Baby Conner

How was your Christmas? We had a wonderful Christmas around here. I havent' even had a chance to make any LO of our celebration. I took close to 200 pictures though, so I will be scrapping christmas for quite a while. My kids were totally spoiled. They got most of what they asked for. Jeremy got an Optimus Prime mask with a voice morpher in it. I have a funny video of him singing Christmas songs as Optimus Prime. I will post it here if I can ever figure out how to put up video. I have only seen people put up Utube videos.

It seems that we can't manage an New Years celebration without someone being sick. This "tradition" started 3 years ago when we all had the flu over New Years. Last year, Rachael and Andrew both had strept throat and Rachael had pneumonia on top of that. On Friday, Jeremy started running a fever. He has had a cough for a month. He had a check up with his pedi on Thursday and he was totally healthy. She said his cough was probably allergies as his lungs were clear. Friday is when the fever started. Last night, he was up to 104.6. His only symptom is this cough. His lungs are still clear, so it is probably viral. He had a flu shot, so it isn't the nasty flu. He has layed on the couch and watched TV for 2 days straight. He doesn't feel like doing anything.

I have a wonderful woman on my CT. She is known on the web as Nanna Susie. She makes wonderful LO. Last month, she welcomed a new grandson into her family. His name is Conner. In honor of Conner (haha), I made this kit. She send me a picture of his nursery set and I matched it to that. I am really pleased with how it turned out. I hope you enjoy it. I will be in my stores at Scrappers Zone and Studio Style Designs.

I made a freebie to go with this kit. The freebie isn't as baby oriented as the original kit. It is gender neutral and can be used for just about anything. I hope you enjoy this kit.

Download here

I have slowly had CT application trickly in. I have accepted everyone that has requested to be on my team. I have some wonderful team members so far. I have Angie , Nanna Susie, and Robin . Angie and Robin are new in the last few weeks and Nanna Susie was my first CT member. I really look forward to seeing what these amazing scrappers come up with. It is so cool as a designer to see people using your work to scrap their lives. I am still so new and it still thrills me to see it. I hope I never lose that thrill as I design longer and longer.

I hope everyone has a wonderful New Years holiday. Be safe. Don't drink and drive. We are going to be staying home, especially since I have a sick little one. I keep waiting for the rest of us to get it.

A big sale

I am having a big sale in both of my stores. All of my products are 50% off until the 28th. This includes my designers overlays. All of my products are scrap for hire friendly. Don't miss out. You can find my products at Scrappers Zone and Studio Style Designs.

I also have a new product in my stores. This is called Old Fashion Christmas. My inspiration was my memories of Santa and decorating the Christmas tree at Christmas. It is a small kit. With the sale this week, you can get it for $1.88. That is a steal!! Don't miss out.

Now for some general updates. Jeremy is almost 6 now. His birthday is in 2 weeks. He is so excited about his birthday coming. We aren't having a birthday party for him this year. I have tried to explain that to him, but he doesn't get it. I only let my kids have a birthday party every other year. I started this because Rachael and Andrew's birthdays are only 2 weeks apart. It is too hard having a party for each of them every year, so Andrew gets one one year, and Rachael gets one the next year.

Jeremy is also having a hard time with my healthy being bad. He has melt downs like he did when he was 2. He doesn't want to sleep at night and he is really clingy. He cries about everything. He has had problems with his hips in the past so I had them checked out and they are doing fine. I am going to take him into the pediatrician next week to have a physical to make sure there isn't a physical cause to all of this and to talk about how to best handle his behaviour problems.

Andrew is having his own set of problems. He picks on Jeremy constantly. He has gone beyond what a normal brother will do. With Jeremy being more sensitive lately, it has been unbearable. I finally threatened Andrew that he will lose Christmas presents if he can't be nice to Jeremy. He lost one for one day this week. He had to be extra nice to Jeremy to earn it back. He did. He has been better the rest of the week. I hope it lasts, but I won't hold my breath.

