life as erica

New Home

2009-11-11T14:21:00.000-08:00

I have moved my blog... my new home on the web is:

http://web.me.com/ericacoombs/pinkdahlia/me.html

2009-09-07T16:16:00.000-07:00

Wow, I can't believe that summer is over and that it is already September. Time sure does fly! I had a good summer though. The weather here was great!

I haven't posted anything on here in a long, long time, so I thought I would post a few things from my annual family camping trip. As always I had a great time and can't wait until next year!!

Here is a picture of some of the grandkids. They are getting so old!

Anthony Lake is really pretty and despite the fact that my pictures are pretty much the same every year, I still take tons of photos of the lake. Here are a few panoramas that I did:

Here are a few of my favorite pictures:

Jeff's cute little chihuahua Hoss.

The kids really liked catching frogs:

Here is a little collage of some of my favorite camping photos. The credits for the elements I used can be found here.

To see more camping photos you can visit my flickr photostream, or you can look at my scrapbook album (not finished though, so only a few pages posted).

Gettin' Digi wid it

2009-02-21T13:22:00.000-08:00

OK, first... yes I know lame title, but I am not the mosat creative and I am not running on much sleep right now. So here is the story...

I woke up at five am this morning because I am a total nerd. My favorite digital scrapbooking store is having an all day(16 hour) chat today...fun! Every hour they give out a digital freebie and a chance to win cool shutterfly prizes. My sisters made fun of me because I was so excited about this and put everything in my life on hold for it (even school.).

I started digital scrapbboking the end of last October and have been hooked ever since. In addition to that I am hooked to the community of scrapbookers at Designer Digitals. Everyone posts their pages there and through those pages you learn a lot about the people who post there. There is also a forum. I really like it... despite the fact that I think I may be the only single and childless person who actively posts on the site.

If you have never tried digital scrapbooking, or even if you have, check out designerdigitals.com....they have great designers there, and from now until Monday nightish their entire store is 30% off. Also they give away three freebies every week, offer 25 cent items each Saturday night and have some amazing tutorials.

Here are some links:
Designer Digitals the store
Designer Digitals Gallery

Other stores that I like:
We Are Story Tellers
Shabby Pickle
2 Peas in a bucket
Litltle Dreamer Designs

There are also a lot of websites out there with free digital elements as well as tutorials... maybe I will post those later today....

Anyways, I just thought I would share my OBSESSION with y'all! NOw, back to chating and scrapping!

Cinq handmade gifts from moi!

2009-02-19T11:32:00.000-08:00

The first FIVE people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you. This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

1- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!

2- What I create will be just for you.

3- It'll be done this year. (sometime in 2009...most likely in the summer :))

4- You have no clue what it's going to be.

5- I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you must re-post this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog. The first 5 people to do so and leave a comment telling me they did win a FAB-U-LOUS homemade gift by me! Oh, and be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it! Sounds like fun, right?

School, toasters, drill and craziness

2009-02-08T21:12:00.000-08:00

Wow, it has been a while since I have posted anything on here. School has pretty much taken over my life and is sucking up all of my time. I swear I become a major flake when I am in school. So, to those of you that have e-mailed me and I haven't responded... I am really sorry... I will work on doing better. Anyways... here is a little update on everything going on in my life.

School --- Like I said before, it is all I do... and it is crazy! This quarter has been absolutely INSANE! I love being in the design program, but man it is tough. For anyone who thinks being an art major is easy... let me tell you, it definitely is not. Out of all of the classes that I have taken my design classes have been the most intense and the most competitive. When I decided to do design at the UW I was amazed at how competitive the program is. To get into the program students have to complete an intro class take an all day entrance exam and then be chosen to be in the program. Last spring, when I applied, there were also about 150 other students applying. Of those 150 only about 40-45 were accepted into the program. Pretty crazy.

Anyways, this quarter I am taking a typography class and a human centered design class. I really, really like my typography class... my human centered design class---not so much. It is an industrial design class and I am more of a graphic design kind of girl.

For our first project in this class we had to make 30 comics for how to catch a mouse. That was actually a pretty fun project, I just wish we would have had more time to work on it. For that class we also had to create a toaster manual. We had to do the layout, do all of the illustrations and have it flow well. Right now we just finished a big observation report on self-checkout machines and we are working on drawings for new and improved self-checkout machines. Later this week we will start to make 3-D models of the machines, create a new computer interface for them and then present them to the class. Here is the toaster manual that I made:
OK... enough with school!

