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.

Scrappers Zone CT call

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my US readers. In honor of Thanksgiving, I am having a sale at Scrappers Zone. My entire store is 35% off through Sunday. Don't miss out. All of my products are Scrap for Hire friendly.

Studio Style Designs is having a store wide sale. EVERYTHING will be 40% off through the 25th. With all the sales going on, it is hard to chose what to buy. I hope you find something you like among my products. You can find the links to my stores in my side bar.

Now that the business is taken care of, on to the fun stuff. What are you doing for this Thanksgiving holiday? My husbands only sister lives just north of Austin in a HUGE house. We usually go to her house for the holidays, both Thanksgiving and Christmas. The hard part of me today is staying on my weight watchers program. I don't like a lot of the really fattening stuff for Thanksgiving. I don't care for green bean cassarole or the sweet potatoes with brown sugar and marshmallows. Those high calorie/high fat dishes are easy to avoid. The hard part for me is the desserts. I LOVE pumpkin pie. Emily, my SIL, makes wonderful pies. I am going to bring a weight watchers friendly pumpkin pie. It will be crustless and only 2 points per slice (1/8th of a pie). I will also be bringing sweet potatoes roasted in fresh rosemary and olive oil and green beans steamed with dried cranberries. Usually, we bring homemade bread for dinner. We have a bread machine and a few tried and true recipes. Our favorite is parmesan and oregano bread. However, I went to make bread for a church activity and we are missing one of the beaters to our bread machine so I can't make bread. I got on the Westbend website to order the replacement part and I can't find the exact same thing. I need to call Westbend about it. The description says "black beater bar" and what I have in my machine is a white beater (no bar). I don't want to order the wrong thing.

Happy Thanksgiving

Snow in Texas

No, you didn't miss something when you watched the news last night. This is the name of my new kit. Last January, we got 2 days of snow and ice, well, mostly ice. I finally got around to scrappin those pictures (I took about 100) and realized that I did not have one single snow kit. I always skip over the snow kits, even the freebies. I had just started designing (tells you how far behind I am in my scrapping) and decided to make my own kit for my LO. I made the specific things I wanted first, used them and then made the rest. I usually don't like to scrap with my own work. It is easier to make something for a specific page and then use it rather than make a whole kit and then use it. Sorry, I'm rambling again. This kit is now in my stores (see the link on my side bar). All of my kits include a Scrap for Hire terms of use. If you make a LO with my kits, I would love to see them.

Here is a quick page I made with this kit. I hope you enjoy it. The "Snow in Texas" kit will be on sale in my store tomorrow.

Download here

A sale

There is a sale going on at Studio Style Designe. All of my products are 25% off for the next 24 hours. Remember that my products are now S4H friendly. Here is a great chance to get them on sale. Don't miss out. You can find my store here.

A New Haircut and Scrap for hire friendly

That is the name of my new kit. It was a kit I made at the request of someone looking for a kit to scrap her babies first haircut. This doesn't have to be limited to "babies first haircut" though. I just recently got my hair cut and I think I will do a LO with this kit to show off my new "do". I just have to find the time to do it now. You can find this kit at both of my stores, Scrappers Zone and Studio Style Designs.


My second announcement is that I have now made all of my kits Scrap for Hire friendly. All of my kits come with a specific scrap for hire terms of use in a PDF file. I also will not require that you look for an updated TOU when you use my kits. Even if I change my TOU, the TOU that came with your kit is the one you will need to follow. I don't think it is right that a S4H scrapper should have to hunt down updated TOU before they use a kit. That has got to take up a lot of time and I know that time is precious to all of us.

My first CT call

I am having my first CT call. I am pretty easy going and I want this to be fun. I hope that I get get a great team together and we can be like a family. My requirements are easy-2 LO per kit and 1 kit per month. LO should be posted in at least 3 galleries-DST and 2 others of your choice. I am designing at Studio Style Designs and Scrappers Zone. If you are intersted, send me a link to your most complete gallery and a little about yourself to digiheaven_designs at sbcglobal dot net. This is an open ended call. I will close it when I feel I have a good team. I hope to hear from some of you.

