There’s a bunch more here!

Now it’s icy, cold, and bleak….. what a weird new years day this has been!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

For example, with my day job, EO work:

• I am slow, then slammed, then slow then slammed. I haven’t archived files in months (which is bad, but also good cuz it just takes up agency time)
• I haven’t gone through my work email and filtered/deleted since September, meaning 930+ to sort through, and home since the same, so probably even worse as all my gmail and puremotif goes there.
• I have 2 important projects I’m in the middle of, but right now, they are on hold so I’m twiddling my thumbs. At any moment though, they could break out and go crazy.

And with freelance and my business:

• I had one wedding this past Saturday which was beautiful and another at New Years. After that I have no weddings until May, (when there are THREE!)
• I do have some family photo shoots coming up, but not a whole lot of graphic design work.
• I have an album I’m waiting for the couple to decide on images for, so that will be some time when it comes
• I’m really in a place where I need to say yes to any and everything that comes my way freelance wise, so I book up enough work to tide me through till weddings begin in spring.
• I will soon need to spend some time compiling and organizing everything tax-wise for the 08 year. I did oK keeping it organized, but still not good enough.

And at home:

• I had the ambition to do Christmas Cards this year, but it’s not going to happen, I just don’t have the manpower/time and I can’t afford the ink/paper to print them. I’m really bummed about this.
• I got my wonderful new elliptical for Christmas already and it is set-up, I had time to workout 3 days last week, then no more. It’s not that I don’t want to, I really want to. I just can’t get to it!
• The house is an absolute and utter mess.
• This is a problem, because my in-laws and brother-in-law and his girlfriend are going to spend Christmas with us for four days.  That’s 6 people in a small 3 bedroom Erie City house, with ONE BATHROOM. Count them. ONE. So, that’s going to be really really interesting. I’m so excited to see them, but to get my house ready for guest useage is going to be a lot of work. I’m really praying this week and weekend affords time to do that.
• I am however done with all my family Christmas shopping, couldn’t do friends this year, and most of the wrapping, except for one of my presents for my hubbie that got messed up in shipping
• Wrapping presents and doing tons of laundry last night took me like 5 hours instead of the 2 I was hoping for.

And in general:

• I am always 3-8 minutes late for everything. I don’t know why
• But today, I was 10 minutes early for the presentation at the Manufacturer’s Association.
• I say I’m going to go to bed by 11, but last night I don’t think I closed my eyes until 1:30am, and this generally happens to me.
• I want to be blogging more.
• Brian and I had another little tiff about our schedules and conflicts and life and expectations last night. It ended wonderfully with laughter and teasing, I love that we can take our fights and turn them into jokes… but still, it will always be an issue I’m sure.
• Snow makes everything take longer.

That’s all. I guess this post was more for me. ha.

So much has happened today and yesterday. It’s all crazy.

Ok so now I have tons of work to do.

Also it feels like the end of January.

As Saturday wore on, we had to call a friend to come plow out the snow at the bottom of our driveway because it was so heavy and high, we couldn’t shovel it ourselves. Because of Brian’s back (2 herniated discs at the young age of 26), he can only do a small amount of shoveling, and I do my best but I’m only able to handle so much. It was amazing what a plow can do in 30 seconds that takes us humans hours to do ourselves!

Truthfully Sunday was quite beautiful – most of the main roads were melted, but a lot of the side roads are still struggling as the plows never got to them. And because so many people in the city don’t have off-street parking, a common site was cars barely visible, plowed into their spots with 5 foot high snow drifts around them. But the sky was blue, and we were able to attack some other portions of the snow. I hired a nice young strong guy from church to shovel our sidewalk and he and his dad came and did an AMAZING job! I was so relieved to know that people could freely traverse the sidewalks again. (sort of) Sunday night we had a get together with our music teams from the church, and ended up getting stuck in the driveway of the host’s home which was a steep long hill. We had to get towed out! But the great news is that we found out our insurance will cover it so I’m going to send in the bill.

Another fun thing that happened Sunday is when we got home, the pilot light had gone out on our furnace, and the house temperature had dropped to a whopping 49 degrees! This is Brian, Danielle and Candace dealing with the cold

Alright I need to do some work, asap! Thanks for reading if you did

Here is a warning that Dave gave me from the people in charge:

Deep snow is making travel treacherous today and both the Pennsylvania State Police and the Erie Bureau of Streets are asking people to stay at home if possible.

“People need to be off the roads,” said Terry Delio, the assistant chief of the Bureau of Streets. “This is one of the worst storms we’ve seen in years. And it’s going to keep coming.”

Here’s some pictures of my little corner of the world in white:

And my favorite:

Stay safe, stay warm, be glad you don’t live in Erie! (or anywhere else that’s getting hit by the storm!!)

Headlines say: “Winter storm warning in effect from noon today to 4 a.m. Sunday”

I’m a bit nervous as Brian and many others I love are traveling tonight to a youth retreat called “The Great Sex Weekend,” (yes it’s a church-youth-group retreat themed on sexuality!) Last year when Brian was gone on the winter retreat, my car was almost totalled by being rear-ended into another car and Brian had to come home, so I’ve been asked not to drive this weekend. Obviously I will need to at some point, but I’ll be very careful. It’s supposed to be the worst later tonight. All I know is I’m glad I purchased a back-saving new shovel last weekend because I think I’ll be needing it.

Be safe everyone!

(Picture from the heavy snowfall two weeks ago)

Basically my weeks have been filled with this: (Most designs and by Danielle and implementation by me)

Basically the main photo bar takes you to a new section of our site. The campaign billboards are around Erie and direct you here to read true stories from real people in our church from all stages of life. Who is grace? We are grace. I am grace.

and this: (looking at these now i see some dust on my lens and i’m not happy about it)

and this (first time i’ve witnessed them on a bed “together”):

and many other non-photographic elements including web updates, grocery shopping, budget planning, laundry, kitty playing, husband and friend time, worshipping at church, volunteering, life life life life.

Can’t wait to get back in the game!