It’s true that I never take the time to send out any other cards besides Christmas cards.  I always have good intentions but sending cards always slips my mind.  I use Shutterfly for printing photos and photobooks (which I adore).   One of the only traditions I seem to keep every year is sending out a Christmas card that shows off my little family.  Mostly the adorableness of my furbabies.

Shutterfly has a ton of holiday card designs and I can almost guarantee that they have a format that will fit your needs.  This year I’m going to do something different from years past.  I usually set everyone up in one location, set the camera timer and take a million pictures.  It never fails that the dogs are never looking the same way and there is usually at least one of Liko with his lips curled back exposing his teeth.  Though small, still sharp.

So this year I’m taking individual pictures of the furkids and either taking a photo of C and I or using one from the past year.  This year has gone by so quickly that the holidays really did sneak up.  These are the layouts I’m deciding between:

First 3 commenters will get a code for 25 free cards from Shutterfly!

*This post was sponsored by Shutterfly. I have ordered photobooks, prints and cards from them in the past.*

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Whenever holidays come around I feel torn about feeling obligated to go to a family gathering or spending quality time with my own little family. I’ll be honest that 8 out of 10 times I choose the quality family time ignoring the disdain of extended family at skipping dinner.

Easter isn’t a holiday that registers with me. I was raised Catholic but I don’t practice and haven’t for some years now. I don’t have kids to take to egg hunts or color eggs with so aside for the Easter candy I don’t have much involvement with it. Instead, C and I ran our errands and picked up a soccer ball. We took the dogs to a near by community college and kicked the ball around for part of the afternoon.

Scooby was too exhausted to even sit up during the ride home

I wish I would have gotten video of Liko with the soccer ball. He would chase it down, running at top speed, and when he tried to stop as he got to it he ended up rolling over the ball. It was entertaining, trust me.

I spent an absurd amount of time watching hockey this weekend too. Every game that was on to be exact, with the exception of Nashville/Anaheim because it wasn’t broadcast on national television.

How was your weekend?

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I’ve been banging my head against hard inanimate objects trying to figure out the best way to back up all my crap.  I have an external hard drive and I back photos up on Shutterfly (<3) but I feel like if something were to happen to my external drive I would cry because all the original sized photos are on there, not to mention my documents and music.  Dare I say that sometimes I miss having to develop film and filing cabinets?  At least then I had hard copies and organizing them was relatively easy.

Now I take pictures with my camera, my phone, C’s camera, C’s phone.  We go somewhere for the weekend and I have media from 3-4 different electronics.  UGH.  I’m not the most detail oriented person.  I’m only organized to a certain extent and then from there it’s pretty much chaos.

I tossed the idea of flickr around but I really don’t think I want to use flickr.  Do any of you use cloud storage? I like the idea of it, I upload and then it’s just floating around on a server somewhere.  Enlighten me.

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Last year I waited until the last minute to do Christmas cards.  Since we officially had a house and three furbabies I wanted to send out Christmas cards.  I decided this sometime at the end of November.  Ideally, you want to have the picture taken and have the cards out by sometime in early December so people can enjoy them, not get them a couple days before Christmas and throw them out.

I order my photobooks form Shutterfly, so why not my Holiday cards too?  So we took about a bazillion photos with the dogs in front of the fireplace one Sunday morning. Of course someone was always looking the other way, blinking, drooling, whatever.  I glanced over the images, chose the one and tried to tone down the dogs laser eyes.  They all ended up looking possessed. “Merry Christmas! My dogs are dead inside!”

That’s what I get for being in a hurry.  Not this year though, I’m starting now!

I’m having a hard time choosing though, I’ve narrowed it down to these three:

Mod Snowflakes

Modern Snowflakes

Bright Colored Lights

I love getting Christmas cards, I tape them to my front door.  Which card is your favorite?

*Attention Bloggers: You can receive 50 free holiday cards from Shutterfly http://bit.ly/sfly2010*

*This post was sponsored by Shutterfly. I have ordered photobooks, prints and cards from them in the past.*

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What’s been going on – visual edition

Taking time out to explore Oscoda – September 2010

Jenni and I went and saw a Midsummer Night’s Dream – September 2010 – My uncle happened to be one of the dancers.

My Dad turned 60 and I held a small dinner for him at one of his favorite restaurants – September 2010

C and I ventured to the apple orchard. I was disappointed that you walk to the orchard and don’t get a hay ride. Boo. I now have more than enough apples to bake some tasty treats though. – October 2010

Jenni, Lauryn, Sarah and I had more more class of working our sexy. Oh yeah, almost ready for the clubs – you know the high class ones – October 2010

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Last night Jenni, Lauryn, Sarah and I finally got to roleplay as pole dancers .  What girl doesn’t want to let their sexy inner goddess out??

