Another Year Has Passed.....Now onto 2010

This year has started out great and relaxing so far. I hope it's a sign of what the whole year will be like. We spent a very busy Christmas here at our house this year with my whole family, then a nice quiet New Years Eve watching football and ripping apart our fireplace. Ah.... the smell of sheet rock dust...cough cough! Got a few snow days in at the beginning of Jan... I'm still waiting on the ice on the front walkway to finally melt and it's been almost a week. Yep, been THAT cold. Other than that, it's been pretty chill here at the Colbeck house. Nice.....

This year I've got many goals I'd like to make, so I hope I can do it..... gotta get out of debt.... gotta get a great paying job....gotta pass the LARE.... are the MOST important things on the list, but then again, they are on there every year, so here's to hoping I finally get to knock some of those off the list. I REALLY need to get back on here and write more, so here's my attempt at trying. We'll see how long it takes before I give up and find something else to do. hehehehehe!

Hum... a little TOO Wild America over here.

Just a little update on our wild critters...... as cute as they are and as fun as it is to watch Chris feed them at night, we seemed to have gotten a pretty brave raccoon in our midst. The large one in the videos has moved on and now a much smaller one has been showing up every night and is getting way to brave with Prissy. The other morning, Chris saw it go up to Prissy while she was eating food out of her bowl and pull the bowl away from her to eat. Yeah...... so...... unfortunately, he's been having to take extra measures to warn this raccoon that he needs to stay off the back porch..... by scaring it with a paintball gun. Obviously, we don't want to hurt the guy, but he's REALLY not getting the hint and we're really worried that Prissy is going to snap and attack it......and Prissy will lose. EVERY night and sometimes early in the morning, I hear the lovely sounds of popping through the house as Chris shoots his gun out the slightly opened back door. This dude just isn't getting it! I just wonder if we'll have to have it trapped and transported somewhere else in order to have some peace at night for Prissy....... hum.....

Colbeck of Johns Creek.... Wild America

The Adventures of Our Backyard

So, since we've been letting Prissy outside during the day and some nights, we've noticed having more and more critters showing up on the back deck. We've always had the mama and baby deer in the back yard, although it's been a while since they've been around. We've also had plenty of birds and 4 very fat squirrels that spend the day digging food out of the squirrel proof bird feeder. But what we find entertaining are the critters that show up at night to eat whatever food is left over in Prissy's food bowl. It's amazing how brave they are too!

I call him Poppy 5000. I was expecting to see a raccoon eating her food, but when I turned the light on, I found him. Pretty cool little dude. He's been around a few times.

Prissy and the biggest of the 5 raccoons, who I call Bandit. I actually have seen her sitting on the deck with 4 raccoons like nothing was going on. We are actually able to open the back door and let her in and they continue to eat.

I have long video of Chris sitting outside feeding Bandit. This is a shorter one where Bandit catches Little Rocky peering around the corner and chases him away from the food. Chris said it sounded like a cat fight with all the growling going on. Pretty funny! I hope to have more videos on here soon.

REALLY got some catching up to do!

Ok.... so, I've been a little preoccupied with trying to find work AND planning a wedding these days... months... whatever. I didn't realize it's been since Jan since I've added a post, so I'll just do a brief little post here to catch everyone up.

Wedding Plans..... WAHOO!!!! The date.... Sept 26.... the location.... St. George Island on the beach. We always talked about a small beach wedding with just our close family since the two of us aren't exactly the kind of people that like to be out in front of a crowd. This is perfect! Got our beach houses set and the photographers are nuts, so this should make things really fun. I guess as far as the wedding goes, all we have left are pulling together the details and getting the guys their Hawaiian shirts. I've got my dress, so I know I'm set. hehehee!

Reception to follow.... kind of. We decided we still wanted to share this time with our family and friends and well, have excuse to party like rock stars, by having a large reception when we get back from the honeymoon. Got the place picked..... The Stovall House up in Sautee, GA right down the road from the Shoemake's Hab House. The most beautiful area around and I'm sooo excited. Next step is to run up there and meet with the owner and chef and pick out the menu and then meet with the crazy tent guy to decide what size tent we need. Should be fun!!! I just hope through both weekends, we don't have to deal with any hurricanes since it will be prime hurricane season.

Jobby Job search.... not as exciting. Yeah... so it's been about 6 months since I started my retirement and I've applied to close to 10 jobs.... I guess out of the 10, maybe 2 were landscape architecture jobs. It's bleak out there. VERY BLEAK! Good news, and I hope this doesn't jinx me by going ahead and mentioning this, I did go in and interview with Pike Nursery about 5 minutes down the road from here and the interview rocked!!!! The best part.... Pike's Landscape Design Department is housed in that very building. They don't have any openings now, but IF I get this job, they would get a chance to get to know me and hopefully I'll be able to have my foot in the door when they do start looking for anyone else. That's my hope at least. For now, I just have to keep my fingers crossed and hope that it's good news when I get a call from them at the end of the week.

There.... my life in review...hehehee! I'll add more later, but I wanted to get all the good stuff in first. Wahoo!!!!