Rachael is a typical teenage girl. She is fickle in love right now. She will admit it too. She has had a big crush on Andy, a guy at church for the past 6 months. They talk on the phone all the time. They can't date because Rachael isn't allowed to date until she is 16. Recently, Rachael and Andy went to a homeschooling teen leadership thing in San Antonio. She got to see a friend of hers that she hasn't seen in over a year. He happens to be a guy and he likes Rachael A LOT. Rachael just wants to be friends though. Andy saw the way Preston and Rachael were together and got really jealous. He has been really jealous before this also. Rachael was not impressed, so she told Andy is was back to being friends. Now she likes Preston again (she liked him over a year ago). They talk on the phone a lot. I am so glad we have unlimited long distance with Cingular and lots of roll over minutes. Rachael is pretty good about watching her minutes on the cell phone. She knows if she ever goes over on her minutes, she will lose her cell phone. You might as well cut off her hand as take her phone away. Last month, she used 2640 minutes. Only 90 of them were part of our minutes. All the rest of them were either mobil to mobil or night and weekend. It really helps that all of her best friends have Cingular.

My MIL is helping us finish converting our garage into a family room for our Christmas present. All of the dry wall is up and most of the mudding has been done. We are going to be texturing the wall and painting over the next week. Stan will have every day but Friday off next week so he and his brother will work on the room some more. I am going to let Rachael paint large spots on the walls. I want the walls a green color, with lighter and darker green spots and maybe some cream spots. She wants to have free reign in there, but I want her to run her designs by me first before she starts painting. She can get some really wild ideas.

Don't forget about the brag book challenge at Scrappers Zone. I think I am the only one that has made any brag book pages. I hope to see more contributions so we can exchange pages. It is so much more fun to exchange pages when there are more pages.

I don't know if I will get to post again before Christmas. If I don't, then I hope you all have a merry Christmas.

Check out my Slide Show!

New product and a sale at Studio Style Designs

I am having a sale on all of my new products at Studio Style Designs. I decided this morning that I was going to put everything in my store in sale. I am selling all products for $2.00 each. some of these kits are huge. You can go to my store and find these items.

I know it is hard to see the preview on this one. It is a nativity set kit. It is hard to find kits that center around the birth of Christ. I hope you enjoy this one.

My overlays are commercial and personal use overlays. They add wonderful textures to any paper you have.

I've been tagged

I have been tagged by Scrappy Cats. I have to answer all of these Christmas questions. They are prett easy. Now I have to think of who I am going to tag. I think I am going to tag Rose McDigital , Corrine and Aimee.

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?
wrapping paper. My kids love to rip open the paper and I love to see them rip it open. No gift bags here.

2. Real or Artificial tree?artificial –we are all allergic to most Christmas trees.

3. When do you put up the tree?the day after Thanksgiving. When I was growing up, we always put it up right after Thanksgiving dinner. When I got married, we went to the IL for dinner and never had time to put it up on Thanksgiving.

4. When do you take the tree down? On New years. This is not set in stone though

5. Do you like Eggnog?yes, I love it, but it has way too many calories. Not weight watchers friendly

6. Favorite Gift you received as a child?A doll called My Friend Mandy. I loved that doll

7. Do you have a nativity scene? We have several

8. Hardest person to buy for? My BIL, Frank. I have been so glad that we exchange names now. I haven't had to shop for Frank since we started exchanging names.

9. Easiest person to buy for? My kids. They love almost anything and are always happy with what they get

10. Worst Christmas gift ever received? My first Christmas with my husband he bought me a see through teddy. I hate those. I prefer to leave a little to the imagination.

Multiple Sclerosis

After a year of mysterious neurological problems, I have finally been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. I am not shocked or surpised or upset. I have felt like this is what I have had for months. I am so relieved to finally have an answer. Now, I can start treatment to avoid further damage from this unpredictable disease. She is also going to put me on some medication to help with the fatigue. She wants to wait until I have been on the Avonex so she knows how I am going to tolerate it before adding a new medication. I am looking forward to the Provigil for the fatigue. It will help me so much to be able to have a little more energy to do things.

