hallo from im krankenhaus!

I've got Internet!!! I'm using a German keyboard which is a little tricky, but otherwise all is good. The surgery this morning was quick, and the doctor said I'm all closed up now, so this little baby should be all set for 5 more months. :)

I'm especially excited that now I can catch up on my google reader stuff...I was getting behind again!

I won't be able to share any photos while here, but at least I can type and get email. I hope everyone is having a great week, and I'll be back to share my im krankenhaus experiences. (Krankenhaus is hospital in case you don't remember!)

Bis später!

TFL!

I've been tagged!

Hello everyone. Sorry I don't have a card to share with you before I had to the hospital tomorrow morning, but I promise I'll have one when I get home on Wednesday! Jessie (one of the wonderful Prettie Girls) tagged me last night and I thought that now would be a fun time to play along since I don't have any eye candy for you.

The"rules" of the game: Each player answers questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

Ten Years Ago: I was working for a Fortune 500 company as a web marketing manager in Silicon Valley, living in a townhouse with my then boyfriend/now husband with our 2 cats.

Five thing in today’s ‘to do’ list:
1. Take my friends to the airport at 5am!!! (YIKES!)
2. Pack for my hospital stay (including towels!)
3. try to clean the house some (didn't do this, altho my dh did!)
4. catch up my google reader-not gonna happen...
5. complete paperwork for rental house we're hoping to get in San Jose, CA
6. make dh's anniversary card - DONE!

Snacks I enjoy: depends on my mood; peanuts, chocolate (peanuts in chocolate) fruit, chips...I guess pretty much anything!

Things I would do if I was a millionaire: Unfortunately, at least where we're moving back to, that wouldn't get us very far. It would just barely buy a home. But then we'd have no house payment so I guess we could use that money to do fun stuff like travel more.

Places I have lived: Maine, Southern California, Northern California, and Germany.

Okay, so now I am supposed to nominate 5 people, so I nominate....YOU! Please leave me a comment if you decide to play along on your own blog...or just leave a comment with your own answers!

Have a great few days everyone, and I"ll be back soon.

TFL!

It's a healthy Baby!

S/he is healthy! We just had our first-trimester genetik screening where they do some pretty cool things with 3D ultrasound. The good news is, we have now gone down from a 1 in 200 chance to a 1 in 2000 chance of having a major genetic problem. This is huge news for us considering our last pregnancy ended because the baby died in utero at 13 weeks because of trisomy 13. Now, I just have to get my "stitch" put in (a cerclage to try and prevent my cervix from opening early again like it did with my daughter), and we're all set for a full-term, healthy baby! :-)

TFL!

No stamping yet...

Sorry I haven't had a chance to do any crafting in the last 2 days. My parents are currently flying home, so I'll be crying in my non-alcoholic beer tonight. I've lost my laundry-man and chief dishwasher, as well as the best playmates for Julia there are! However, we will be driving back to the airport in just 30 minutes more to pick up our good friends from California who are arriving this afternoon. I had just enough time to wash the sheets and vacuum the guest room in between visitors!

Hope you all are having a wonderful day, and I'll try to get some stamp time in this afternoon.

TFL!

Prettie Wednesday, Prettie Peak, and Prettie Party!

Wow, that's a lot of Prettie!! Sorry I've been missing my German Phrase of the Day...I'll get back to it next week when life is normal again. Today was hubby's birthday, so I spent the morning making his favorite meal (murtabak...YUM!) and a cake. This this afternoon, I went upstairs to rest since Julia was playing with a friend, and fell asleep - for a whole hour! What bliss. Then, had to frost the cake, do our little "birthday party" with cake and presents, then finally got into my stamp room to play.

2 weeks ago, Julie challenged us all to "Be Inspired" and link to a favorite website that inspires us, then post a card inspired by that site. One of my favorite stamping blogs (and I have MANY) is Kristina Werner's. I love her MACM videos (so does Julia...so much so that now when she stamps what she calls her make a card monday cards, she even gives the explanation as she's stamping!) and I love her clean crisp style. That girl has a LOT of style!!!

And, I used Cooper...Paper Pretties newest character. Perhaps he's Sophia's little brother? Cooper will be available tomorrow night at the Prettie Party where the Prettie Girls will be stamping in their PJ's (I won't be, I'll be enjoying some R&R with my dh, ALONE!) The party starts at 8pm EST in the Prettie Forum, you won't want to miss out as Charmaine has some wonderful challenges all cooked up for us. I'm hoping to bring some stamping stuff with us so while my husband is reading or writing, perhaps I can stamp! :-)

Ok...back to my card. I stamped Cooper (from Look out World) and his sentiment with Brilliance Black ink onto Stamper's Select white, then made a mask with my handy-dandy Eclipse masking paper. I have gone on and on about how amazing this stuff is, right?? Did I mention that if you order any Paper Prettie stamps during the release party, you'll get a coupon for 25% off your next order??? What an awesome deal!!! Yet another reason not to miss out!!

