Way back in January when I was in the midst of my week long birthday celebration I mentioned that one of the super fantastic presents that my husband Mike gave me were tickets to see Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes on the Jay & Silent Bob Get Old Tour! After all this waiting it was finally time for the big show!!

Now because Mike is awesome and tomorrow is the 11 year anniversary of when we started dating we turned tickets to the show into a little mid-week getaway! Yesterday I worked only half a day and then we headed to the Royal Pacific Resort over at Universal and checked in and kicked off a much needed 24 hour escape! The hotel is beautiful, we had a great room, we explored, we had drinks, we laughed. We had an absolutely spectacular meal at Emeril's - I mean seriously spectacular and after dinner we took our full and happy selves over to Hard Rock for the show!

Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier kicked off the show with an hour and a half Smodcast recording! Hysterical! I laughed so hard!! Then the next hour and a half was Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes - also hysterical and at parts a little sad but a magical evening! After the show Mike and I strolled back to the hotel in the pouring rain, we laughed and talked and went over our favorite parts of the show and the evening as a whole.

This morning we woke up to tornado warnings - WHAT?! I've probably mentioned before I am absolutely petrified to drive in the rain and the weather forecast was grim and had the rain not letting up until much later tonight. So we took our time getting ready for the day and checking out and then had a fabulous breakfast at one of the hotel's restaurants it was nice and relaxing and then hand in hand we walked and explored the hotel, did a little shopping and then I made a command decision - We're going home! As much as I would have loved to stay at the hotel I knew we had to get home too. So off we went, picked Hooper up from my friend's house and then came home. Sure I had a white knuckle grip on the steering wheel most of the way but we made it safe and sound and have not moved from the couch since! The fur babies have taken turns coming to cuddle with us I guess even though we were only gone over night they missed us!

I hope all my Florida friends are safe and sound as it is still absolutely pouring rain out there!

Wasn't I Cute?

One of the major perks to having my mother take part in the February Layout A Day was seeing the layouts she created using old family photos. Mom has had these photos in those old school magnetic albums for years and years and they were starting to yellow and fade and just weren't being showcased the way they deserved.

Enter LOAD and mom used photos rich with family history and came up with some truly incredible layouts and no I'm not saying that just because I happen to be the focus of this layout!

LOADs of Fun!

I am embarrassingly late with this Layout a Day (LOAD) recap but to say that it was amazing just falls short somehow.

I'm proud to say that I completed all 28 layouts in the 28 days of February and I'm even prouder to say that my mother also completed all 28 layouts!! It was so much fun seeing how mine and my mom's takes on Lain's prompts differed and it was nice seeing my mom could create spectacular layouts in a few hours instead of a few weeks (haha!)

My biggest challenge this time around was working, not only was I getting used to my role at work but I was transitioning to full time and still trying to make time for laundry and exercising and having fun once in a while. Thankfully my husband took care of every meal during the month of February so I did not have to worry about that!!

One night in particular I thought I was going to throw in the towel - I worked a 12 hour day, got home around 8:30PM and the challenge was to use ribbon in a way you don't usually use it. ACK! Ribbon! I don't usually use ribbon on pages at all for some reason I am - no scratch that - was scared to use it. So I thought forget it I won't put together a layout with ribbon I just won't follow the prompt but then Lain announced that if you used the prompt you could win a Jar of Ribbon from www.ribbonjar.com! Well who am I to pass up a chance at a fabulous prize?! So while waiting for one of our meetings to start I was chatting with my boss about this challenge and we started sketching ideas. I sent a quick text to the husband asking him to print out a few photo options for me and when I got home this layout was created:


And thank goodness it was because I was extremely thrilled to find out I was the winner of the jar of ribbon!!! So today this super stuffed jar of fun arrived!!



I'm also happy to say that since using ribbon on the layout above I've used it several more times - who knew using ribbon on a layout could be so much fun!!! And now I know where I can stock up!!!