Standiford Family

Per Kelly Mear’s request, here are my aliases:

1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car) Peanut Elantra

2. YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fave ice cream flavor, favorite cookie) Vanilla Sugar

3. YOUR “FLY Guy/Girl” NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name) M-Sta

4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal) Blue Shark

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born) Joseph Mount Clemens

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first) Stami

7. SUPERHERO NAME: (”The” + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink) The Black Juice

8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers) Robert George

9. WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (father’s & mother’s middle names) Dean Mae

10. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME: (Your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter) Varga Vegas

11. SPY NAME/BOND GIRL: (your favorite season/holiday, flower) Summer Rose

12. CARTOON NAME: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now + “ie” or “y”) Strawberry Socky

13. HIPPY NAME: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree) Chex Bonsai

14. YOUR ROCKSTAR TOUR NAME: (”The” + Your fave hobby/craft, fave weather element + “Tour”) The Gaming Rain Tour

Kelly Mear tagged me and also Mickey. Here are my aliases:

1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car) Misty Odyssey

2. YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fave ice cream flavor, favorite cookie) Black Cherry Oatmeal Raisin

3. YOUR “FLY Guy/Girl” NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name) K-Sta

4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal) Blue Elephant

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born) A. South Bend

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first) Stake

7. SUPERHERO NAME: (”The” + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink) The Green Lemonade

8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers) Robert Richard

9. WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names) Sue Neil

10. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME: (Your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter) Jackson Jacksonville

11. SPY NAME/BOND GIRL: (your favorite season/holiday, flower) Spring Tulip

12. CARTOON NAME: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now + “ie” or “y”) Grape Jeansie

13. HIPPY NAME: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree) Oats Ginko

14. YOUR ROCKSTAR TOUR NAME: (”The” + Your fave hobby/craft, fave weather element + “Tour”) The Knitting Sunshine Tour

I was saddened to read the news this morning of the passing of President Gordon B. Hinckley. What a great example he was to our family and to the whole world! Kelly and I both commented on how we felt like he was saying goodbye in last October’s conference talk. I guess it wasn’t so much what he said but maybe the way he said it. Listening to him speak will be one of the things that I’ll miss the most. His talks always had a way of demanding my attention, unlike anyone I can remember.

I can’t imagine the reunion that happened last night. Another great example was the love he had for his wife. They must have been so excited to be with each other again.

I’m sure that we will be blessed with another great prophet, but right now it’s kind of hard to imagine anyone other than President Gordon B. Hinckley.

This week I got the brilliant idea to do layouts with the Christmas cards I’ve made. (Last year’s card was staring at me while I was lifting my weights. I also needed to clean off the shelves above my desk and that’s where it was sitting.) I found cards, pictures, and new letters from the last four years and put it all together. Here they are:

I feel like I cheated a little but I did do all the work, just not this week. I figure this kind of stuff needs to be documented also. After all I can’t keep all my cards in a box.

We have not posted on this event in a long time.  We still do Friday night movies.  The choices are getting slim since we’ve been doing it for years now.  Last night we rented Mr. Bean’s Holiday.  Megan has been wanting to see this one so we got it.  Let me just say Mr. Bean is not my favorite character so I probably won’t give an unbiased review.  The movie started in English with them being in England.  Then he won a trip to southern France, Cannes.  Once he was on his way for the trip everything went to French, not my favorite language, and subtitles.  This made it really hard for me to follow along with the movie because I was trying to knit.  And I don’t think Mat could read fast enough to keep up either.  She was done in the first half.  She did kind of stick around and saw the few funny scenes.  There weren’t that many.  Over all I would say don’t waste your time watching this one.

Mickey also rented Nacho Libre.  We have wanted to see it for a while now, ever since Mark and Janel were over quoting it.  And of course after seeing Janel’s picture dressed up as Nacho we had to see it.  (Sadly she removed her picture.)  Jack Black was hilarious.  I can’t believe how he can move his eyebrows.  We probably should have waited until tonight to watch it because we were both really tired when we started the movie.  I woke up some and laughed a lot.  I really like the fact that the movie took place in Mexico but they still spoke in an accented English.  I would say rent this one if you want a good laugh.

I came across this truck by doing something I have never done before.  At the top of Blogger hosted blogs you can click on a link that takes you to the next blog.  I think it has them sorted in alphabetical order and the link takes you to the next blog in the list.  Totally random and I guess potentially dangerous on the eyes.  I happened to be lucky and stumbled across a blog of pictures, no words just pictures but that is where I first found the truck. It took me a little bit but I found this background information on the creator.

Dale Ison, creator of the Heroes Truck had a vision to create the most powerful and heartfelt patriotic vehicle to date.

Dale wanted show his appreciation for those Past, Present and Future heroes who have put their lives on the line daily for us all. Dale has invested over $600,000.00 into this project.

You might wonder what that is. It’s a sandwich I came up with a few years ago during the Nemo craze. It’s a pb&j cut into the shape of a fish. I don’t know how many of these I’ve made but it’s a lot. The girls have kind of outgrown them but I’ve started making them for Kade. (He only eats pb ones. I can’t believe he won’t eat my ‘licious jelly!) It’s a good way to make lunch fun. And if your little one won’t eat the crust it works out great, most of the crust is cut off. Here’s the picture. (The second fin isn’t shown.)

Here is the second layout of the week. (I got it done just before the deadline.) This one only took me about 30 minutes. Can you tell? I don’t think it’s that bad, very simple. It really focuses on the pictures.

I’ve been working on a layout all day. I don’t know how many interruptions I had, too many to keep track. I tried to get Kade busy with his own scissors, paper, markers, and glue stick but he’s different from the girls. He only lasted about 10 minutes and didn’t like the sticky glue stick. After what feels like hours of work I finally finished ONE layout. Here it is. (Again it’s not my best work, that would take about 3 days to do. And sorry about the light bulb glare. Anyone have pointers about how to take a picture without the glare?)

This one is a blast from the past, c. summer 2004. This is Meg before kindergarten, before adult teeth, and before glasses or braces.

I found another layout in Meg’s book when I put this one away. I had forgotten about it. I’m proud of the work here so I thought I’d share it. In case you can’t read the title it’s called “Wild Child with the Face of an Angel”. I like the little tear detail and that I stamped on the pictures. I was brave and it turned out great.

And this next one is for Becca (when she comes out of the dark). This is the page I did of our strawberry picking outing last summer. I love the vibrant colors. I used pictures of the berries to cut out my title letters. When I pulled this out tonight I really wanted a piece of the pie. (It was so delicious!)

Here are the two layouts I worked on this week. I said I would post the good ones but I don’t think these rank as good. Right now I’m in the “just get it done” mode. I’m just happy to have two done and hopefully this will get my creative juices flowing so soon I will have good layouts. Now that I’m done for this week I’m sure I’ll be spending a few hours trying to pick out what I want to work on next. We have too many photos to choose from. It’s really bad to get so far behind.

Sorry, I don’t know why the pictures are dark. I’m too tired right now to play around with the color in iPhoto. The Teeth Cleaning layout was inspired by a Becky Higgins sketch from her book Creative Sketches. I started the giraffe one last year and I don’t remember where I got the idea from, probably one of Becky’s. I really want her new book but I can’t find it anywhere. It’s back ordered everywhere I check. I guess it’s good and they didn’t print enough. I think I’ll place my order with Amazon and hope it comes in soon.