Oh The Weather Outside is Frightful!

AGAN! This time the winter weather advisory is out for Indiana. I was supposed to meet Dave, Laura and the Girls for lunch in Angola today and bring the girls back to either get picked up by Pop tonight or spend the night and I’d take then to his house tomorrow. This would make up for me not seeing the four of them on Christmas Eve and get the girls to their grandfather’s house for New Year’s Eve festivities. Pop and Aunt Judy take the grands for a family fun New Year at Frankenmuth every year. My cousin John’s daughter, Kendal, was the first teenager to say, “not this year.” She’s only a year older than the girls, but she sees her grandmother a lot more than Tori and Rina see their Papa, so they may want to go and run babysitting duties for the younger kids a couple more years to have the time with Pop. We’ll see what happens when they start driving!

I got a text from Dave this morning while David and I were making breakfast to call if I was awake. It was 9:30 and I usually wake up at 7. Silly brother! When I called he said he wanted to change plans because of a weather advisory until 1 AM. I assured him I didn’t want any of us to be on the roads with an advisory. He’s gong to call Pop after his shift at Meijer is over to make evening plans for Monday or Tuesday and he’ll call and, update me.

So, now aside from a small errand, I get a free day I hadn’t expected! I’m going to do a little laundry and spend some data entry time with our card database. I got a Windows address book program that would work on both of our laptops. Now we are entering all of our Christmas card addresses. It’s a pretty big task! We ordered 75 of our family and friends cards and 75 train cards for each of us. We send one of each train card per envelope to our raifan pals, so we’re talking 150 cards-to-mail ordered, most of them used and only a few addresses that both cards go to, so there is a LOT of data entry to do in the new book. Unfortunately, the old data is on the Mac in a Mac-unique program, so I can’t just transfer the data and update. This new program is a Win-Mac program, so if I get the one written for the Mac too, the data will transfer. I’m going to do data entry for a while and then some Scrapbooking!


Speaking of Scrapbooking, I found a totally sweet freebie mini kit by Shelleyrae Designs at her blog. The kit is a perfect match for the centerpiece Grandma gave us for Christmas 2007 and last night I did a couple of pages for Christmas Day with it!

Credits: kit – Snowdrop by Shellyrae Designs,
Templates – Christmas Tree Templates by Digitalegacies Designs

That brings me to my Christmas week gift! The pair of templates I did for the layouts! Template one is in my usual multi-photo style with the large tree and snowflake sunken into the main paper. Template 2 is me stretching my style a bit. I’m not a big fan of white space layouts for me, but I realize that many people love to do them. I believe that you should give as a gift either something you would enjoy receiving as a gift yourself or something you absolutely know the receiver will enjoy, whether or not it’s your cup of tea. Since this set of templates is my Christmas gift, I’m serving both my ”cup of coffee” and many others‘ “cup of tea” together!

Click the preview to download
Password is Merry-Christmas

I’d love to read your comments here at The Chronicles of Nani, which is where I see them sooner and more often. What do you think about the embossed shapes for the background layers? Do you like a pair of templates with a white space and multi-photo page together?

Off to do an errand and get to work on data entry and more scrapping! I hope you’re all enjoying this holiday weekend!

Shhh! It's Christmas Eve!

trains, M&Ms, cats, yeah, that's our tree all right!

Carla has been spending a lot of time looking out the back window which is the same window Kaline gazed out of looking for Santa Paws when she was a kitween. Carla didn’t get to watch for him in a nice warm house with a Christmas tree and pretty lights last year knowing that when it was time to sleep she’d be curling up under quilts in a bed with a Daddy and Mommy who loved her. The fact that she is not out in the snow alone makes this a special Christmas for her, but she and Kaline were chasing around by the tree and it really was playing just a little bit ago! Okay, maybe that gift is for David and me!

Here is our festive view from the dining room this Christmas Eve:


This view is why I prefer to keep the shades up at night during Christmas! Our tree and the neighbor across the street – It takes a village to raise the holiday cheer bar! It’s just such a gorgeous, warm view!

Tonight it ends up being just us at home. We were scheduled to go to the Motherland tonight when David got in from work to go to traditional fish fry at my cousin’s house and the back to Pop’s for coffee and gift exchange with my brother’s clan, but we got weather-scared out! We weren’t going to make it until after dinner anyway, which was okay, it’s the people not the food I go for. Fried fish in abundance usually leaves me looking for a snack because I haven’t eaten! I’ve never been a fan of fried fish, I just enjoy seeing my cousins and Uncle John, who I don't see that often. But the forecast at lunchtime said to expect freezing rain here about the time we were leaving until about 3 AM and starting up there just a little later. Well, we actually dodged that bullet in Ohio, but it sure is pink on the satellite in the Motherland right now! After pretty scary drive home last year, we weren’t going to disregard the forecast again. So, instead of fried fish, we had spaghetti and some nice time to spend with the cats who seem to know it’s a special night. They are playful, but peaceful at the same time. Even Baggle was playing with a mousie like he was a kitten!


