[ procrastinators ]

I ADMIT, I'm guilty of procrastinating, particularly if it's something I'm not too keen on having to do. I think I'm a few of these rolled into one…

Can you relate to any of them? {click on image to view larger} :)

lisa

[via mashable.com]

[ indulgences ]

SO I've been pretty good lately when it comes to limiting lots of sweets and goodies. Of course I still cheat but as a whole, I'm doing pretty well. That is, until I heard about these bad boys with the funny name…

…and now I'm slightly addicted. Drat! Have you heard of them? I hadn't but some Dutch expats were raving about them here so of course curiosity got the best of me and I looked for them in the grocery store. Big mistake. And just like potato chips, you can't eat just one. They may only have 60 calories per cookie but they've got 3g of sugar which is what I've been trying to avoid.

What's your latest indulgence?

lisa

[ funny ]

CAN anyone else relate? :)

lisa

[ handmade cards ]

I LOVE the idea of handmade cards {though I've usually sent out store-bought mostly due to timing and laziness}. But I love that handmade cards allow you to personalize them however you want and make as many as you need at a fraction of the price.

Last year I decided to make some simply ones using my Silhouette {see them here}. This year, I took a different approach and simply used my computer…

I won't pretend that I designed these cute graphics myself ~ I could have but decided to speed up the process a bit and found the LOVE graphic on Pinterest as a downloadable tag freebie {do a search on Pinterest for all sorts of freebies}. Instead of using it as a tag, I thought it would be cute modified into a card so I simply printed off a bunch on a page and trimmed them out…

I went through my stash of craft supplies and found some black card stock that I thought would work and decided that I would write inside with my silver paint pen. But first… I thought they could use a bit of added cuteness so I got out my sewing machine…

…and stitched across the top of each card with red thread. I think it gave them just the right finishing touch.  The office supply envelopes I bought had a faint logo printed on the inside so I designed a little Hello label to hide it... 

I think this year's cards are even cuter than last year's.

Do you make your own cards?

lisa

[freebie via onevelvetmorning.wordpress.com]

[ happy weekend! ]

WHAT are you doing to be happy this weekend?

lisa

[via pink-pearls-boatshoes.tumblr]

[ vroom vroom ]

ONE OF my guy's favourite things is checking out cool cars so this weekend we went to the Dubai Motor Show. If money is no object and you're looking for the latest and greatest, Dubai is the place to see it…

Or if you can't afford to buy one of your own, why not join the Dubai Police and drive one of their fleet cars…

I saw a few things I wouldn't mind like these rugged wheels they don't sell in Canada {perfect for cottage country}…

…but my dream car would be something like this…

What would your dream car be?

lisa

[ project life ]

SO, unless you've been living under a rock {like I was for the past couple of years}, you've probably heard all about Project Life ~ Becky Higgins' answer to photo albums/scrapbooking/journalling for all of us who are pressed for time or simply lazy...

I've never been a scrapbooker and having lived here in Dubai and Ireland prior to that with limited access to fun supplies and goodies, I hadn't heard of this quite brilliant system for documenting life. Thanks to Pinterest {are you as addicted as I am?}, it opened my eyes to how wonderful it is to document all the things going on in everyday life and how easy it is to make a pretty album by just sliding everything into pocket pages.

Even though I have this blog, which has been an excellent place to make note of everything for the past almost 4 years, I thought it would still be nice to have something to flip through, especially to remember our years as expats.

Becky's system includes binders, photo pocket pages and pretty insert cards...

The preprinted cards can be used to write in some journalling notes or just pop in some of the patterned ones to fill in empty spots. It's designed for weekly documenting which I find to be too much, especially since I'm working my way backwards. 

I decided to create a spread for each month instead, sometimes only one page for a month depending on what I actually had going on. Thanks to iPhoto, my pics are all organized by date so that definitely makes things easier. It's a lot of work going back and sorting through pics, organizing and printing them out but I'm slowly making progress. I bought a couple of different pocket pages but didn't bother with her preprinted insert cards ~ Pinterest has tons of downloadable freebies and I created many of my own. It's turning into a hybrid of text added in Photoshop and handwritten notes and some pasting which is making it interesting. 

Here are some cute examples from Pinterest of completed pages...

As you can see, the options are endless ~ you can make things as simple or as layered as you'd like. I may share a couple of my completed pages once I get them done and my journalling notes added in {it may be a while}. So that's what's been eating up my time.

Have you embraced Project Life?

lisa

[ they call me Sally ]

SO, it seems that Dubai is a great hang-out for these little guys...

How do I know? Well, we've had 5 of them IN OUR HOUSE since we moved into this villa! They're sticky and they're quick and love to hang out on the walls outside. If we're not careful, they'll scurry in undetected whenever we open the door. Oh sure, these little salamanders or geckos or whatever you want to call them might be cute as cartoons...

...but seeing one scoot across the counter or hanging out near the ceiling is not a pleasant thing. While I freak out, my guy has become the "sally" catcher, armed with the dyson vacuum cleaner to chase them with the nozzle to suck them up and then release them outside {they're so fast, it's the only way to catch them}. Luckily he's been home every time one has been spotted.

And to think I used to be afraid of spiders...

lisa