Words From the Wise

Here's the last of the archives of my journal of last year's travel adventures! I did it! I made it! I survived! Southern Indiana and I have shared some quality time together..but I’m ready to break up. The last 2 weeks I’ve had a car that doesn’t have Sirius. Ugh. But I’m dumb and realized I could totally hook up my iPod about 3/4 the way through. And thus I give you #onlyonashlynsipod (I felt a hashtag was necessary for this). So… I heard Amy Grant (so one of my guilty pleasures from my childhood. Hey, we all have them.) followed by Without Me- Eminem #onlyonashlynsipod Blink 182 followed by the stud of a crooner Michael Buble #onlyonashlynsipod Another One Bites the Dust by Queen then Lovebug by the JoBros #onlyonashlynsipod Gosh. I have such great taste in music. Here we go..for the last time this season! THE GOOD! - Prior to these last 2 weeks I haven’t been on the road as much. My fantasy team had taken a beating during that time. I didn’t have lunch visit...

Here's another page of my journal of last year's travel adventures! The end is near, I can see it. (Actually the end is already here because I’m writing this 2 weeks late. Go Ashlyn.) This week of travel is one I dreaded the most- 4 night hotel stay in Evansville. NOOOOOOOOO. That means I have to figure out how to spend my evenings in lovely Evansville..please be nice to me Eville (see what I did there..because I think Evansville is evil.) Random story from the road time! Remember when we were younger and the boys totally thought there were couches in the girls bathroom? And we totally told them there were? Well…I hit the holy grail this week. I walked into the faculty bathroom and TA-DAAAAAAA! There in front of me sat a large couch. I had only ever imagined of such a thing. Did my dreams finally come true?! If you honestly think my dreams would be finding a couch in a bathroom, you’re dumb and wrong. My dreams are way better..like going on a shopping spree, snow of Chri...

Here's another page of my journal of last year's travel adventures! So last week I had this started…but didn’t save it. And not I don’t remember anything I was going to say. Well, we’re 1/2 way through Ashlyn’s travel season! Week 3 was so easy to motivate myself because it was only 3 days of travel. And it was all close. Since it’s a shorter week, there wasn’t too much that happened… The Good- - Little Caesar Crazy Bread. Yum. Yep. That was totally my dinner one night of travel. So worth it. - With some down time, I had the chance for Christmas card shopping! Whoot! - My hotel greeted me with warm cookies. -CHICKEN-N-DUMPLINGS! - I had some girl come up to me during a lunch visit and say I have really great style. Totally confidence boost. The very next day I had a girl tell her friend I looked “so old”..no longer feeling so great. - I watched 2 boys have a pretend fight with pretend lasers. Sounds effects included. The Bad- -You know you’re craving food, other...

Here's another page of my journal of last year's travel adventures!  This last week has flown by, thank goodness. These first few weeks of travel have been pretty lucky - I get to sleep in my bed most of the nights. I really can’t complain too much. I chatted with a counselor this last week who told me he’s on the road for a solid 9 weeks. His closest school is 3 hours away from his college. Yikes. That’s A LOT of travel. Suddenly life doesn’t seem so bad. This week I had the chance to deal with some interesting students and parents. I’m so use to the typical “Hi! Let me know if you have any questions about the university.” that when someone says something I don’t expect, it totally throws off my game. So imagine with me..it’s 7:40 and your fair is almost over. You’re thinking about how you can’t wait to get in the car and drive 2 hours back to sleep in your own bed. And you’re trying to figure out what fast food sounds the most appetizing (which is a task all in its own...

Last year around this time, I decided to write down some of my adventures to Southern Indiana while traveling for my old job. I figured it's time to share some of these adventures. Enjoy! Most people think staying in hotels and eating out for a week sounds like a pretty nice time..but chances are they haven’t done that..ever. I’ve decided it’s time to keep entries of my travels this year. Last year I was the new counselor. I had no idea what to expect. This year I at least have an idea, but there’s still room for surprises! Let me start off by saying southern Indiana is beautiful…and big…and has so many curvy roads. So many. Like to the point where I sometimes I have slow down because I’m starting to feel car sick. It’s so great. What makes it even more great is when you’re on your way to your VERY FIRST visit and the traffic is completely stopped. Dead stop. Man, I was on a roll too! So instead of 25 minutes early I was 25 minutes late. I thought things could only go up. Gu...

Time for Part Deux of my crazy traveling trip! I had full intentions of getting a lot of my scrapbooking completed this week but my actual life had other plans. Around 8:00 last night I decided to crack down and knock my Tennessee trip on its tooshie. I was really feeling it at first. I finished the first page...I was no longer in the mood to scrapbook. Grrrr. I just hate when that happens. You're all pumped and feel like you're going to accomplish A TON. So you drag out all of your scrapbook stuff. You work on your first page and that feeling you once had of motivation has suddenly left. AND it took you longer to drag out all of your supplies than it did to make that first page. And that's what happened. But I wasn't going to let that stop me! Here are the pages that I powered through last night and can check off my to-do list. BOOYAH! The guitar and "Nashville" came from a map I got on my trip. I was super pleased with how that turned out....

It seems like not too long ago I thought it was a genius idea to do 2 trips to 2 different states in less then 2 weeks time. I was crazy for thinking that. And here's the thing, neither for them were a "vacation" but more work related. But how can one pass up on opportunities to travel.... for free. Not me. Hence the 2 trips, 2 states, 2 weeks. First up - West Virginia . I had never been to W.V. before! And my kinfolk are from there. (I felt it was necessary to use kinfolk.) Anyway, I was on this trip with the university's speech team for their national competition. The days are really, really long. And we didn't have much free time. So all I had to document were the pictures I took of the team and my brochure and ballot from the tournament.  Don't you just love that map?! Thank you Pinterest for that find. The paper in the bottom right corner is part of the MME Lost and Found Pt 2 collection. The camera was a card find at Michael's in th...