Sadly... not much else has been going on other than school stuff. One cool thing though is that my niece Cadison is on the Drill team at Sammamish High and she had a competition on Saturday that I was able to got to. It was an all day event and was very fun. Sammamish took 3rd place in both the drill and kick categories. In the end of March they will go to Yakima for state... it will be fun to see how they do there!

At the end of the competition they have what is called a Drill Down... Cadison takes it very seriously and gets nervous during it... she is also very good at it. Here is a video of the drill down yesterday... she is about dead center and is wearing black and a white tutu (sp??). I will try and get a video of the drill and kick routine from my sister Melanie and put it on here sometime this week.

Ready, Set, Go!

2009-01-02T02:42:00.000-08:00

Project 365 has officially started! What is project 365 you ask?? Well, it is only the coolest project ever. The main idea of the project is to take a picture every day of the year. It can be a picture of anything you want. In the end you will have 365 pictures that tell a story about who you are. To learn more about the project see the links at the bottom of the post. It really is a pretty cool project and I am super excited for it! I am going to do a digital scrapbook page/pages for each week and in the end I am going to print them out in either one or two 12x12 shutterfly books. Here is my picture for Jan. 1st... it is of our cat Kitty...he is such a good sport for letting me do a photo shoot of him.
My sisters are also doing this project... in the process of talking my sisters into going photo crazy I also converted them to the digital scrapbooking world. They are already completely addicted to it. A few days ago I hooked them each up with a copy of Photoshop Elements and showed them the basics of how to use the program. On New Years eve we all had our laptops out and were digi scrapping...we normally play game, but that didn't happen this year. We had fun though. Here is a page I made while showing my sister Melanie how to use photoshop to scrap:
My sister monica isn't too happy that I used this picture of her. We all had a lot of laughs while working on this page. Good times!

So to all of you (...the 3 or 4 people who read this!) Dust off your camera and join me in project 365!

Here are some great links:

Creating Keepsakes Kit of the Month they have a cool kit for $40... all you do is print off the photos, do a little journaling and plop them into photo page protectors. Easy as pie.
Becky Higgins Blog ... she has several entries about Project 365
Photo ideas from the January Creating Keepsakes magazine

On the twelfth day of Christmas...

2008-12-25T01:24:00.000-08:00

Hope y'all Have a wonderful Christmas!!

On the eleventh day of Christmas...

2008-12-24T11:00:00.000-08:00

Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!

2008-12-23T01:23:00.000-08:00

Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the snow is so delightful! OK, I know, I know, the song doesn't really say that the snow is delightful (the fire is delightful), but this is how I have always sung it and I like my version better! For the past four days we have been dumped on by snow! It has been GREAT! I love the snow! It is pretty rare to get any good snow in the Seattle area. It is even rarer to get snow that lasts more than a few days. Because of this...chaos galore erupts in Seattle when it snows. Schools and business' close down, roads close, people abandon their cars and pretty much all life stops. For many areas of the world a foot of snow would not cause people to be 'snowed in' for days on end... but in Seattle we like our snow days! When I was a kid I would pray and hope for snow. Sadly... we never got much.

Until now! So far we have about a foot of snow... and it is supposed to snow Tuesday night. Woo Hoo! As annoying as it is out on the roads I think that the snow is pretty, and I am hoping that it doesn't melt and we are able to have a white Christmas!

Other than playing in the snow I really haven't been doing too much lately. I have been very lazy the past week. The exact opposite of a year ago. I have been able to get some fun digital scrapbooking done though! Here is a page I did with some pictures of all of the northwest snow! If you click on the picture you can view a larger image.

On the ninth and tenth day of Christmas...

2008-12-23T01:17:00.000-08:00

Oops... I missed a day! Here is Monday's ...

On the eighth day of Christmas...

2008-12-21T04:00:00.000-08:00

On the seventh day of Christmas...

2008-12-20T23:32:00.000-08:00

On the sixth day of Christmas...

2008-12-19T02:11:00.001-08:00

On the fifth day of Christmas...

2008-12-18T16:56:00.001-08:00

On the fourth day of Christmas...

