Saying good-bye to this blog...

So, I'm obviously not keeping up with this one, and never have. I gave up and started a new blog to record my daily life. If you would like, you can find me at Rockn' Like a Hermit Crab, my new blog. Thank you for stopping by, and I hope to see you at the new one!

Gettin' my scrappin' groove back!

So, I've quit my job and am being a full-time mommy again! Woohoo! However, that means that I can't sit here and scrap all day 'cause I'm in charge of all the housework and food lol! Not a bad deal, IMO, but I'm going to have to figure out how to organize my time so I can get everything taken care of every day... Now that Noah is down for a nap, I'm on here playing. That is so backwards! I need to get in there and put up all my laundry from this weekend and start lunch. Ah well, I'm here now =D

I'm finally easing back into my CT jobs, and to start off with a bang, I put together a CD album for Chris Young of Heavenly Scraps with her GORGEOUS "Splash of Color" kit. Here is a preview - she is giving away a page every day at her BLOG



Have a great day!

Movin' right along

Oh, things are SO much better now! I finally took Noah to the ER/Urgent Care on Sunday. They determined that he was long done with the virus (I kinda figured that), and that the reason he was still getting sick is that his tummy was tender, and when he would nurse or drink something, it would overexpand his little stomach, and that would cause it to all come back out. The doctor wound up putting him on Zofran for the nausea, and an electrolyte solution to rehydrate. Thankfully, because he is still nursing, the dehydration was relatively minor! He still isn't being overly active or eating well, but he is feeling a whole lot better.

On a little different note, it looks like I am going to be quitting my job in the VERY near future!!! Woohoo! It has been quite a stressful experience, and it will be good to be able to stay home with the little ones and let my mind heal. I can see how the past 2 months at the other store have changed me as a person, and that's not a nice feeling. Now, however, we have to be really careful with our money, which means no more buying the gorgeous kits I fall in love with :( LOL! I think I can survive on the many, many gigs of digital scrapbooking stuff I have now in addition to all the amazing freebies that are out there!

Speaking of freebies... I made this for the January color challenge at SAS, and I figured I may as well put it here. Please feel free to download it for your personal use, and send your friends to my blog to get it for themselves! Comments are certainly appreciated, but definitely NOT required lol! I figure if someone downloads my work, then that's a pretty good sign that they appreciate it, and what would REALLY make my day is if you would let me know if you use it in a LO somewhere so I can leave some lovin' for YOU!

Without further adieu, here is A Woodland Walk:



Click here or on image for download.

I will warn you, though - this is my very first attempt at designing anything, so be gentle LOL!

Oh, I am so worn out! It's been a crazy week here - Madeline had a stomach bug on Saturday, then Ellie came down with it Sunday night. Poor kid had never been sick before, and every time she was about to get sick, she started screaming about not feeling good and being in pain. Then, Tuesday, when we were about to go out to dinner, Noah woke up sick. Great. Well, Adron stayed home with him, and Deborah and I went out for dinner with Ellie (Madeline got herself grounded on the way out the door). I woke up at 4 a.m. Thursday morning, sick as can be. Adron took off work yesterday to help me out, thank Heavens! Then, bless him, he woke up this morning feeling icky, and it's been downhill from there. We've all been blessed with it lasting less than 24 hours, except for Noah. His poor little body is looking so fragile right now! He has lost 2 lbs. since last week - and only weighed in at 24 lbs. then. He hasn't been able to keep anything down since Tuesday, and hasn't been interested in anything other than nursing. I would be in bed now if it weren't for us being out of clean towels and lovies for Noah. Sighhhhh.......

On a much more exciting note, I am participating in a bow swap, and the theme is St. Patrick's Day. Here are the bows I made for my partner's two girls. I have so far to go to get to where I'm making the amazing bows - and taking good pics of them LOL!




And even more exciting, here are the bows my partner, Jennifer, made for Ellie - Madeline hasn't been home for me to take pics of hers lol!




These bows are so gorgeous and have inspired me to make a dress for Ellie! I haven't been really inspired to sew since I made Noah's 1st birthday outfits back in November, and I think that was the first thing I had sewn since I discovered digiscrapping back last May!