A sale on "I Miss Summer"

This is my kit "I Miss Summer". It is going to be on sale the entire month of November. It will be 25% off in both of my stores. It is going to be the kit used for the brag book challenge at both Studio Style Designs and Scrappers Zone. I would love to see some of you head over to one of those forums to participate in this challenge. In the challenge, create 1-2 brag book pages (4x6 inches) and at the end of the month, you get all the other brag book pages. This is a great way to get a full brag book for a Christmas present with the effort of only 1-2 pages. With this kit, you could do a whole book of vacation pictures.

Now that I have done my advertising, here are my weekend plans. We are going camping. This is a cub scout family campout. We love camping and this is going to be a prefect weekend for it. The lows at night have been in the high 50's and the highs have been in the mid 70's. I love this weather. I wish it could be like this all year round. I love this weather.

I hope everyone has a good weekend.

Happy Halloween

I was hoping to have a halloween gift for everyone, but I didn't get a chance. Sorry. I will tell you that you can get an unreleased kit on Saturday at Scrappers Zone for free. We are going to be having hourly happy hour freebies all throughout the day. You will never know what kit is going to be free and you are going to have to look for it. Here is a preview of the kit that I will have for free on Saturday. Head to Scrappers Zone on Saturday if you want this kit for free. It will go into the store after than, although it will be a bigger kit in the store. For those of you that get the kit for free and want the additional papers and elements, I will be making an add-on of all the new stuff I add to the kit. There are also going to be lots of sales in the Scrappers Zone store. I hope to see you all there.

Here is a LO that was done with this kit. I actually made this kit in response to a search someone was doing for a kit to scrap her daughters first haircut. I am pleased with the way it turned out.

I have received some wonderful blessings in the past few weeks that I want to tell everyone about. These blessings confirm to me that I am suppose to be doing this (becoming a designer that is). I posted about getting CS3. I was also gifted a Digiscrapdesigners subscription from my MIL. Last week, I posted at DST looking for some inexpensive or free custome shapes for photoshop. I had several people tell me I should get a subscription to ActionFx. I posted back that I could not afford that because of my health issues and not being able to work and paying a lot of money out in medical bills. I wasn't looking for a hand out, but just explaining why I couldn't get the subscription. I got a private message from a designer gifting me some of her png shapes. There were LOTS of them. I am so grateful for her generosity. This weekend, I got 2 gift subscriptions to Action Fx. They are both 2 month subscriptions. I was blown away and overwhelmed by these acts of generosity. I emailed Al, the owner of Action Fx and explained to him that I had 2 subscriptions going at the same time. I requested that they be active one after another so I had 4 months. He emailed me back and said that he gave me a one year subscrption since the price was close to t he one year subscription. I am just so filled with gratitude for all those that have been so generous to me. I am also grateful to my Father in Heaven for sending these people into my life.

A big sale

We are having a big sale at Studio Style Design. This sale will take place the 30th of every month. Select things will be 30% off. Today, my entire store is 30% off. This will not be the case every month. Some months, I will only put select things on sale.

Things have been crazy busy around my house for the past week. Now that I am finally well, we took Andrew out for his birthday dinner last night. His birthday was September 29th. We took him to Gatti Town. We take him there every year for his birthday. His favorite food is pizza, and he loves to play video games, so Gatti Town is perfect for him. The hardest part was that the doctor wants him to lose a little bit of weight. He is the only one of my kids that isnt' super skinny. He needs to lose 13 pounds. He had to limit himself on the amount of pizza and eat a bunch of vegetables. The doctor said he can't have soda at all. I allowed him to have 1 soda last night since it was his birthday celebration. We don't drink a lot of soda anyway.

Today, we are painting pumpkins. We bought a few pumpkins at Sweet Berry Farms that we wanted to paint. They are small pumpkins, a little bigger than a softball. Tomorrow, we are going to carve our other 2 pumpkins. We have found in previous years that they start to mold in about 24 hours, so we usually carve them on Halloween day, or sometimes the day before.

