Through.

It felt so good to get out with the camera and hunt down something to photograph. I am absolutely reveling in being pain-free after more than a week of dreading every movement. I feel kind of invincible at the moment, even though I'm mired deep in the push to get all of the 2012 reporting done for work by the end of the month. It will get done, even if I have to stay up half the night to do it.

So it is fitting that today's photo prompt was 'Through'. I'm through with the pain, almost through my busiest month, maybe even kind of through the weirdness of my emotions and doubts over the past number of months. And that's a good thing. Even a major fog today couldn't dampen my spirits much. It would be nice to see the sun, but I was rather pleased with my foggy pictures.

What I do.

The challenge today is to take a picture of what we do. I've already taken a picture of my computer, I'm not sure there is much else that one can do with that. And I've taken a picture of food, so that pretty much covers the whole 'I feed my family' thing that takes up such a large chunk of time.

How does a mom sum up the span of what she does?

This is it. THIS is my master list, my 'I could not survive without this' planner. This is what I (theoretically) do when I am not working.

I need lists. I need lists like some people need air. I need air too, so I guess that means I need air AND lists. Oh, I tried other plans for getting my house cleaned and organized and they did not work. Somewhere there is an unused email account filling up with thousands of emails from FlyLady. Even on the 'please don't inundate me with 50 emails a week' plan I STILL spent half my time trying to read emails and tips from her and nothing ended up getting cleaned anyway.

But this, this is awesome. I found it last year, and for about fifteen dollars for the download and getting it bound it was well worth it. At least, it was worth it for the four months I kept up with it, faithfully checking off tasks each day. After that, when my brain fell apart and I couldn't seem to get anything done even with a list staring me in the face it was more of a taunting 'see what you SHOULD be doing and aren't?'

Still, I'm back at it this year. I printed it out and had it bound last week, but haven't checked anything off yet because 'sit in your chair and whine about how much pain you are in' was not on the list. (I totally would have rocked that task, though.) I'm going to start small, aiming for just getting ANYTHING checked off during the week. And I will consider that an accomplishment.

Because this is what I do.

Something I saw.

So I've missed a few days of the photo challenge. That happens when you mess up your back and pretty much the only thing that makes it happy is sitting on a chair and not moving. I tried the whole 'get up and keep moving' thing, but that is more easily said than done when you are so crazily out of whack that movement means you are thrusting more things out of line to compensate.

But, by Sunday evening things were looking a little better, and we enjoyed a game of Castle Panic as a family.

This is what I saw.

The boys are finally getting to the stage where we can play games with them that are actually fun for people over the age of 6. (I'm looking at you, Mousetrap.) We're still working on the whole thing of 'do not jump around and shake the table or throw the dice half-way across the room', but I'm assuming that will come with age. In the meantime, we've solved the 'But I NEVER win' complaining by getting some cooperative games like Castle Panic. It also makes it easier in the learning stages because we can discuss strategy with them and help them to plot out the best course of action. Teaching logic is always a win in my book.

And that's what I saw on my Sunday evening.

Circles.

I cheated. Today was supposed to be something yellow, but I wanted to do the circle prompt that I missed yesterday because I've been waiting all week for it. It isn't the most visually stimulating picture, but it was good practice in trying to get the color of my office wall to come out at least close to reality.

So, here it is...my new office 'art'!

Seriously, this was the perfect choice for my space. It filled up just as much as I wanted (although I'm going to add two more prints in 4 inch hoops once I find the smaller hoops), but best of all? It is a low budget, low commitment solution!

That's always my problem when picking out decorating solutions, I have too small of a budget to risk getting something that I will hate, or at least get bored with quickly. This cost me about $25 initially, but now that I have the hoops the only additional outlay will be for fabric. And I can change it whenever I want to suit my mood. I can opt for a softer look, for a different accent color, for geometric shapes, for something quirky...whatever!

How cute are these little birds? As soon as I saw them I picked all of the other fabrics to play off of this one.

Now, if only I could finally decide on fabric for the curtains...