The Weekend | Nov. 27-28

We have a 4 year tradition of celebrating “Christmas at Thanksgiving” with my sister and her family, who live in Iowa. They drive up the night before, I cook a great big Thanksgiving meal, then everyone hunkers down with the Black Friday ads to strategize for the next day. Due to my raging crowd anxiety I’m always the designated babysitter while they go out to gather up all the deals. Although this year it was glaringly apparent that these kids don’t need a babysitter so much anymore. For the sake of my sanity, and so that random shoppers aren’t subjected to me curled up in the fetal position in the underwear aisle singing Row Row Row Your Boat, we’ll just pretend that they’re hellions who can’t be trusted alone.

My brother-in-law is a hardcore shopper, he manages to find me some little awesome deal every year. It’s not every day that you meet a guy who actually enjoys shopping, but Justin does, and I’d pit him against any woman any day of the week when it comes to getting the most stuff. If you were going to be a contestant on Supermarket Sweep, Justin is the guy you’d want on your team. He would KNOW that the money is in turkeys, diapers and baby formula. He’d come skidding across the finish line, a caravan of full shopping carts in tow, and you’d be doing the walk of shame off the set after he schooled you with his high checkout totals.

I totally dated myself with that Supermarket Sweep reference, didn’t I? Some of you will know what I’m talking about.

It’s a good thing he’s so gung-ho about it, though,because my sister and I aren’t big fans of shopping. Although we did go out to WalMart at midnight to pick up some early Black Friday deals and I saw my life flash before my eyes when the crowd was unleashed on a pallet full of small appliances. I like a $10 blender as much as the next person, but I’m not willing to throat punch a guy to get one. Just sayin’. This year Justin managed to find me a $70 2TB external drive from Target, and when I saw it there on the couch my entire line of vision exploded into sparkly glittery bits with hearts and rainbows. She who dies with the most hard drives wins, and I love me some digital storage! I’m out of outlets on my power strip back here in One Little Bird World Headquarters so it’s still sitting in the box while I decide which hard drive to retire.

On Friday evening they packed up their goods and headed back to Iowa. I’m always sad to see them leave, especially since the kids have such a good time playing with one another (for the most part). But I do enjoy the sweet, sweet silence of an empty house after several days of commotion. Also her kids are much (much!!) earlier risers than mine is, so I took a four hour nap on the couch after they pulled out of the driveway. I’m not even kind of exaggerating.

Just another (extra)ordinary weekend at our house.

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JOURNALING:

The only cure for a few days of stunted sleep and overeating – a DIY movie marathon. I have my standard fallback titles for a weekend spent on the couch, usually it’s the Oceans trilogy and some ass-kicking courtesy of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, but I decided to switch things up a bit this weekend by revisiting the ever-so-yummy Jason Bourne (times 3) and Liam Neeson. All titles from our personal arsenal. Then we threw in a few newcomers in our ongoing effort to stay relevant. Casino Jack was a bit frantic and tough to follow, but Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was a geektastic wonderland for Tom. Not sure if either one will make it into our permanent library, but they provided some much needed downtime so we could recover from the hectic holiday weekend.

MATERIALS:

Focal Point (debuts 12.02.10) and Delightful Alpha by One Little Bird; P365 Calendar by ON Designs (retired).

About This Project

A Year of Weekends is an ongoing album project that embodies my desire to stay grounded in the everyday unsung moments that make up the weekends of my life, while also giving me a playground to express myself through design and storytelling – without any pressure to be poignant or a trendsetter. My goal is to always design these pages around products I already own or designed myself, which allows me to revisit some of my favorite kits and products and either use items for the first time or see previously used products in a whole new light. Sometimes the pages will be irreverent, other times they’ll be serious or emotional, but all of them are created in celebration of the extraordinarily ordinary moments that fill the 48 hours of each weekend.

Feel free to join in and post links to your own pages in the comments. Don’t worry about what products you use, all stories are welcome.