TGIF

It's Friday. I have a freebie for you today. Here are some metal hearts I made just messing around. I thought they turned out pretty good. I love putting hearts on things. Even on a little boy page, they show the love you have for that person. I hope you all find a use for these.

download here

Even though it is Friday, it really isn't any different from any other day of the week. We have no big plans for the weekend. My husband is going to work for a few hours on Saturday. We will probably watch the UT football game, or at least part of it. Andrew is going to a friends house over the weekend. The boys have their yearly program for primary at church on Sunday. We are having the missionaries for dinner on Sunday. There is our entire weekend in a nutshell.

I have to finish up the boys Halloween costumes this weekend too. Jeremy is going to be Harry Potter. We found a great costume, but it is too big for him to I have to hem it up. Andrew is som sort of Pokemon. I have to sew some green balls to the back of the costume and sew a red sash.

I hope everyone has a great weekend.

A Great Weekend

This weekend, we did a family trip to Sweet Berry Farms. It is about an hour outside of Austin. They have a pumpkin patch this time of year. In March, you can go out there for strawberry picking and you can pick blackberries in May/June. The kids loved it. We did a hayride, the kids and the husbands did a giant maze that was cut into a corn field. We made our own scarecrow. I need to go get a pole today to put it up in the front yard. They had some great pumpkins out there. They are way better than at the grocery store. The kids bought small pumpkins and they are going to paint them today during school time. We did this outing as a celebration of my daughter turning 15. Her 2 best friends came out with us and her cousins and her aunt. She is really close with Aashlie who is 13 (her cousin). My best friend met us out there and they all did the maze together. I didnt' do the maze though. I have some mobility problems and I wasnt' sure what it was going to be like in the maze. I got lots of great pictures while we were there. I took 118 pictures in 5 hours. Niether my best friend or my SIL brought a camera, so I was the group photographer. It was so nice to have a family outing like that. It has been a long time since we have had a day like that.

Here are some LO I did yesterday of our trip. These first ones are done with Kim Cameron's kit Pumpkin Juice. It is a perfect kit for those pumpkin pictures. It is so full of elements that you can use it on a lot of LO.

This is my family. From left to right, we have Andrew, Rachael, Jeremy, Patricia and Stan.

These are my daughters favorite cousins and her best friends. From left to right, there is Jessica, Aashlie (cousins), Rachael (my daughter), Amira and Megan (DD BFF).

This is my SIL and her kids. From left to right, there is Aashlie, Travis, Margie, Brandon, Megan and Jessica.

Here is a LO I did with my own Halloween kit. It is called Going Batty. My kids think some of the elements look like the bat symbol from Batman . You can get the kit at my stores: Studio Style Designs and Scrappers Zone.

I have decided I don't really like to scrap with my own designs. After I finish the kit, I am kind of tired of seeing it and I don't want to look at it again. Maybe if I was doing a LO 6 months after I made the kit it would be better. I just finished the kit last week though.

Dropping out

I decided last night to drop out of the contest. I was getting so stress out by it. I was hating everything I was designing for it, I wasn't sleeping and I was getting grumpy with my family. We got the next theme and I almost cried when I saw it. I thought and thought about what I was going to do with the theme and finally came up with a subject that I liked. Through a conversation that took place on the private contestants forum, it came out that my subject would not be accepted for the theme. I couldnt' bare the thought of having to do a kit with a theme I didnt' like. It was hard enough last week doing a color palatte I didn't like. I got into designing because I love doing it. I was not loving it over the past week and I was really questioning my decision to become a designer. I feel such a huge relief now that I have dropped out. It was a hard decision for me to make. I am not a quitter and I usually finish what I start. I'm glad I make the decision to drop out though. I am trying to explain all this with out giving away the contest theme, so I hope it all made sense.



I don't know if they are going to delete my kit from the contest forum, so I thought I would post it here so if you still wanted to get it, you could.

Get it here

I did decide that I was going to continue making the kit that I was going to use for the contest. I love the subject I chose. I will post a preview of it when I am done, as well as a link to where you can buy it.

