Tag Archives: Family

Longing for Family!

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I don’t know about you, but my sweetie and I have had an AMAZING 4th of July weekend!

We were fortunate enough to spend the weekend out in Carlton with my sis-in-law, mom-in-law, and the nieces and nephews!! Can I just tell you, we had a BLAST!!! We had fun going on a long walk/jog, swimming at the community pool, window shopping, and then my sis, Nette, and my niece Megan spent so much time arting! I was teaching them both some mixed media techniques!! Megan is getting ready to redecorate her room, now that she is almost a teenager, and I wanted to help her out by giving her the opportunity to make some new art to hang in her room!!

Megan's Art

Megan’s Art

The stuff we did was pretty advanced, and she did swimmingly!!! Nette and I did well too, but Megan ended up with a finished piece…let’s just say, Nette and I have a bit more to do before we can say the same thing!! 😉

Anyway, we had fun listening to music, hanging out on the back patio trying to enjoy the rare moments of cool breeze (and this weekend, that was rare!), but now that Jason and I are finally back home, I am a little sad. I miss having family around, having family dinners, community walks, meet and greets, get togethers, and just plain silliness that you can only experience with true freedom like you can with family! My sweetie and I are seriously thinking about moving to their little town, just to be able to have that in our lives more often. We shall see! 🙂

My Art

My Art

Well, enough of that! I wasn’t wanting to be a bummer at all, but really just a quick, and belated, Happy 4th of July to all of you out there!! I am so grateful to live in an amazing country where I can live the way I want to, with the people I love!! God is good! We are SOOOO BLESSED!!!

Here is to creating a Beautiful Creative life! 😉

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If you want to have a different life, live differently!

Final Road Trip Pictures!

Good morning!

Before the week got too far ahead of me, I thought I would share my favorite road trip pictures from this past weekend with my Auntie in Port Ludlow, Washington! 🙂

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My Auntie and I on a very windy but lovely afternoon!! 🙂

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My auntie and the surprise birthday boy, “Uncle” Manny!

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Some of my Uncle Manny’s friends!

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The next morning a few of us were able to get together for breakfast before we all headed out for home!

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This is Cathy, Misty, and my Auntie. Misty and I used to pal around together when we were younger!

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Alice and Manny were and still are always so much fun to spend time with!

DSC04813Here is Dick, Mary, Cathy, Manny, Misty, & Alice!

After going through these pictures, I see that I have missed a whole lot of very important people! I will have to see if I have any other pictures tucked away on my phone, and share those on Facebook!!

I really had a wonderful weekend; time at the coast is always so rejuvenating!!

Here is to good memories, and even greater friends, both new and old! 😉

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If you want to have a different life, live differently!! 🙂

Heading Off On Vacation!

Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse statue at Disneyland CaliforniaGood afternoon!

I will be taking a few days off from blogging, so that I can be fully present as I enjoy time with my family as we go on vacation!!

YEAH!!!

My sweetie, myself, my sis-in-law, and my niece and two of our nephews are all heading down to California for a looooong weekend! 🙂 We are going to spend some time on the Californian beaches, a day in Disneyland, a day in California Adventures, and maybe a day in Hollywood?? We shall see!!

It is going to be a whirlwind trip and to say that we are all so excited is truly an understatement!! 🙂

I have not been to Disneyland since I was 12, and my sweetie has NEVER flown since I have known him, and from what I hear hasn’t even been on a plane since he was 12, so this is going to be an adventure for us all!!! I know we are going to have the BEST time! I will make sure to have many pics and stories to share when I get back!!

Here is to having a BLAST while on vacation with the family!! 🙂

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If you want to have a different life, you have to live differently!!

Good Morning!

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Getting Inspired (Photo credit: A.Currell)

Good morning!