Awhile back we excitedly bought a Groupon for Polefit Revolution.  Last night was the first class where we got to  acquaint ourselves with the Pole.  It was so much fun giggling and acting sexy with these girls.  We became even closer because we had to share poles.

Jenni and Lauryn sexing it up together

Sarah and I showing off our sexy fake splits

You can imagine the laughter and general awesomeness of sharing a pole.

Sarah working on her tricks

Jenni and I working on sexy

going for a spin

We seriously have too much fun together.  Wait, is that possible, too much fun?  I love these girls!  We’ll be out at amateur night in no time!  And if our day jobs fall through, well at least we have a backup plan.  Get your singles ready

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A good way to get back into the swing of things.  A few weekend shots…

How was your weekend?

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Three years ago today C and I got married, on my parents anniversary, on a beach on Hanalei Bay, Kauai.

Three years ago I had no idea what it actually meant to be married.  It couldn’t be much different than living together, right?

Wrong.

In the past 3 years I’ve gone through a lot of emotions.  I won’t lie and say most of them were good, I’d say it was 60% good and 40% bad.  I think it took me 3 years to adjust to being married.  To being attached to someone and  having to share almost everything with another person.  I think we do a good job of staying true to ourselves and keeping our separate identities.

When you get married everyone tells you it isn’t all fun and games and they can talk until they are blue in the face.  It’s one of those life things that you have no idea what it’s going to be like until you actually do it and are immersed in it.  You can’t plan for the fights or what they will be like, or even what they will be about.  Some are pretty petty and stupid but a fight all the same.  It’s amazing how fast you can go from a feeling of pure adoration to ‘omg I might hate you right this moment”.  But it’s because of the fights and aggravation that you can fully appreciate the moments (big or tiny) when you are laughing together and you think life is good and you feel completely content.

There have been numerous ups and downs.  Life events that changed us both.  But we’ve made it this far and because of that I think we’ll survive this societal thing called marriage.  I still have a hard time signing my married name.  It isn’t me. Yet. Or maybe I’ve always had a problem writing ‘ch’ in cursive, I have no idea.  No one can prepare you for marriage.  But I can tell you that you do build strong bonds in everything you go through as a couple.  C and I, we may be complete opposites, but it works for us.

I’m so thankful that we’ve stuck through everything together.  There are many times I’d like to punch him in the face, but lucky for him there are more moments of us laughing together to make it all worthwhile.

I’m not that great at being all smooshy.  And I’m not one to tell you all the nice, thoughtful things he does for me.  So just know that he is awesome and I’m lucky

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I’m still feeling really crappy with a cold I’ve been trying to fight off.  I was going to do multiple posts but I’m so excited about this weekend that I think I’m going to cram it all into one.  So you’ve been warned

Saturday morning was my last aerial yoga class of the session and I probably won’t sign up for another one until the fall (if I have the money).  I adore it, if you can’t tell by how much I talk about it.  I did a whole trick that included a drop (that I may have made me scream as a fell).  In case you care, diaper stag – swingset – locust – forward drop – hip something.

click to open - click again to increase size

The last sequence I went through to finish up class was diaper stag – something – corkscrew – knee hang

Saturday night I attended the best wedding reception ever! It was held at the Henry Ford Museum. It felt like I was in a movie at fancy, classy party. More importantly, since we had the whole museum to explore with an open bar it was easy to escape having to talk to family! Though my drunk relatives were pretty entertaining. This includes Maeko, who I didn’t even get a picture with because I only saw her twice in 5 hours!  Her dress was absolutely gorgeous and very Mae.  Here are a few of my favorite pictures, please notice beer on the rosa parks bus – FTW

Sunday was the Detroit Zoo Kidney Walk. My Dad, LP, C and I walked around the zoo. The weather was beautiful and it was nice to spend time with them.

And the best for last. Both the wedding and kidney walk had photobooths!!!

How was your weekend?

*so if you want to make the collages bigger – click on them to open in a new page and then click again to enlarge. i don’t know why, just because.

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I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.  Or maybe it started last night when my Sprite exploded all over me and then when I opened the bag of carrots they went all over the floor.  It continued this morning when my phone just quit working.  You know they make lovely paperweights when they don’t send/receive phone calls, send/receive texts or connect to the internet.  Yep, a nice blue paperweight.

I spent an hour on the phone with Verizon and it resulted in me having to completely reset my phone.  It wasn’t that bad but I lost some cute text messages from C and my ring tones and notifications sounds.   I hope, hope this doesn’t happen again!

So enough complaining…some good things to get me through my afternoon meeting:

• Red Wings victory and into the 2nd round – did you see my boyfriends Datsyuk’s 2 goals!?
• Finding my favorite brand of jeans on ebay for $5
• Getting home owners insurance on the cottage
• Craigslist
• Plans to buy some Nuvo Vodka
• Buying paint for the cottage tomorrow
• Sunshine – even if it is a bit chilly

And of course this face

The first shot

5 shots in

completely on his nerves

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