I have a confession. I may or may not have had some of these pages done before doing previous months. Yes, it's true. I had finished these next few pages before I had finished the pages from my last post. But I wanted to start with the events that were current and I had the strongest memories of! Enough of my confession. Now, I bring to you my workings from the rest of March. Whoooot. Side note, some of my weeks got a little wonky because I had some pretty important events happen that I didn't want to limit on my documenting.(you'll soon see what I mean) week of March 17th- WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN? I always get one photo that loads in the direction I don't want it to! But you still get the idea here. This week we celebrated the President's  Inauguration. I was very active on a committee so I decided to commemorate the week! You can't tell in the picture, but I used a beautiful avocado washi tape (my newest obsession)! It's made by We R Memory Make...

Here's the problem I always seem to have: I go on a trip, take a ton of pictures, return home and develop my hundreds of pictures, tell myself I will scrapbook them later...then never get to them. Until recently this has been my anthem. Prime example- my trip to the city of hustle and bustle, NYC. I went on this trip in 2009 with a group from college. I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't do much scrapbooking in college. In fact, I don't think I did any...so I have some catching up to do. This project has been looming over me ever since I've decided to really get back in to scrapbooking. While I'm scrapbooking my most recent adventures (probably because I have the strongest memories of those) , I look at that pile from NYC and tell myself, "you can get to that one later." So finally "later" came and it was time to tackle the project that's been sitting there staring at me. I've decided to post some of the pages I've completed. As ...

Time to get to work on the largest space I have...my floor. Remember the Ferris quotation I used in my last entry, yeah..it's still true. Will life ever slow down?  ...and remember that one time I decided to start my own Project Life? Well that is one thing in my life that has slowed down! I have spent the last week playing catch up for February, March, AND April. Holy cow. Here's the biggest piece of advice I can give- if you're going to PL, keep a journal! I started out doing pretty well and there are 3 weeks I forgot to document and now struggling for my book. I guess it gives me more space to be creative. But there is one project I was very eager to start on. My vacation to Florida. So I've decided to load just a few of my pages to share of few tips and tricks I've learned!  Hello Florida! All of the products used were random odds and ends I had in my craft supplies. I have no idea why some of these are loading this way! Sorry. I did get...

Ferris Bueller was so right - Life moves pretty fast. You don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. My life has been busy, so I've done a horrible job at blogging. BUT NOW I HAVE SOMETHING FABULOUS TO WRITE ABOUT- The proposal at Disney World! *Warning* This post could make others nauseous with the overwhelming amount of cuteness and romanticness (is that even a word? Is now.) Read at your own risk. But really, you should read. Because it's cute. And I said so. It all started back in January when Brandon drove to my parents house to tell them the news and ask for their permission. Immediately my parents asked how they could help. Minutes later, my mom brings out my Grandma Irene's engagement ring and tells him she'd be honored if he could somehow use it. After weeks of Brandon e-mailing my mom, he had the proposal all figured out. Just look at that cheesy smile! My mom put the ring in her purse the night before we left for Disney. My da...

Well friends, I've been a busy worker bee! I think I'm close to being done with my trip to Ireland. I have a ton more pictures, but decided to edit it down. Feel free to scroll down and see some of my work! Sorry for the blurry picture- you still get the idea! I was trying to make my trip not too green, but that started to make things tricky. And in comes all the green..whoops! I did want my pages for St. Patrick's Day to be green, I managed to make a few days before then green too. Green is my favorite color, so what can I say? It was really easy to find St. Pat's Day stickers. And it was really hard to find Ireland stickers. I did manage to score a sticker book of just shamrocks from JoAnn Fabrics for $1..Ashlyn for the win.

Today we ventured out of Belfast and in to Dublin for St. Paddy’s Day! It was a very long day. Our train left Belfast at 6:50 am. Let’s just say I fell asleep as soon as I sat down on the train. So we’ll just move to…the arrival in Dublin’ yay! We seriously had no game plan. And a game plan is crucial with this bunch. After walking around, we decided to get a good “seat” for the parade. So 2 hour before the parade starts, we find our spot and stand. And wait. And get annoyed with people around us. Apparently the European thing to do is show up 30 minutes before the parade and shove your kids to the very front so they can see. Then they say “excuse me, can you move so the children can see?” this did not settle so well with the Americans. We had been standing there for 2 hours so we deserved our spot. And I don’t want kids kicking me, stepping on my feet, and smacking me in the face with their flag. It happened. And then I got the pleasure of having some short woman behind ...

I’m gonna make this post quick. Today was our last full day in Belfast (tomorrow we are heading to Dublin). We decided not to have much planned for the day. I thnk this is where it’s important to add in we started with a rainy day. The Bot We started our morning eating breakfast. Breakfast consisted of soda bread, potato bread, bacon, egg, sausage and baked beans. Yep. That’s a traditional breakfast here! We then head to St. George’s market for one last look and come up short. We venture over to city center to walk around and then head to the BBC building. This was our surprise from Hailey. We got to sit it on the taping of a small show. It was pretty interesting. After the show, we decide it’s time to head back for lunch (and yes it’s still raining). Hailey decided she wanted Chinese but mom and I wanted fish and chips. So we drop Hailey off and head the The Bot for fish and chips. Now first I must say that the name The Bot reminds me of The Dot and therefore Degrass...