Oh yeah...the card! I masked Cooper and stamped the oval from Sassy Circles under him in Going Gray to give him some grounding, then I colored him with my prismacolor pencils and blended them out with my OMS and blending stumps. For the papers, I used the SU! Simply Scrappin' kit Primary Colors. Kristina often has 2 different patterns of paper together like this, and I really like that look. The card base is Bashful Blue, and I used some Real Red wide grosgrain to finish it off. I think he's pretty darn cute, what do you think??

Oh yeah..and I promised an announcement, didn't I? Well...Julia is expecting a little brother or sister in another 6 months. Yup, I'm preggers!! Will make the whole moving halfway around the world in the next 10 weeks a little more interesting...but we're really excited here, and keeping our fingers crossed that all goes well. Considering our reproductive history (a 26 week premie, and then 2 miscarriages - 1 at 13 weeks) we're a little nervous, but every week that goes by is a good thing! I'm almost 12 weeks right now, and already starting to show. Thankfully, I left a suitcase full of maternity clothes at my sisters' house when we moved here, "just in case." They were able to bring the clothes to my when the arrived 2 weeks ago, just in time. :-)

Have a great day/night everyone, and don't forget the Prettie Party tomorrow night!!

TFL!

Hola! I'm home from Spain.

Hi everyone! I'm home from Spain, altho over half my family arrived less then 12 hours after I did, so life has not calmed down yet! We had a wonderful time in Spain, and my husband has decided he wants to move to Barcelona next. I said maybe after living back in the states for a few years we can try out Spain. ;-)

I haven't made it up to my craft room yet, but will tonight because Ihave a Prettie Girl card to get made for Wednesday!! Running late as always! Tomorrow morning my mom, sisters and I are taking the train to Paris for a "girls' gettaway" and I'll be back again late Thursday night. Then I"ll actually be home for 4 days before leaving again! Hopefully I can get some stamping done in that time (Julia willing of course!)

Thanks for your patience everyone. I hope you have a great day!!

TFL!

Awards and confessions...

I have a confession to make. I'm in California. I've been here since Tuesday, but I couldn't say so on my blog because we were surprising my good friend and upline Rachel. She found out Thursday night (our big plan worked and she was VERY surprised!) and so now I can let everyone else know. I'm actually here checking out potential schools for Julia since we are planning on moving back to the Bay Area this summer/fall. Lots of work in the next few months, but it will be fun to be back!

In the meantime, I've received the Arte y Pico Award a few times now. Christie very kindly passed it along to me, as did Charmaine. Love those Pretties!! Thank you ladies!! :-)

So...here are the rules:

1. You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity,design,interesting material,and also contributes to the blogging community,no matter what language.

2. Each award has to give the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.

3. Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.

4. Award winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of Arte y Pico blog ,so everyone will know the origin of this award.

5. To show these rules.

I will come back and award this to 5 people soon...my google reader isn't working here, so I can't check to see who's got it and who doesn't (that's also why I haven't been commenting like usual...sorry folks!)

Hope you all are well...and I'll try to post some photos of projects soon. I made a Jan Tink Carousel Notes purse, and some AWESOME cards with a wonderful member of my downline here using Nestabilities and copper paper! Gorgeous!!

Tag I'm it, and a card!

German Phrase of the Day: Umbau bin ich es. = Tag I'm it. Betchya didn't know that, did you?! I'll be honest, I cheated and looked it up on babelfish since I didn't know how to say tag in German - although I got the rest of it right. :-) Since Melanie (you know her, that awesome designer of stamps for GinaK!) tagged me, I figured I'd respond. You'll see my 7 weird facts below. :-)

Here's a quick card I made yesterday while working on my pretty card. It's the January Bella card of the Month from Paper Pretties...and I just love it! Of course, I didn't follow the directions EXACTLY, and I was too lazy to stamp the bags again and cut them out...but I like it! This paper is just fabulous...don't you agree?

