A Scary Sight!

Today, Jim & I went to look at a couple of homes for rent. Afterwards, we decided to drive out to Lakeside Mall so I could find some workout clothes. As we were driving down M-59, this is what we saw:
Thick, black smoke in the sky.....and at this point, we were still about a mile away from it!

We decide to keep driving to find out where it was coming from. Turns out, it was an apartment complex. I happened to have my camera with me since I took some pictures of the houses we looked at.

If you click on the images to enlarge, you can actually see the flames.
The weird part of all of this was it was a year ago this month that I saw the fire at a Coney Island & took pictures of that one, too.
I just hope & pray that no one was hurt or killed in this fire!

There was a young man in the parking lot that apparently lived there. I wanted to go up & give him a hug so badly, but he was surrounded by other people. I just wanted to let him know that you can get through something like this as I have been there myself before.....I lost everything I owned 20 years ago in an apartment fire just like this one!

Now for a really scary picture:
I was debating whether or not I should post this before picture of me (you won't see my side view picture!), but I figured it would be one way to hold myself accountable to keep going to the gym :) I tell ya.....seeing myself, my whole self, in a picture was a HUGE wake-up call! But I'm finally on the right track! And since Jim is doing this with me, I thought I might as well post one of his before pics as well (he doesn't know that I posted his side view picture yet ;):
Friday was our first day at the gym & we spent a little over 2 hours there. 25 minutes on the treadmills, 20 minutes on the recumbent bikes & then the rest of the time on weights. I thought for sure I would wake up sore this morning, but surprisingly, I didn't :) We're going to attempt to go again tomorrow afternoon, but we're not sure how busy it'll be.

Now for a pretty picture:
My Rhododendron in bloom :)

Fire update: We just saw the story on the news about the fire & it seems it started by a gas grill that someone was using on a second story balcony of the apartment building. No one was hurt, so that's great news! But I can't believe that someone would even use a grill on an apartment building balcony! Nuts!

74 words

Speedtest
I saw this on Staci's blog & thought I'd give it a try. I even surprised myself! 74 words per minute!!! I guess taking typing for 4 years in school has paid off :) Give it a try & let me know your typing speed.

I was also tagged by Lida to answer the following questions:

Last music you listened to - Whatever was on the radio station on the way home from the mall.
Last thing you watched on TV - The local news to see about the fire.

Last movie you saw - Hmmm.....good question. I haven't been to a movie in a while & really only watch shows on tv.
Last book you read - Photo Freedom (still reading it).

Last person you spoke to - Jim

Last thing you ate - 3 Nutter Butter cookies (I know, not good for the weightloss, but they ARE good!)

Last time you laughed - Yesterday at the gym (yes, exercising can be fun!).

Last place you visited - The mall.

Last website you visited - Two Peas & my blog.

Last thing you scrapped/crafted - A picture frame for a Breast Cancer Relay Bowling Event, which you can see below:

Click on it for a better view. I used lots & lots of Stickles on it & just highlighted the flowers to make them 'pop'. I was so happy with the way it turned out & so was the person that won it :) Now, I tag: Lorrie, Staci, Jewls, Kim, Cindi & anyone else that wants to play along :)

That's all for now.....have a safe night & give your loved ones an extra hug tonight!

Benita

The Madness Continues

You seriously didn't think that my reorganization would stop at my last post now, did you? Hehe :) If you know me, you know that when I start reorganizing, I keep going & going & going.....just like the Energizer bunny. Last week, I had a 50% off Michael's coupon that was just burning a hole in my purse & I decided to finally break down & buy the Making Memories Embellishment Center. Well, that lead to having to rearrange more things on my walls. I originally planned to just hang it up on the wall where my tilt bins were since I've been thinking about getting rid of them, but then I thought.....no.....not there. Over here ---> So I had to move one of my paint racks along with my stamp pad holder & I put it where that was. The bigger glass jars are from Walmart & the smaller ones are from Ikea.
I then moved my sewing machine to the top of the file cabinet & put my stamp pad holder on top of my stamp holder (both of which I purchased on ebay).
Then when I moved the paint rack down to the other end of the row of paint racks, I decided to turn it into a Stickles rack :) But now I'll be in trouble if they make more colors as it's already filled as I own every color that they currently make, except for the bigger ones.....I only have 4 of those!
Sarah asked me what brand of 3-ring albums I'm using. I wanted to keep them mostly black, so I'm going with 8 of the Making Memories 5th Avenue 12X12 3-ring albums (they match my altered items in my room so good!) & I also just ordered 7 more American Crafts albums from Ritz Camera. Yeah, I know that Hobby Lobby has them on sale this week & I was going to take a drive up there to get some, but after I figured out the costs of buying them at Hobby Lobby versus buying them through Ritz Camera's website, it worked out to be almost exactly the same with the cost of gas being as outrageous as it is right now! Plus they're offering free shipping with a $100 order right now & the albums are on sale on the website (not as low as Hobby Lobby's sale, though).

