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Lori Pickens

Thirty on Thursday

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Every week I plan on doing a Five on Friday, but the weekend comes, and we get busy, and somehow I just never seem to get around to it. So today, I am going to try and make up for that by having a “Thirty on Thursday”.

Coming up with 30 things to say might be a little over ambitious, but it sounded nice with Thursday, so we are going to give it a go and just see where we end up.

1.) Bad blogger. I’m sorry I have been so inconsistent with my blogging. One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to never let the blog be more than a day or two out-of-date. Well, here it is February and I’ve already failed miserably. But today, I am restarting that resolution and will try to do better. Promise!

2.) Older blog entries. You may notice that there is now a link called “older blog entries” on the top and bottom menu bars. This will allow you to move back or forward five blog entries at a time. Even though I am going to get out of the habit of my massive blog updates at once, if you do happen to need to catch up on the blog, you can simply click “older blog entries” and keep reading back until where you were before. It’s a feature I’ve been asking for and Justin was kind enough to add it for me :). Hopefully it will be easier to navigate than the blog archive, although that is still there too.

3.) Speak Now. My new favorite CD is Taylor Swift’s new Speak now album. I downloaded it quite awhile ago, but pretty much listen to it constantly in my down time. She is coming to Columbus on June 7th, and I am so hoping to get tickets!

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4.) Hidden messages. I read online that in Talyor’s album booklet, she hides secret messages that give her fans clues about what (or who) the song is about. She does this by capializing random letters in her journaling, that when rearranged give the clue word. For example, in her “Back to December” song, the letters spell out “TAY” – basically indicating that it is a apology to Taylor Lautner. Some are more complicated than that, but you get the idea… I obviously didn’t get the book since I downloaded from Walmart, but I think it is fun, neat idea.

5.) Inspiration Challenge. I’m hositng this month’s Inspiration Challenge at Design House Digital. The winner gets a $5 gift certificate to the store! Since I’m normally listening to my new favorite album while I scrapbook, I decide to use it as this month’s theme. You can find all about it here:February 2011 – Inspiration Challenge: Speak Now

6.) I’m totally going to stop talking about Taylor Swift now, before you begin to think I’m a crazy teeny-bopper fan.

7.) My photo business is officially launched now, and I am taking new clients. I actually booked my first senior session the other day, which I am super excited about.

8.) Senior discount. Speaking of seniors, I’m currently running a special discount to help build my senior portfolio. You get 50% my session fee, so senior pictures are at a steal of $25 plus the cost of prints. You can read more about it here: Senior Discount

9.) Craftiness. I seem to go through phases. I will be really into my photography for awhile, then I feel like all I want to do is scrapbook for a month. Well, right now I am in a crafty mood. I have about 6 “projects” planned right now. I’m currently decorating some things in the house, painting a peapod, making headbands, have plans for cute outfits for the nieces and nephew, etc. I promise to share them on the blog when I actually get some of them finblog.loripickens.comed.

10.) Under the Sycamore. I blame a good bit of my new crafty phase to this blog: Under the Sycamore by Ashley Ann. She seriously does some of the coolest things.

11.) Pinterest. Have you heard about pinterest?

What is Pinterest? Pinterest is a social catalog service. Think of it as a virtual pinboard ? a place where you can post collections of things you love, and “follow” collections created by people with great taste.

Seriously, this thing is cool. As I’m browsing the Internet or whatever, I can just drag a little pin over and it bookmarks everything for me, and then when I go to my Pinterset account, it is filled with all my pretty pictures and links back to everything.

You can also “follow” other people’s boards to find ideas. If you are interested in what I’ve been looking at, you can find my board here: LoriLeigh’s board

Right now, you can only join Pinterest by invite, but I can now invite others, so if you want an invite, leave me a comment or send me an email and I will get you one 🙂

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12.) iGoogle. My other new fun little technology tool is iGoogle. It’s like a customized home page for Google, where you can pick different apps that have right there for you. I like it so much, I’ve ditched my paper to-do list and may be switching my LoCalendar to Google Calendar.

 

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13.) Zumba. I’ve started going to Zumba classes. They are actually a lot of fun. A few different friends from my church teach, so I have several different nights of the week that I can pick from. If you are interested in a good workout, let me know and I can get you the times and places.

14.) Winter. I am soooo sick of winter. I’m tired of cold. I’m tired of snow. Every time it starts to melt off, we get hit with another 3 inches. Seriously, what happened to this whole global warming thing?

15.) Skis. I do have to tolerate winter some, because my husband loves skiing and I love him. For his birthday, he even ordered his own skis and boots. He’s pretty pumped about them!

16.) Basement stuff. We are still working on things for the basement. We bought tile for the bathroom the otherday (which I need to take pictures of and share…). Country Cabinets is working on a stain for our kitchen cabinets down there. It feels slow, but I know we’ll get there.

17.) Chicago. I found out that I’ll be traveling to Chicago for work in April. Any suggestions on fun things to see or do in the evenings?

18.) Blessings. I can’t even begin to tell you how much fun it is to have 3 nieces and 1 nephew now. I just love them all to pieces! God has just been overflowing with blessings on our family.

19.) And here’s a picture of one of those sweet blessings from last night:

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20.) Miss Bryleigh. Speaking of one of those adorable little blessings. I get to watch Bryleigh ALL day next Wednesday. Papaw, her normal babysitter, will be off skiing, so I switched my day off so I could watch her. To say I’m excited would be quite an understatement.

21.) A week or so ago I went to a Tastefully Simple party, and today my order was delivered. It’s safe to say what we’re having for dinner tonight: Perfectly Potato Cheddar Soup!

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22.) It just occurred to be me that this Thirty on Thursday might make my Five on Friday a bit of a challenge tomorrow.

23.) American Idol. I really had no plans of watching it this year, but we have DVR’d it a couple times, and I’m actually enjoying it. I even like Steven Tyler a lot more than I thought I would. He’s actually pretty funny.

24.) Nathan just made me hot chocolate. he is the sweetest husband ever!

25.) The Office was actually really funny this week. The last few have kind of been off for me, but this one made me smile.

26.) Well, here I am at 26 and I am tired and can’t think of any more updates. I may think about it for another hour or so, or maybe it will just be thirty-blog.loripickens.com

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