My daughter Rachael turns 15 today. Time sure flies. She is excited to be learning to drive this year. I'm not, but that's ok. She is a joy to have in my life and I can't imagine life without her in it.

Round 2 uncovered

Here is my round 2 kit for the design contest at Just for the Scrap of It. Our theme was little boys age 3-7. My son is 5, so perfect. He loves Legos, so I chose that as my theme for this kit. My daughter initially suggested I do cars. Jeremy loves the movie Cars, and he loves Hotwheel cars. I am so glad I didn't do cars. A lot of the women did a car type theme. The site owners has asked that we link everyone to our gallery on JFTSOI rather than straight to the 4shared link. Later in the week, after the voting is done, I will put up the 4shared link. I would love everyone that likes this kit to register at the site so you can vote for me on Tuesday and Wednesday. Leave me some love it you like the kit.

get it here

I will put up a reminder tomorrow for everyone to go vote.

Voting results and a freebie

I made some pretty chrome frames for everyone this week. I hope you enjoy them.

get them here

Now for Round 1 voting results. After torturing us for almost 2 days while the votes rolled in, they told us that everyone will be moving onto the next round. This was a decision they made before the contest even started. They wanted the first round to be a trial run only, but they didn't want us to know because they wanted us to try our best. I am now hard at work on my next kit. The theme is a little bit harder this time. I have a great idea for it that I think lots of people will like. I am not thrilled about the color palatte though. I like some of the colors, but 2 of the colors in it I don't care for. I guess that is part of what makes it challenging.

Studio Style Designs is having a Grand Re-Opening tomorrow. Everything will be 25% off. There will be lots of freebies. This is my second store and I am trying really hard to get it stocked before tomorrow. I will be uploading things all afternoon. I hope to see everyone there.

Voting has started

Voting has started in the "So...You think you can design" contest. I don't think I am going to be able to go to the forum until voting is over. It is making me have butterflies in my stomach. Please go over to the forum and vote. My user name on there is poppymom. If you like my work, please vote for me. Here is the link to the voting forum .

The promised freebie

Here is the freebie I promised you. This is a mini kit I made from my kit Yummy Yummy. You can get it at my store if you like it and want the whole thing. My store is here .

Get it here

Voting for "So..You Think you can Design" contest at Just for the Scrap of It starts on the 9th. If you haven't signed up at the forum, please do so. There are some great kits available and they all coordinate together. You can find the round 1 gallery here .

Photoshop CS3

I have Photoshop Element 5.0. I love this program. It is a great scrapping program. I can do a lot of my designs with it too. For my birthday, I got a subscription for DigiScrapDesigners . This site does not do specific designing tutorials for photoshop Elements. They are all for the full Photoshop. Some of the tutorials I could not figure out an alternative in Elements. For example, to put a selvege on a ribbon, the instructions say to go to the "stroke" feature in the layer menu. Elements doesn't give you that option. A friend of mine is letting me borrow CS2 while his computer is down.

This does have a point, I promise. I was telling my mom that I want to save the profits from my sales to get my own copy of CS2 or CS3. On Thursday, she offered to buy it for me until I told her it was $650. Yesterday, she called me and told me she was going to buy me the program I wanted. She said that my step dad had offered the money he had in savings for me to get this program. So, last night, I ordered CS3 from Adobe. I am so excited. I am going to continue using my Elements to scrap with though until I get used to the other program. I think it will be a while.

Stan (DH) and I were talking about this last night. Everything is just falling in my lap. I am meant to be a designer. I don't know that I am ever going to be rolling in dough from it, but I hope that I can eventually make enough to contribute a little to the house hold income. I don't know if I will ever go back to being a nurse. I don't know what is going to happen with my neurological problems, but I can tell you they aren't getting better. I also don't want to live on disability income. I am not that kind of a person. I am independent and I want to make my own way. I also don't want to fight for it like so many people have to. If I ever get to the point that I can't design or do anything else to bring in income, then maybe it is time for me to look into disabilty. For now, it isn't for me.

