Productivity

I've been rather unproductive the last two weeks. It probably has something to do with my menfolk coming home and all but still it bothers me. Wednesday and today I went into the office and got tons of stuff done. Usually I'm pretty good at staying focused at home but these past few weeks, not so much.

Another thing that kept me from producing any of my work was a project I started (and completed - yay!) for my mother's 70th birthday (which is next Tuesday). One of my cousins has sent us all a CD of my grandparents slides and photos that he had scanned from the originals. There are LOTS of them. Most were in bad shape and/or bad photos (my grandfather had a thing about taking pictures from a moving car, don't ask me why - but boring doesn't begin to describe them). So I wanted to create a book of photos and poems for my mother. I decided to take the photos just of the womenfolk in the family: my grandmother (her mother) at different points in her life, my greatgrandmother (posed with my mom as a toddler), my mother at different stages (although nothing recent), her sister as a toddler and young mother (her sister passed away in her early 50s), my sisters and I as kids and then the last page includes fairly recent shots of all her grandchildren (she has 6 - 2 girls and 4 boys).

It took me quite a while to go through the photos and then I had to correct them via Photoshop. Now b is the photographer, web designer, graphic artist etc of the two of us, not me--seriously not me. I'm not crafty (in any way imaginable). But he wasn't home so I had to learn what I could on my own and do the best possible. I think they ended up looking pretty good but nowhere near what a professional would do. Then I found poems on motherhood, sisterhood, grandmothers, and daughters. I even included one of my own. I created the book using this. It is pretty cool and rather inexpensive. I recommend it if you ever have a need to create an entire book.

Boy gave me a hard time about the project all week long because--well because he gives me a hard time about anything these days. He told me not to expect him to do anything that involved for my 70th. Since he also forgot to bring me home a slice of some delicious wedding cake from his job that night, I told him I was not expecting much of anything.

Its being shipped directly to her (I had to rush order it since it took me so long to finish) so I haven't seen the final product. Hopefully she'll get it by Tuesday and love it. I'll let you know.