2008-12-17T01:10:00.000-08:00

On the third day of Christmas...

2008-12-16T05:00:00.000-08:00

On the second day of Christmas....

2008-12-15T20:43:00.000-08:00

October- December Happenings

2008-12-14T21:00:00.000-08:00

Wow, I can't believe that it is already the middle of December! Time sure does fly by fast. I feel like it should still be November. The past few weeks have just gone by too fast. I have been pretty busy lately though. My classes this quarter really took a lot of time, and there were also a lot of things going on at the Institute as well. But, I am very glad that fall quarter is done and that I will now have a little break before winter quarter starts. Despite the fact that it was incredibly time consuming, this past quarter was a good one. I finished my last quarter of Spanish, which also happened to be my last general ed class. Now it is all design and art history classes from here on out. WooHoo. I also took a pretty cool art history class this past quarter and finished my first class in the UW design program. Bellow is a drawing of a zipper that I drew for my "drawing for designers" class. It was a pretty interesting class. We were not allowed to draw with pencils.... or rulers. All of our drawings were done with cheapo Bic pens on 11x17 copy paper. This course was geared more towards those who want to go into industrial design rather than graphic design. All in all it was a good class though. We started out drawing a TON of cubes and cuboids and eventually made out way to drawing cameras, kitchen utensils, coffee makers, zippers and finally crazy drafting lamps.
When my classes weren't keeping me busy my calling on the Institute council was. I am the ward rep for institute, as well as the historian and the interim secretary, so I have been pretty busy. It has been fun though. The institute here has some great activities and it has been fun to be a part of them. In October we had our opening social. It was a blast. It had a western theme. Here is a scrapbook page that I did about it:
We also just recently had an opeing social, which was very fun. We had Santa and everything! Here is a scrapbook page I did from that activity:
The institute activity was a great kick off to the holiday season. My ward also had a Christmas party... last night in fact! It was a lot of fun. Each year the ward has different people from the ward decorate and supply dishes for a table. They also have a nice cattered dinner and some sort of musical program. I wasn't originally planning on going to the activity, but they needed someone to decorate a table, and so I decided to go and decorate a table. It ended up being very fun. Some crazy people sat at my table... but it was fun. By the time the party was over it had started to snow! It was great! It doesn't snow very often in Seattle... but man when it does it is beautiful! Here are some pictures of my table and of the snow:

When I got home from the party I decided to make a few miniature snow people. It was fun!

On the first day of Christmas...

2008-12-14T20:00:00.000-08:00

This is something that I am doing for the girls I go visiting teaching to... thought I would put it on my blog too.
Here is the first of 12 reading days...

Rock the Vote!

2008-11-04T15:03:00.000-08:00

I don't really enjoy talking about politics with people, but this election has been an interesting one. It will be exciting to see who wins! If you haven't voted yet... get to it and go rock the vote!

This is Halloween!

2008-10-31T22:59:00.000-07:00

On the 25th I had my 2nd annual Family Halloween Party. I LOVE Halloween. I love the decorations...the fun costumes...and all of the fun and creepy foods. This years part was a blast and I think that the kids had a great time. We had mummies on a stick (hot dogs), salad, smoking purple punch, frog eye salad, bug filled cupcakes and a ton of snack type food. After eating we had a costume contest and then rocked out on Guitar Hero (I love that game!). It was a lot of fun. My nieces and nephews all had really cute costumes. Cadison was a dead football player, Alyssa was the queen of hearts, Tyler was a ninja, Chelsey was Pippi Longstocking (sp??), Peyton was a pig and my sister Monica was a little devil.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from playing guitar hero.

My "I'm a teenage girl" obsession

2008-10-09T23:06:00.000-07:00

The new Twilight trailer just came out tonight. It looks like it is going to be good. I really enjoyed (aka obsessed over like a 14 year old girl) the books, even though I consider them to be a 'guilty pleasure' type of book. Vampire books are not my thing...but these books were great, and so addictive. If you haven't read them, you should. In fact, I may need to reread the first one before November 21st. I just hope that the movie lives up to the books.

Check Out the newest Twilight trailer!

Tres Cosas

2008-10-05T20:33:00.000-07:00

3 Joys

A good book with a cup of herbal tea and a comfy blanket on a rainy day.
Camping with the family in Oregon.
Getting 8 hours of sleep ... I wish that happened more often!