I just wanted to stop by and say GOOD MORNING!!! 😉

Life is a little hectic right now, but I am feeling pretty darned blessed!! 😉 I am on day 10 of having family visiting, which I am really loving, but it is wreaking havoc on my sleeping schedule. I am so dang worried that if I go to bed on time then I am going to miss out on something fun or memorable, so I just hold out for as long as my exhausted body will let me, and then as soon as my head hits my pillows, I am OUT!!! 🙂 Which, as you can guess, makes me more tired the next day, and even more tired the next day, so forth, and so on!! 🙂

So, here I am, on this Wednesday morning, at about 5:30 am, relishing this dark quiet morning all by myself in the peace and quiet. The only sounds I can hear right now, is the soft hum of a fan that is on downstairs, and some intermittent street noise as cars drive by on their way to who knows where. It is a pretty peaceful morning! 🙂

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to hang out with my sweetie and my sister as we introduced my sister to all sorts of fun places throughout downtown Salem. (I swear my sweetie and I should just buy one of the old buildings down there, and move in!!!) One of my missions, besides showing her some cool places to check out, was to start collecting a plethora of photographs!! I don’t know about you, but I just LOVE blogs that have a lot of juicy, colorful pictures, and I am going to make the effort to make sure that I have plenty of eye candy on hand so that This Artsy Life can have some of that flavor too!!

Unfortunately, I have not had a chance to process any of those pictures yet, this is so much more time intensive than anyone can imagine, unless you have taken the time to do this yourself! 🙂 But, I will be utilizing these as often as I am able to fit them in!! I just LOVE photographs!! So, more to come on that!! 😉

I also wanted to tell you about the Right Brain Business Plan Summit Recap that Jennifer Lee had so graciously hosted yesterday at lunch time. It was an online summit recap, lasting only about an hour and a half, but it was chalk full of so much good information that I really feel blessed to have been able to listen in. I wrote copious amounts of notes, as you might imagine, but my biggest takeaway was a visual aid that she had all of us draw for class. It took something that was easy to understand and made it fool proof, and completely tangible!! Maybe, if I am feeling froggy I will take a picture of that, and share it with you all this evening! 🙂

Wow! I feel like this post was just so random, but I really just needed to get it all out!! I am sure many of you know exactly what I am talking about!!! 😉

Here is to a FABULOUSLY ARTSY day!! 😉

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If you want to have a different life, you have to live differently!!

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Re-Post: A Quick Cheery Morning!

Good evening!

Instead of taking Saturday nights off from blogging, I thought I would go back, back, waaaaaay back, and re-post a blog posting from my old blog, ChristinaVille. I have decided to call this weekly Saturday night post called a Re-Post! 🙂

I hope you enjoy!! 🙂

Originally posted: April 20, 2011

Good morning my lovelies!!

I am up and ready to head out to work just a little early today, so I thought I would stop and take a few moments to post this morning!!!

While doing my morning pages, this morning, it got me to reminiscing about one of my childhood friends. His name is Robbie! You see Robbie’s mom, and my mom were best friends growing up, so naturally, Robbie and I spent a lot of time together growing up too!!

I remember both of our families lived in a duplex for  a time, they on one side, and we on the other. Robbie and I were inseparable. We went to school together, played together, went to church together! He was my

;-) Robbie and I would sometimes play in the back yard, and we had this folding table back there that we would turn on it’s side and cover with a blanket. That would become whatever building our imaginations needed it to be for that particular game. Most of the time we would playArmy, and Robbie, every the epitome of a gentleman, would be the soldier, and I would always pretend to be the nurse. My job was to hang out in the table/fort and take care of any wounded soldiers that would come in, and generally remain safe from enemy fire!!! Isn’t that funny!! I think we were probably 8 or 9 when this was happening, and it just makes me smile.

Robbie was my hero; he was faster than any of the other kids – seriously, he could run like nobody’s business! He was smarter than any of the other kids, he was more polite than any of the other kids – not many other kids held the door open for ladies! ;-) He was cuter than most of the other kids!! Looking back, I am sure I had little crush on him!! ;-)

Robbie and I would do all sorts of things together, climb trees, go to the penny candy store (yes, they still had one of those back then), catch bugs, play on the park playgrounds, run around making up games to play with our siblings, and one of my favorite activities at the time, screeching around on our big wheels going as fast as we possibly could!! Man, what fun we used to have!!

Well, we both eventually grew up, and we had kept in contact with each other until our early 20′s but, as people change and life moves on we have lost touch. I sometimes think about him and wonder what his life is like right now!? I sure know he really helped make my childhood fun!!

Wherever you are, Robbie!! I hope you are as happy and as blessed as humanly possible!! You TOTALLY deserve it!! ;-)

Did any of you have childhood friends that made your childhood special, like Robbie did for me?? I would love to hear about them in the comments section above! :-)

Have a FABULOUS morning!!! ;-)

If you want to have a different life, you have to live differently!!

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