Here are the tags that I made to go on my albums:
Here's how I have them displayed (so far) on my Expedit:
Close-up of a few of the albums:

Even closer :) :

I used Stacy Julian's idea of using binder clips, ribbons & metal rimmed tags (although I covered my tags all the way so you can't see much of the metal part).

Tonight, Jim & I finally did it.....we joined a gym! It's something we've been talking about doing for months & well, the gym down the road from us had a special running this past weekend, so we decided to just do it! We went in tonight to get our membership cards & we'll be starting to work out tomorrow. I'm so excited! Yep, you read that right.....I'm excited about working out! :)

As we were leaving the gym, we came out to find a flat tire on my car :( Jim started to change it, but come to find out, the lug wrench that came with the car doesn't fit my lug nuts! How crazy is that?!? So I called AAA (thank goodness for having them!) & the lady that I talked to told me that I was the 3rd person that she had today that said that their lug wrench didn't fit! What the heck??? We only had to wait about half an hour for the guy to show up to change our tire, but it ruined part of our other plans for the night. However, I did manage to make it to Michaels (since I needed some ribbons for my tags) & also picked up these really cool stamps (as shown above).

Now tomorrow, I have to drive up to the dealership to have them 'investigate' the tire to see if they will replace it or just fix it. We found a screw in the tire (I have no clue where I picked that up at!), but just from driving on the tire a little bit, it started to ruin the sidewall, so I'm hoping that they will just replace it. Thank goodness I bought the tire protection plan when I bought the car!

Anyway, that about wraps up most of my week. I'm going to have Jim take some before pictures of me before I start working out & get back to working on my weight-loss album that I put off doing. Wish me luck!

Have a great weekend!

Benita

Altering Again

I finally got around to altered these Ikea drawer units that I've been wanting to alter since I bought them, which was about a year ago. Yep, that's me.....the procrastinator! Not sure what these are called....I think they're meant for CD storage, but I have all sorts of office supplies in them. I have 2 of them, one on each side of my computer monitor. Now I wanna go to Ikea & buy some more just so I can alter them.....this is addicting :)
I used the Making Memories 5th Avenue line of papers on them & they look so cool in my room now :) I need to re-write the labels for them (I HATE my handwriting!) as I was in a hurry to just get them done.
We finally got another glimpse of Spring. When Jim came home from work today, he asked me if I saw the flowers out around the tree. I was like "Flowers? Where?? What tree???" I have Crocus! Crocuses? However you spell it....I have them. Aren't they pretty? And look......they're purple.....my favorite color :) Now I'm wondering what else will pop up around this tree. Since we didn't move into this house until the middle of August, I have no clue what is planted around the yard. And I want to plant some things myself, but I don't even know where to dig to plant stuff as I may end up digging up other flowers in the process. Jim doesn't want me planting anything right now since we may end up moving, so I guess he's right.....I'll wait.....for now. Patience, Benita....patience! Not one of my strong suits at all!

Gonna go watch some tv & relax. Just a friendly reminder.....tomorrow's tax day if you haven't done your taxes yet. Ours were done in February & the refund's been long gone! Have a great week!

Benita

We ArE tHe ChAmPiOnS!!!

We did it.....our team won the bowling league! I still can't believe that we pulled it off! We had to bowl the team that won the 1st half tonight to see who the league champions would be. It didn't start out good at all. Their first bowler had the first 9 strikes in a row & ended up bowling a 278 game. Needless to say, we lost that game by 127 pins & we didn't think we stood a chance after that. But we kept on.....we never gave up & we came back fighting! We won the 2nd game by 64, so we knew all we had to do now was win the 3rd game, which is exactly what we did.....by 106 pins! I bowled like crap tonight because I was so nervous.....I just wanted to win this so bad! Jim, otoh, bowled really good, shooting a 670 series & Joe (our teammate) also bowled really good with a 635 series. Thank goodness that the guys held me up this week :) We go to our bowling banquet Friday night to get our awards & have some fun as there's going to be a DJ there, an open bar & lots of food.

I just did this layout the other day using my last Design Team kit from the Zone. I wanted to document how much I loved being on the design team, so I thought doing a layout would be the perfect way to do it.

Thanks for all the comments & well wishes about the housing situation. We haven't made a decision yet about the house & whether or not we're going to move. We're not sure that our friend's house will work because it is smaller, but we haven't completely given up the idea of moving there, either. Plus I'm checking Craigslist every day, several times a day, to see what's on there (that's how we found the house we're in now). I know whatever we decide, it'll all work out for the best as I say a prayer about it every night.

I'm off to go watch The Biggest Loser (we TiVo it every week) & relax with my hubby. Have a great night.

Benita