3 Fears

Spiders...eek!
Failure/ Not reaching my full potential.
Making a fool of myself in public...I am a pretty clumsy person...so the probability of falling and making a fool of myself is pretty high :)

3 Obsessions/ Collections

I collect shot glasses. I have one for every state that I have been to.
Blog stalking and obsessively checking my e-mail (Like a good 15-30 times a day)
I am obsessed with Boggle and other word games...I could spend hours playing them

3 Surprising Facts

I am a major germaphobe
I have never been kissed
I have really bad road rage... especially in the mornings on the way to the bus stop.

Got Milk?

2008-09-27T23:47:00.000-07:00

I do!!! Well, I did! Mmmm....I love Milk! And guess what...on the first day of classes at the UW they were handing out free milk at red square! Yep, you heard that right, FREE milk!!! That's not all though... they were handing out tons of stuff...it was like being at the fair! There were stands with people giving out free bagels, free coffee, free cookies, free juice, and of course, free milk. Now this free milk wasn't some wimpy sample...it was 16 ounces of pure calcium goodness. In fact it was the same thing as the picture above. It was great...it made the first day of classes super!

Wow, I still can't believe that classes have already started. It is nice to be back at school though. It will be an interesting and challenging quarter. I am taking Spanish 103...after this class I will be 100% done with my generals and all I will have left are design and art history classes! Woo Hoo. So I am a little nervous about my Spanish class....it has been a long time since I have taken 101 and 102...and I have forgotten a lot! I am going to have to study a lot for this class in order to get a good grade.

I am also taking a design drawing class. It is fun so far... of course so far we have only drawn a bunch of lines and squares! In this class we are not allowed to use pencils and erasers ... we are only to use cheap black paper mate pens. Yikes! We will see how that goes....I like my eraser and drawing pencils....I will miss them!

And last, but not least I am taking an awesome art history class. The class focuses on Northwest coastal Salish art. So far, I love it! There is a lot of reading and a lot of memorizing, but I have a feeling that it will be my favorite class of the quarter. The other day we went over the pronunciation of the different coastal tribes...wow, tough stuff! I am really excited to learn more about the history and culture of the beautiful Northwest Natives. In honor of my excitement for this class I made the following collage...I seem to be in a major picture collage mood lately....

When the student is ready, the master appears. ~Buddhist Proverb

2008-09-22T21:35:00.000-07:00

Well, I don't know that I am ready for school to start quite yet, and I am not sure that all of my professors will be "masters", but it is school time again. Fall quarter starts on Wednesday and I am actually pretty excited for classes to start. With the exception of one Spanish class I have all of my generals done...so all of my classes are either design classes or art history classes! Let the fun begin! As much as I would love to be done with school already, I really do enjoy learning and going to school. I love walking into the Library and feeling the collegiate atmosphere. I know I am crazy!

In anticipation of school starting I decided to look on Flickr and see what pictures I could find of the UW campus. I found a ton of amazing photos and decided to make a little collage of some of my favorite ones. I think that I attend college at a University with one of the most beautiful campus'. For proof, just click on the above picture and take a closer look at some of the pictures. I am proud to be a HUSKY!

Goodbye summer...hello fall!

2008-09-20T15:15:00.000-07:00

Well, another summer is over. I can't believe how fast summer went by. It was a good summer though. In July I went camping in Oregon with my family and had a great time, as always. Then in August Alison, Monica and I went 'Twilight' crazy. I had read the Twilight books back in March, but Alison and Monica did not read them until the end of July. Of course we had to go get the fourth and final book at midnight when it was released. We had a fun time reading it...even if we were a little obsessed! I have also done a lot of quilting this summer. It is nice to be able to do a few projects before the craziness of school starts. At the beginning of September Melanie, Monica, Alison, Peyton, Cadison and I went to the family fun center. We went miniature golfing, go-carting and had a great time. It was a lot of fun. We also went to the Puyallup fair this year. My Mom and I went twice. We went on opening day and the day after that. We had a lot of fun. My mom and I were able to see my nephew Tyler do Muttin' Bustin'. The next day we mostly looked at the animals. We all had a great time petting all the sheep and some of the cows...but Cadison, she had to pet every single one! All in all it was a good way to end the summer.