I am having an early Christmas sale at Scrappers Zone. Everything in my store will be 30% off all weekend. The sale will end Sunday night at midnight. I will be releasing a new kit later today. It is a nativity kit called "The First Christmas". I was hoping to have it finished for the beginning of this sale, but things have been busy with my kids extracurricular activities this week so I didn't have much designing time. I will post a new blog entry when I release my kit.

Some CT LO and a freebie

Here are a few layouts from CT members. This first one is from Lois. She is on the Studio Style Designs creative team and not on my individual creative team. She used my kit "Snow in Texas" for this layout. I love the way it turned out. She is also from Texas, but a different area. She is from Alvin, Texas. It snows there even less than it does in Austin. She made a few other layouts that I will feature at a different time.

This layout was done by Clara. She is on my newly created CT. I love her layouts. This one is absolutely adorable. If I remember right, this is her grown son when h e was getting his first haircut.


Now for the promised freebie. It has been a long time since I put a freebie on my blog. I will try not to go so long without a freebie next time. This is the "rejects" from my latest kit, Pretty Poinsettia. I decided that they weren't poinsettia enough for this kit. They are nice Christmas papers and elements, but not poinsettia enough. That is good for you because that means you get it as a freebie. Please remember to leave some love if you download this freebie. Also, please do not share my 4shared link. Please send them to my blog. If you do a LO with this kit, I would love to see it.

download here

Now for a quick update on Lucky. He is doing much better. We got home from my MIL yesterday and he had eaten all of the canned food we had left out for him. His temperature was down to normal. He has been eating well today and is much perkier. He still isn't moving around very much. He mostly uses his front claws to drag himself.

My poor cats

This has been a long week for my cats. On Sunday, one of my cats, Friskie, started having trouble breathing. We rushed him to the emergency vet. He was in severe respiratory distress. They put him in an oxygen tank and let him calm down. They did a chest x-ray and he had a pneumothorax. A pneumothorax is a small hole in the lung that allows air to enter the plueral space . The air in the pleural space pushes the lung and the heart up. The air had also leaked into his abdominal cavity. The vet said they could put him on a ventilator and put a chest tube in, but he only had a grim chance of survival. We decided to let him go. He was only 2 1/2 years old. It was really hard on our family to lose him. We had a funeral for him in the back yard.

Yesterday, Lucky came in limping with a big laceration to the inside of his right ankle. We cleaned the wound and dressed it but he wouldn't bear any weight on his leg. We took him to the vet. They didn't think it was broken. They numbed the area and cleaned it out really good. They sent him home with pain killers and antibiotics. I have to take his temperature twice a day and give him his medication. Today, his temperature was right at the limit the vet set, 103. He wouldn't eat anything at all. We took him back into the vet and they said his wound looked better. By that time, his temperature was 103.8. They gave him a cortisone shot and a shot of vitamin B12 to stimulate his appetite. Our new temperature limit is 104. They sent me home with a few syringes with the skinny top cut off. I have to fill the syringe with canned cat food and force feed him until he starts eating on his own. He is NOT happy with me right now. Our goal is to give him 20 syringe fulls per day until he is eating on his own. I hope he starts eating really soon. Lucky is my baby. He sits in my lap all the time and snuggles up to me. It is hard to see him like this.

We have lost 3 cats this year. Kiki died in April of old age. She was 17 years old. Prissy, our mamma cat, went missing in June. We have looked for her, put up signs and checked the animal shelter almost daily. Now we lost Friskie on Sunday. I am praying we don't add Lucky to that list. I'm sure he will be fine but he sure has me worried.

I am going to try to blog about more cheerful stuff tomorrow or Monday. I have some CT layouts I want to put up here, but I am blogging at my MIL so I don't have access to my pictures. I will have a new kit out within the next few days. It is called Pretty Poinsettia. I will have some freebies of papers that didn't make it into the kit when I release the kit. I will have 2 other Christmas kits coming also. I am not sure if they will be full kits, or just element kits. They may even be mini kits. I guess it will be a surprise.

I want to congratulate Clara, one of my CT members on her new grandson, Matthew Connor. I will be making a kit for little Matthew that will match his nursery. I will get that done once my Pretty Poinsettia kit is in the store.

I hope everyone has a good weekend.