We’ll be making arrangements to have dinner next week with my relatives that came in from San Marino. They’ll be in the States until just after the New Year and we have tentative plans for Saturday to meet Pop, Dave, Laura and Tori and Rina to have holiday dinner together and exchange gifts. I’m looking forward to that. I can’t tell you how much it hurt to hear that whine in Rina’s voice on the phone when I told her we couldn’t make it. No slight to my Brother or Sis, who I also don’t see often because they are in Indy with the girls too, but it just kills me not to get to see my Sweeties for Christmas! Fortunately the bad weather will be gone by the weekend and we’ll be able to see them. It’s also a bonus for me because I’ll pick up the last part of Dave and Laura’s gift Saturday morning!

I’m listening to the A Very Games Night Christmas 2009 CD that Sheri did for everyone again this year in my CD drive. David is using the outlet that usually powers the stereo for his computer so we can play games and sit together. I like his company even better than the good speakers! My picks that she put on this year’s CD were Away in a Manger by John Berry and Dru Hill’s This Christmas, which is playing now. David’s choice is the bawdiest tune on the album; Christmas Tree by Lady Gaga, the artist David calls his guilty pleasure.


I’m going to finish this blog entry off with a short, fun Meme I got from Kristine.


1. What 5 items are on your holiday wish list this year?
• Acupuncture
• Some quiet time with David; no poker, no scrapbooking, no trains, just us.
• A new camera
• A case of Almondina
• Caribou Blend and Green Mountain Decaf French Roast K-Cups

2. What is your favorite handmade gift you have received?
• Grandma used to make sequined and embroidered felt calendars. I still have them in my cedar chest.

3. What was the best Christmas gift you received as a child?
• I realize I risk sounding disingenuous here, but I really don’t remember a specific gift that was measurably better than any others, I always had abundant and wonderful Christmases as a kid. It was more a feeling that every Christmas was the best yet. I think that love for the holiday and the people I share it with was the best gift I received as a child and still give and receive as an adult.

4. What items are on your kid’s wish list this year?
• Treats, toy mice, more treats and Carla wants more paper balls.

5. What will you be hand-crafting for the holidays?
• I’ll say later because sometimes he reads this blog!

6. What is your favorite holiday movie?
• It’s a Wonderful Life

7. Favorite holiday song?
• Away In a Manger (I really like John Berry’s version), All I Want For Christmas (is a New Year With You) by Toby Keith

8. Favorite holiday pastime?
• Baking and entertaining


Well, time to cut into our crostada and some ice cream with hot cocoa for dessert and wait for Santa and midnight so we can put the baby in the manger and welcome the true magic that is the spiritual part of Christmas into our home.

Whatever part of the holiday season you hold and celebrate, on what is a very holy night for me, I want to wish you all the very best of what this season holds for you!

Goals and Projects for 2010

Christmas Eve Breakfast Still Life

Isn’t the photo cool? The photo isn’t all breakfast. Just one slice with coffee, but the full sliced quarter of the Panetonne looked better for the picture! That is a sample for my Project 365 in 2010. More about that later! I cut the huge Panetonne my Dad got me into quarters and wrapped up the other three to freeze. I’m the only one in our house who eats it, but the Panetonne brings back such sweet memories of Noni and the fact that she always made a special effort to find the ones without the candied oranges for Mom and me. It’s also quite tasty as a mildly sweet breakfast bread to the portion of my taste buds that are authentic San Marinese and a rather large and filling slice is only 310 calories!

This week’s Photoblog Wednesday was the final photo of Patch 365. No, we didn’t choose to go out to celebrate our first anniversary the night before for that reason, but it was a neat byproduct of the scheduling! So the book starts with our first married photo and ends with us celebrating our first anniversary with 52 weekly pages and some pretty cool extras in between. No, I’m far from done scrapping it. I have each week’s photos in a folder wi0th the notes for captioning them so I have the facts and memories recorded to catch up the scrapping as I can. But I think it’s going to be a pretty cool book to have on our coffee table recording the special days and the things that made the ordinary days special of our first married year!

I decided that I’d do a selfish project 365 this year and try something fun and a little artsy just for me. Now, I really do believe that scrapbooking is selfish, but in a giving way. It’s sort of like the great painters. They can be called selfish because they created works for their own fulfillment, their expression of what was inside of them. It just so happened that the beauty and emotion of their efforts touched many people and that beauty became a treasure and the mark, the legacy they left to the world. Isn’t a scrapbook the same thing? A well-done scrapbook is a beautiful piece of expressive art that becomes a cherished treasure to those with whom it’s shared. So for 2010, my Project 365 will be a special to me book when it’s done. If many years down the line it becomes a special look at me or a fun book for anyone else to look at, bonus! But the project is all for my own expression and nothing else, just for fun for me.