Got A LOT of catching up to do!!!!!! First.... the Big News!

Well....just like everyone else, I got a little behind on my blogging. I guess with Christmas and New Years, I just had too much going on. So.... I'll TRY and get you caught up on things. First of all....The Big News!!!! In case you haven't heard, Chris proposed Sunday before New Years.

This is how is happened. He went up Tues before Christmas to spend it with his family in Illinois while I stayed here with my family. He rode back with his brother and family on Saturday. Got home kind of late, so we pretty much ate dinner with them before they headed to SC, then we went straight to bed. I woke up and met Megan and Jennifer for breakfast the next morning, not thinking anything, just really excited to have Chris home and I really wanted him to open his gifts. hehehee! We laugh now, because I gave him "old man" gifts for Christmas..... bird and squirrel feeders and food.... picture frames... but really, he's like a female Snow White. We've had deer, squirels, birds, raccoons, and rabbits so far and he LOVES to feed them all.
We sat in front of the Christmas Tree to open gifts. I got to his gifts.... I got a Savannah Tours book (my FAVORITE place), a Smokey Mountains National Park map book (maybe our next National Park).... then a bag with a printed out Menu for McKendricks. He said he wanted to print out Morton's menu, but they didn't have one to print out, but he told me I got the idea... he wanted to take me to a really nice Steak house. YUM! Then, he said, he had some ornaments for me. He pulled out a little tent ornament from his pocket that he picked up at REI..... I already had one, so we laughed as I turned to put it on the tree next to the other. Then I turned around and he handed me a key to the front door- I have been living there for months, but have been using the garage door to get in because we didn't have a spare key for me. hehehehe! He handed the key to me and said, You'll need this if you're gonna be wearing this.... and that's when he pulled the ring out of his pocket to hand to me. He said I had the most dumbfounded look on my face.... I think it took a second to register that it was for real! AND of course I said yes!!!! Why wouldn't I? I love this man!

Here's the funniest parts about the story. He had bought the ring a year ago... even before he bought the house.... and the big leather chair I am sitting on right now, that I sit on every day and nap on on the weekends.... yeah.... he lifted it up and showed me the little safe under it.... said I've been sitting on my ring for a year! heheheheee!!!!!! Under my butt the whole time and I had no clue!

Another story he told my dad when they called to congratulate us.... back when mom and dad moved to Florida, I don't know, maybe March? Chris was in charge of hanging up pictures. He got to what we call, The Wedding Wall, and asked mom how she wanted them to be hung.... we've got mom and dad's huge picture, then Megan and Julie's smaller pictures. She told him she's not sure since she's missing one (hello ours!). He was too funny..... didn't get it at all. Said, well, do you know what size that picture is going to be? Mom said... no, what size do you think you want it to be? Still nothing...... he said, I don't know. Then he said, Maybe we should wait until we get that other picture before we hang these up. Mom said.... when is that gonna be? I can't wait forever! hehehehee! He asked her where the picture was, and she said she didn't know and then asked him where he thought it was...... that's when we died laughing and HAD to tell him to LOOK at the pictures he was hanging up... oh yeah... red face! Little did any of us know..... he had the ring during that conversation too!
He's good...... heheheee!

Wonder if THIS would work......

I found the t-shirt designs. I wonder if I could just market myself as an artist for hire. Wonder if there is some way that I could design logos for fundraising t-shirts for teams of walkers. Hum.... I guess if any of you have a team that needs a team t-shirt that needs designed... holler! Here are the 3 that I've scanned in from the past. We just printed the designs out and ironed them on t-shirts. Then we made a list of names for the backs of the t-shirts of who we were walking for. They would probably last much longer if they weren't iron ons though. After running a 5 K or walking well, 60 miles, the logos start to smear or crack.


Juvenile Diabetes Walk.... we didn't get the t-shirts made in time so technically, this logo has only been seen by a few people. I made sure that the lizard wore the shoe design that they used in all of the official t-shirts.


This is the design we wore for our Breast Cancer 5K.

AND this is our Breast Cancer 3-Day design. I tried to make it look like a girl scout sash with patches.

I guess this is a start for ideas.

Turn a Hobby into a Career??? THAT is the question!

Ah...here it is.... 3 months into my "retirement" and I have to say that it's getting a little old. I'm not finding anything in the landscape architecture field unless I want to work in Atlanta or below it... or jobs that require me to be registered... GAR!!! I knew I should have kept pushing to pass that stupid test, but you know, I just don't take tests well and I can't justify throwing hundreds of dollars away to try and pass the rest of the test just yet.

So.... NOW WHAT? Now, I ponder what other opportunities are out there. Right now, any other job outside of my field would be great, with the exception that I don't have any other experience. If I were an employer looking at my resume, I'd laugh. I mean, my lar resume ROCKS, but I don't think I have enough experience in any other field to build a resume that equals that. A high school kid probably has more on their resume than I would.