I colored my Sweetie Bellas with WWC and aquapainter. I colored the curly haired one to look like me (altho I put on a bit too much eyeshadow - didn't realize how dark the Spica glitter pen was going to be!) and the other to look like my little bug. This is us in 10 years sitting together eating ice cream. Now if I could just know I'd look that good in 10 years. Who am I kidding...I don't look that good NOW!!! LOL! Julia is eating lemon ice cream (her favorite over here...boy is she going to be disappointed when we move back to the states and she can't get Lemon Eis anymore!) and I have a scoop of mint chip and a scoop of mocha. And of course, we've just spent a lovely afternoon of mother daughter bonding at the shops. Yes...I'm still in my little dream world. In 10 years she'll be 16 and want to have NOTHING to do with her mother...but a girl can dream, right?

Okay, now for the rules of the game:
Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
• Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself on your blog, we all want to know them.
• Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
• Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

1. I bit my fingernails my entire childhood and only stopped when I started getting acrylic nails put on when I was like 25 and working. Can't bite through those suckers!!

2. At one point I had over 2 dozen pets in my home. We had 1 African Gray Parrot, 1 lovebird, 3 cats, 1 pug, 3 snakes (I think) 2 box turtles, 2 tortoises, 1 frog, 1 bunny, 3 geckos and about 15 bearded dragons (our female laid a clutch of eggs and most of them actually hatched!) This was all right before I started dating my now husband in the home I shared with my then boyfriend.

3. My husband proposed to me underwater while scuba diving. He brought the ring down in his BC (Boyancy compensator - like a vest with air in it) and didn't even tie it to anything. Everyone always asks "But what if he'd dropped it?" I just tease him that he did that so he wouldn't have to actually say the words.

4. My all-time favorite dessert is a well prepared flourless chocolate cake with a tart raspberry sauce. MMMMMmmmmm!

5. I love to fish. My dad and "adopted" granpa taught me to fish when I was 5 years old, and within a few years I was baiting my own hooks and traipsing along-side my dad as we climbed through brush and muck to find the perfect fishing spots. Some of my best conversations I've had with my dad have been standing next to small brook or stream holding a fishing pole.

6. My mom has been a wonderful inspiration to me that women can do and be anything they want. She started as a medical secretary, then stay-at-home mom, real estate agent, road construction fore(wo)man, housecleaner and finally teacher. She also taught me you don't have to tie yourself to a career at 22!

7. I was 17 years old the first time I stepped foot on an airplane, and that first trip I flew from Bangor, Maine to Los Angeles, California. Within a week I had then flown up to Seattle and over to Japan!! Talk about starting big!

Ok...hope that was random enough for you all. Now to tag 7 others...
Danielle Lourdes
Frances Byrne
Charmaine Ikach
Erika Martin
Heather Summers
Stefanie Ardry
Jessie Rone
Phew...that was hard!

Supplies: (all supplies from Paper Pretties unless noted)
Stamps: Sweetiebellas by Stamping Bella
CS: Bazzill wild pansy, olive & atlantic, paper salon designer papers, ultrasmooth white
Ink: brilliance graphite black
Acc: SU! watercolor crayons, aquapainter, spica glitter pens, SU! Crafter's toolkit, jumbo brads, sparkly chipboard flowers

TFL!

"German" chocolate cake

Hey...do you all know how German Chocolate Cake got it's name? I sure didn't, but one of my readers does (Thanks Pat!!) and gave me this link. It's quite an interesting story.

And related...Beate has now turned me onto another kind of cake, Donauwelle (which means Danube waves, right Beate?) which sounds amazing. I found a recipe that looks do-able, so I'll let you all know what I think! If you want to try it to, check it out here.

ETA: Beate has declared using boxes of mix "Yucky" so I guess I'll have to be brave and use her recipe from scratch! I'll let you all know how that goes! :-)

Ok...back to my Travel Agent job! ;-) I've got flights, trains & hotels to book! Oh...and I promised a glimpse of our upcoming travel schedule so here it is:

March 20-24 Venice, Italy
April 10-13 Rome, Italy
April 18-20 Wine Trip through Germany Mosel Valley and France Champagne areas
April 26-May 3 Spain, Barcelona to Seville and Gibraltar with many stops along the way
May 6-8 "Girls" trip to Paris with mom and sisters
May12-18ish Birmingham, England, possibly also down into Southern England
May 22-25 trip with my honey - dunno where yet!
May 26-June 1 Provence, Geneva and Strasbourg or Freiburg with my parents
June 6-7 Netherlands with friends
June 10-12 Paris with friends
June 14-21 MAYBE Souther England...still working this one out.

SO, as you can see...it's going to be a little insane in the Weaver household. And add to that, we're MOVING back to the states in August (hopefully) so Julia can start at a US Kindergarten when all the other kids do. Phew...I'm exhausted just thinking about it all!! ;-) Don't feel too sorry for me though, because you know I"ll be having a blast.