On a similar note, I found some really pretty royal blue leather the other day, and I am so inspired to make some soft shoes for Noah. He usually wears squeaky shoes, and is developing an intense fascination with mock-crocs (i.e. he can put them on by himself), but he really gets giddy when I put his soft leather shoes on him. I mean, he literally starts dancing around lol! I have a fair amount of leather in neutral colors, but when I saw the Memphis Tiger blue, I couldn't resist! I really want to buy the patterns from www.makethemyourself.com Misty has awesome patterns, and I love supporting WAHMs! I'll be sure to update whenever I get them done...

Two Pet Peeves....

Ok, first and foremost, I swear I think I am going to snap the next time I go to 4shared and see "12th to download, 1st to comment. Thank you from me and the 11 others before me." Are you kidding me? Every time I see one of these comments, it just strikes this chord in me and makes me want to yell! I mean, really, are you making yourself look better by pointing out other people's rudeness? How do you think the designer must feel seeing that you are POINTING OUT how many people DL'd without commenting? Ya know, the numbers are there for everyone to see, but why on earth would you rub it in? And above and beyond that, it is comments like these that I have to seal with day in and day out coming from my 3 year old! "Mommy, Maddy didn't close the drawer!" My inevitable response to these tattlings is "Well then, why don't you go fix it and not worry about what other people are supposed to be doing!" I swear, if there is ever a point where I am making things to give away, and someone leaves a comment like that I will explode! Ha - maybe I should leave a bogus comment as the first one just to nip this in the bud lol!

Whew! That's better! Not that anyone besides me is reading this blog, but I so had to get that off my chest....

And the 2nd part of this rant isn't nearly so impassioned, but SHEESH I really NEED that darn Vector Tube script by Gary Barton! There are so many amazing tubes that I would love to have, but they won't do me any good without this darn script. If I had more of a clue about writing scripts, maybe I could try to figure it out, but I'm just barely getting my feet wet in PSP X2 as it is, so I guess that it'll have to wait for another day.

On the subject of scripts, I managed to make a rudimentary little script to prune the dead space from around my PNGs. I played with it for a while last night and discovered that it really didn't make much of a difference in size on most of what I had, but it definitely made it easier to see the small images that were just swimming in nothingness! However, I was a little surprised by a few of the files I used it on. There were all kinds of random stray pixels scattered around the images, and I had to clean all of that up to fix them. Thank goodness for the modify selection > hole and speck removal tool lol!


Ok, 'nough ranting for now - I have to work tonight and only have about an hour to get anything done before I go!

Grrrrrrfffff! I am so sick! I think I've got the flu, and I know that it is making me very cranky, whiny, and tired! I am in some serious need of retail therapy, it seems, but thankfully I have been pretty good about looking and not buying. I spent an hour at a local scrapbook store this morning, and about 15 minutes at Hancock Fabrics, but didn't buy anything! However, when I went to the grocery store to buy something for tonight's dinner, I walked out with over $100 worth of stuff!

As icky as I'm feeling, it is killing me to get anything done. I did start on cleaning out my craft room the other day, though. I used Nichole's blog as inspiration for getting my room organized, and while I'm still a very, very long way off, I started by storing some of my ribbons like she demonstrates here. It was fun to do, and once I'm done, there will be a huge open spot in the middle of my floor where all my ribbon used to be! I really should take some pictures of the mess just so I can remind myself of how I DON'T want to live!

Trying to get in the habit

You know, I think if I just try to post every day, I'll get in the habit at some point lol! I adore all the amazing blogs that get constant attention from their owners, but I swear I have no idea how they do it!

I am trying to get my life organized right now. My sewing/craft room is a total wreck, and I am determined to get it together. I am really blessed to have a huge bonus room over my garage that is all mine, and after seeing some of the gorgeous craft spaces other people have, I am totally inspired to work on creating my own space! No more stepping over piles of fabric to get to my ironing board, and no more avalanches when I go looking for the particular punch or stamp set I need for a project lol!

Good heavens!

Yeah, it's been a while....

I feel downright guilty for not keeping up with my blog, and I keep telling myself I'll do better, but I still put it off. Let's try this again and see how it goes lol!