Lately, I've been thinking about the other things that I have interests in. Then I saw an article on yahoo's main page.... Turn a Hobby into a Career. Hum.... I could do that...maybe? I mean, I have plenty of hobbies and activities that I enjoy outside of landscape architecture. The problem would be... which one to choose.... would I be good enough at it to make money and survive... maybe not as much money as I was making before the layoff, but something.... then would anyone actually take me serious and buy what I have to sell? All sorts of questions, but no answers. I just wish so badly that the answer would just slap me in the face. That somehow something would just click and I'd be off and running with it. It wouldn't have to be a living... just something to live off of for the next year while the housing market is in the crapper. I welcome ANY suggestions or comments. I feel like I'm just in this cloud. I see rays of sunshine peeking through the clouds, but not long enough to see clearly.

Here's my list of interests and hobbies. I figured SOMETHING is bound to come out of this... maybe just typing out my list and looking over things would help me narrow my ideas down. Ug... who knows....

Well, there's scrapbooking. Granted, this isn't one my pages. I haven't taken pictures of any of my pages, but you got the idea. I enjoy it... it allows me to reach into the imagination and create ways to tell stories, but who would pay me to scrapbook for them? That takes away the personal touch that folks like to see when they look through scrapbooks.

Fundraising! I LOVE creating themes and ideas to help raise money for good causes. I do tend to get excited and either over plan or under plan things, but overall, they are a hit. Here's our Relay for Life Team- Team Landmark Design. We raised nearly 5 grand through the office and by selling hot chocolate and baked goods at the actual race. It was GREAT!!!! And if we still had a Team Landmark Design by next May, then I'd enjoy being their team leader again. It was very rewarding.

Here we've got Josh and Jesse drumming up buyers to our tent by street performing. They had more people take pictures of them than anything, but they did get the attention we needed when most folks were starting to hide in their tents to go to bed for the night.

Our hot chocolate and coffee tables. This was at the peek and we had everyone working like dogs. I came up with the idea to take big marshmallows and sticking a drink umbrella in them for the hot chocolate. Kids LOVED them and people remembered us all night.

Coffeeville Logo. That's another thing..... I enjoy sketching up logos for fundraisers.... t-shirts and tables. This one was pretty easy. I've designed t-shirt logos for Juvenile Diabetes walk for Elizabeth and for our Breast Cancer walks/ 5K. I REALLY enjoy sketching and anything I can do to help us stand out over all the other t-shirts out there, count me in. I just wonder how I'd be able to market that unless I had a t-shirt maker to partner with. Someone that could make 1 to 50 t-shirts and not cost an arm and a leg.


Elizabeth's t-shirt.

Here's more fundraising ideas... our Casino Night to help raise money for the Breast Cancer 3-Day. Talk about a blast! Even coming up with decorations for it was fun!

What about just plain ol' photography. You've seen all the pictures on this blog and my other blog.... if I could just take a class to figure out how to use all my camera tricks and maybe get an idea of how to improve my composition, then I could do so much with that. I still think I have a long way to go before I could actually get paid to take professional photographs. Chris on the other hand.... he'll be great once he gets the hang of his camera. He's done sooo well so far.

Then of course, there's the family Event Planning idea that we've talked about over and over for years. Something that we've all been able to do, but we've not been able to actually make it into an official business.... yet. I just think that even though I'm ready to start, my timing is off. Megan and Steve are buying his route and Adena with the new baby.... they are more of the backbone of that business than me. I'm still not sure what my specialty would be just yet... Adena is great with food and Megan with planning... where would I fit in? Another thing I'll need to think about as well.

Food we created for Sarah's baby shower.

Hey... I can mix drinks. hehehee!!!! Maybe bartend... naw... I go to bed WAY too early to work at a bar.

The Diaper Cake we created.

Julie's tea party shower table decorations.

Maybe I can be Brenda's apprentice and learn the art of making wedding cakes and other cakes. This is her Victorian Charm Cake. A big hit at wedding showers.

And then there's sketching and coloring. Just plain ol' anything you need me to do. My wrists aren't as great as they used to be, but this was my living before the layoff. I would either sketch or color drawings for marketing purposes. I could use those skills and do other things. But would I be able to sell enough of them to make a living?

Some of my past work. I didn't actually design this plan. I took an old damaged blue print and created the design from scratch... every pencil scratch on that drawing came from my hand... then I color rendered it. FUN!!!!

Another sketch that wasn't exactly mine, BUT it's another example of my coloring skills. Who would have thought that coloring with markers and pencils would be so fun.

Now, Keely, if you read this before I see you on Tues.... don't scroll down any further.... or if you do, pretend you didn't see it. ; ) I did sketch 2 sweet little faces for a Christmas present this year. I don't know, I haven't sketched people since high school and when it comes to sketching people or things, I have to be moved.... there's got to be something about the photo that catches my eye... colors... contrast... something. This was from a picture she sent me of Alli and Macy last Christmas and I've always thought of it as one of my favorites. If I could make a living off of sketching family portraits, that would be AWESOME! The only problem is.... I'm just too picky with the pictures. I can't just draw from any ol' picture. It's got to be great! That might be where Chris comes in hand.... maybe he'll be the photographer to my sketches. If only it were that easy.......

Macy on the left and Alli on the right. Pencil sketch on water color paper.