Oh...and I've decided I need to try digiscrapping so I can get all these electronic photos into books. Anyone have any advice on the best way to get started?? I'd love any links you all have!

TFL!

Cool IKEA light...

Ok Ladies...can you imagine getting to alter this??? It's like having an acrylic paint can with a light in the middle!! how cool is that!?! I didn't see it on the US side, so it may be a Europe only kind of thing. If I knew for sure my husband could re-wire it I'd consider buying it anyway. In the photo in the little catalog I just got it has different kinds of balls around the outside - but you could do almost anything with it!!

Oh...and in this same catalog they have some beautiful glass vases with white designs on them. Can't wait to get my new SU! rub-ons and try that out with a few vases I have here. I think they'll make fabulous gifts for folks as we're leaving!

Anyway...just had to share. Don't forget the party tonight!!! Oh...and stick around til I get up...I have something VERY funny to share with you all! ;-)

Bis spaeter! (until later)
-Jana

What's YOUR word?

Ali Edwards of Scrappin' fame has started a trend that I've seen on a few blogs. She selected a word to represent this next year for her - and encouraged others to do the same.

So...following that advice, my word for 2008 is...

jour·ney /ˈdʒɜrni/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[jur-nee] n.

1.	a traveling from one place to another, usually taking a rather long time; trip: a six-day journey across the desert.

2.	a distance, course, or area traveled or suitable for traveling: a desert journey.

3.	a period of travel: a week's journey.

4.	passage or progress from one stage to another: the journey to success.

–verb (used without object)

5.	to make a journey; travel.

(definition from dictionary.com)

But I have to say I like the definition best from Define Your Life in the SU! catalog:

jour ney: {jur-ne} n. An experience or process that leaves you changed; trail of experience. From here to there.

Our life here in Europe has for sure been a journey for all of us. A journey of discovery about ourselves and each other , as well as discovery about the many countries we've visited. And in this coming year, our journey will bring us back "home" to the US - somewhere! And while we don't know where yet, it will be an interesting journey making that discovery as well! Enjoy your journies...they are what make life special!

Hope you all have a wonderful day...I'll be back with another card soon!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas

Frohe Weinachten

Feliz Navidad

Happy Christmas

Joyeux Noel

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas this year. We just finished opening presents and now dh is taking his parents to the airport while Julia and I relax. Here are a few photos of Julia this morning enjoying her presents from Santa and everyone else!

NSR: Caffiene high...

Does anyone else out there react strongly to caffeine? I weaned myself off it over the summer when I thought my stomach issues were really bad heartburn and figured not drinking coffee would be better for my tum...then just continued after my surgery hoping it would also be better for my migraines. But, everyone once in a while I like to have some coffee, because I really like it. Well...while I was in California I bought myself some General Foods International Coffee drink mix, the Cafe Vienna flavor. I know it sounds like their old ad, but it really does make me think of the incredible coffee I had at our hotel in Salzburg back in May (where I had SOOOO much fun with my sisters!) So anyway...this morning I was making pfanne kuchen (ok, making is a stretch, I was warming them in the toaster oven because I bought pre-made ones from the store which are SOOOO good!) To me, these are more like crepes than true pancakes, because they are sweet. Anyway, I was making those with some nutella for Julia's breakfast (yeah, I know, real healthy, huh?) and I thought some Viennese coffee might be good with the French crepe au chocolat. So I made myself a large mug. Then, after dropping Julia at school, I thought "hmmm...another crepe might be good...and some more coffee with it!" so I made myself jut half a cup this time. However...that much caffeine was too much for my system, and now I'm so wired I can't sit still. I'm typing really fast though!! :-) LOL

Ok...so since my last post I've managed to fold and put away 3 loads of laundry (while starting another) sorted out the rest of the laundry (almost a week's worth...oops!) Cleaned my kitchen (which hadn't been done in too many days to admit here!) and cleaned off my dining table (since when my husband placed his magazine on it 2 days ago and it stuck he thought it might be time to be washed!) Of course, I have to have my ipod on for all this, so while doing all this I'm dancing around the house singing (my poor husband has the door to his office closed!!)

Anyway, the point of all this rambling is I'm really wired, but my hands are too jittery to stamp right now so I'm cleaning instead. I think DH will start spiking my rooibus tea with caffeine if this is the result!!

ETA: Ok, It's almost 2:30 here and I am slowly recovering from my high. Since my DH kept making Tweek references (South Park) I decided to add his picture to this post! ;-)