living my everyday life

Put the shoe on the other foot

December 21, 2015January 1, 2018by LoriLeave a Comment

My week has been truly bizarre. I thought I’d share a bit of the craziness with you guys.

Here’s a little photo I shared on Instagram a couple of days ago:

“Just took off the shoes I’ve been wearing all day. Luckily I didn’t go to work like this! Oh, wait… I did. They are going to think I take Causal Day a bit too seriously.”

For what it’s worth, I was attempting to wear two of the black shoes, as opposed to the ones with the *bright pink* laces. (I didn’t notice that one zips and one laces because these darn shoes are stretchy and I just stuck my feet in them in the dark. They are also different styles of the same shoe, so they didn’t feel any different.)

I guess I was lucky I got one right shoe and one left shoe! Of course, the other alternative would have clued me in more quickly. As it was, I never looked down at my feet once and didn’t realize it until I took them off, so instead of a day filled with mortification, I got a good laugh out of how ridiculous I am.

Please let me know if you’ve ever done anything like this. Hopefully, I’m not alone!

celebrations, living my everyday life

Plan #24 – Have a wonderful day

November 29, 2015January 1, 2018by LoriLeave a Comment

My birthday was a very good day.

I woke up slowly and luxuriated in checking social media on my phone before I even sat up. There is something so nice about waking up early but not needing to be anywhere!

We picked up Addison and headed to Original Pancake House for breakfast, then came home and played a few hands of Dominion. I won the first hand, David won the second, and I crushed both David and Quinland on the third. I don’t even think they let me win!

I then spent a leisurely afternoon cuddled in bed with my dog, just reading story after story on my Kindle. I recently got a trial of Kindle Unlimited, and I am making the very most of it. I suppose all the latest and greatest bestsellers are not available that way, but self-published fan fiction seems to abound!

When David asked me how I wanted to spend the day, I had proposed all sorts of things: going to the Woodburn Outlet Mall, eating lemon cake at Pastini, working on the scrapbook room. The first two went out the window when I decided to read all day, but once I got up from that, we made awesome progress on the scrapbook room. A lot of that involved moving boxes onto the guest room bed, but now there is free space on the floor to start sorting things out. I can’t wait!

No, I’m not burning everything from the scrapbook room, although sometimes I think it sounds a lot easier.

After David made us a lovely Mexican meal (kind of tapas-style, with little plates of everything), Quinland made a fire and we played a very relaxed game of Outburst with Q and Addison. Bones curled up in his dog bed and we were all warm and comfy.

I got some special gifts, phone calls and texts, and a zillion Facebook birthday wishes over the course of the day, so I felt very loved. It was a perfect birthday in every respect. (Just ask Quinland, who will attest to how many times I loudly proclaimed the sheer goodness of my birthday over the course of the day!)

creating order, living my everyday life, my favorites

Plan #16 – Get those photos stored safely!

November 18, 2015January 1, 2018by Lori2 Comments

Forever

Photos. They are an incredible joy; they can be an incredible pain. I have so many photos stored in so many places: On my phone. In my email. On my home computer, my work computer, my laptop. On SD cards. On CDs. Slides and negatives and prints, in boxes and bags and piles and – believe it or not – scrapbooks.

Over the years, I have been organizing my digital photos using a product I love. It goes by Forever Historian now, though it was once Memory Manager from Creative Memories. It lets you sort your photos into “Albums,” tag them any way you like, and search for them easily. It even recognizes faces after you label them once! You can rank your photos, write notes about them, edit them, and share them, all from one program. I’ve been using it for years now, and I really like it. (I’ve also used their Artisan program for photo projects for years as well. In fact, all my blog headers have been made on Artisan!)

I still have had two little problems with digital photo storage, though. First, I am not good at backing things up. I have known for ages that I should be backing stuff up online, but how?? Kryptonite? Dropbox? One of the photo services like Snapfish or Shutterfly?

Apparently the people at Forever have got our backs. They have integrated Historian with a permanent online storage program, so now all I need to do is upload the photos I have in Historian right to my Forever online account. In fact, I even got an app for my phone that automatically backs my phone photos to the storage account without my even having to think about it. I have just barely started using it, and I already love it. I’ll keep you posted as I transition the photos to that account and learn all its ins and outs. I’m totally psyched to get up to speed.

Now, if only I could get Forever to organize my future scrapbook room for me, I’d be set!