2010 will be my year of Java 365. I’m going to take a picture of coffee every day. It will most often be my coffee, but I’m not limiting myself to that, it could also be ambient shots of coffee shops or another Sapp Brothers water tower, something like that. It will usually be my coffee, but not just a photo of the cup – that would get boring. I’m going to set up still life presentations with the coffee, with a sweet roll or other accompaniment. I took a picture on the steam train trip we went on in October of my coffee on the window sill, obviously on a train with the countryside in the background, I’ll probably do holiday accents for the holiday coffee pics. I’m just going to have some fun with it.



As 2010 starts, I have 4 major goals I’m working on for the year. The first one is, of course, school! Spring semester starts January 8 and this term I’m taking an XHTML class, which is the first Network Security class. It’s a prerequisite to moist of the security certificate classes and a suggested prerequisite to the intro security class, which is part of the Networking certificate. In the fall, I’ll take the second Microsoft Server class, but rather than doubling up this semester, I’m going embark of major project number two, which is getting myself exam-ready for Network+ certification. I have a couple practice exams and I figure I’ll start with using one to really study and sign up to take the official exam when I can get a passing score with no notes or internet on the other. This will definitely keep me out of trouble and off the streets! I don’t like to be on the streets when it snows anyway!

Project number 3 is a recommitment to Wife 1500. I did not gain from Wedding day to first anniversary, but I didn’t lose much either. Like I’ve said before, it was an emotionally rough last half of the year, but there will always be challenges in life and I can’t allow myself to make them worse by using them as an excuse not to take care of myself. I’ve asked David to do a couple things to support me on this. First is not to skip dessert because I’m not sharing the same dessert. I’m lucky that he shares my taste for Jello as a lighter dessert, but if at the end of the day I don’t have adequate calories left for a piece of cake and/or ice cream, I want him to have it if he wants it. The surest way for me to not stick with my eating plan is if he’s not having things he wants because of it. He should NEVER feel bad if he’s having a brownie with ice cream when I’m having three strawberries with a tablespoon of chocolate!

The second thing he agreed to try to remember to do is recognize that if I’m eating something out of a bag or box and it’s not a measured portion in a bowl for a snack, something’s wrong and he should ask me about it. Even if I don’t want to talk about what’s bugging me, and in fact, I may not even realize that something is bugging me, it will call my attention to the bad-for-me habit and I’ll effect an immediate change in it!

My last major goal for 2010 is a scrapbooking goal. I am in 2007 in my scrapbooks. I am going to do a minimum layout a day to work on catching up. I start a new book at the beginning of the year, so I’m going to scrap 2010 in the now while I’m catching up the other three years. 365 layouts may not catch up three years if I do the minimum, but it will make a big dent! I average about 150 pages per year in my books. If I can start 2011 having made significant ground on the years that need caught up without adding another year to those files, it will make for a much more pleasant start!

So those are my ambitious plans for the first year of the new decade. Do you do goals or resolutions? What are some of your lofty plans? Hey, that’s probably a good first layout for 2010!

Photoblog Wednesday

One Year, December 23!

Last night we went out to Real Seafood Company to celebrate our first wedding anniversary!

Nani Soda

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Jones Soda. All opinions are 100% mine.


I wish ‘d heard abut this sooner because it would have been so awesome for our party! You know how highly I recommend Jones Soda especially their fantastic Jones Zilch sugar free, now there is myJones custom soda! That’s right, your choice of image can join all those fun photos on Jones Soda!

I checked out the flavors. Currently, the sugar free black cherry is in the list of available for customizing flavors, but I would have ordered a six pack each of the four holiday flavors, Evergreen Apple, Holiday Bliss, Snow Drift Cream Soda and Reindeer Root Beer for UNO and that picture on top is the one I’d choose for half the bottles, definitely the Reindeer Root Beer and one of the others with an equally holiday fun photo of David on the other two, and believe me, I do have equally fun photos of my hubby!

Now, it’s too late to do the holiday favors for UNO this year, Custom Jones Sodas need 10-14 days for production plus shipping, but imagine the possibilities. Wedding photos on the bottles for a 25th anniversary party, Childhood images for a graduation or birthday party, school time photos for a reunion, there are just too many things to count for which custom Jones Soda bottles would make a perfect addition to the party!

I think for now, I need to really consider one of those Jones Zilch samplers, but I definitely bookmarked the myJones page and really, you should too!