Now for some CT news. Here is a LO I did with Kim Cameron's kit Pumpkin Juice. The name is a link to the kit in the store. This kit is so cute. I love all the pumpkins in it. I wish I knew where there was a pumpkin patch around here. This kit would be great for those pumpkin patch pictures. I am going to have to google search pumpkin patches to see if there are any in the Austin area.

Here is the kit. Isn't it great?

My other CT news is sad. I got an email from Landi LeRoux telling me she was retiring from designing. I love her designs and will miss being able to CT for her. She wants to spend more time with her family. I can definitely understand that. I wish her the best of luck. She promised she was going to stay active at Snap and Scrap. I am really glad for that.

Now, I know that I promised a freebie the other day for my Yummy Yummy kit. I haven't forgotten. I have been busy trying to get my store stocked. Plus, yesterday, I finally felt better so we ran some errands. It was nice to get out of the house again. I have been cooped up for weeks. I am going to get the freebie ready today and try to put it up tomorrow. Will you forgive me?

Yummy Yummy and a freebie

I have a new kit that I just put in my store. I love bright colors and a lot of my LO will have bright colors in them. I designed this kit with the thought of making a recipe book. It is a very full kit with lots of things to make your recipe LO. It can be found in my store at Scrappers Zone. Check back later and I will have a mini kit from this kit.

For now, I do have a special treat for you. I am getting ready to put a kit in the store entitled "I Miss Summer". This kit will be perfect for scrapping all those pictures you took during your summer vacation. I made a mini kit from this kit and I have that for you today.

get it here

I hope you enjoy this kit. I would love to see any LO you do with my work. Also, if anyone has any wishes, let me know. I am still a new designer and really want to know what people want.

Alta

Alta is my grandmother's name. She is 94 years old. She was my inspiration for the first challenge in the So You Think You Can Design contest at JFTSOI. Our theme was heritage. I can't help but think of my grandmother when I think of heritage. My grandmother loves to spend time in her flower garden. She loves to talk about her flowers and take care of them. Now you know why there are flowers in my heritage kit. Check back here later as I plan to offer an add on pack for this kit. I don't want to do it until after the first round is over as I don't want anyone to think I am buying votes (against the rules, plus unethical). I would appreciate if any of you that download the kit would go to the website and vote on the 9th and 10th. You don't have to vote for me. Vote for the person you think deserves it most. There are close to 30 of us in this contest. We are all using the same theme and color palatte. That is going to be one massive kit when they are all put together. Definitely worth a look. If you go to the gallery for round 1, you can find the links to the kits that have been uploaded so far. We have until the 7th to upload them, so keep checking back for more enteries.

get it here

I announced in my last post that I was going to be a new designer at Studio Style Designs. I got notification this morning that I have been accepted as a designer at Scrappers Zone. I have gone through close to 15 rejections. Each time, I tried to improve my work and find resources to learn new techniques. I guess it has paid off. I'll be putting link to my stores up as soon as I get products in them.

Short and sweet

The design contest has started at Just For the Scrap of It. We were given our colors and our theme. The theme is heritage. The colors are beautiful. I am still working on mine, but hope to have it finished by Thursday so I can get some LO done. I am getting behind in my CT duties due to the illness I am still recovering from and the contest. I'll post here when I am done.

I have some BIG news too. I am going to be one of the new designers at Studio Style Designs. I CT for Aimee and she sells over there. She told me they were looking for designers and that I should put in an application. Vickie looked at my work and told me the same day that I was in. I am so excited. The store is down for maintainence right now, so I don't have any kits there yet. I'll let you all know when the store is open.

I am still battling a migraine, so I am going to go lay down and watch "The Biggest Loser". I hope everyone has a good day.

Scrappin' Pink LO

Here are a few LO done with my Scrappin' Pink kit. They were all done with special women in mind.


This is my LO of my MIL. She is fighting breast cancer for the second time. She is a stronge and amazing women.

This one was done my Denise at Make It Scrappy. This is a friend of hers that was diagnosed earlier this year.

This one was done by alicia+jess at Make it Scrappy. I thought it was cool the way she used the velvet paper as if it were a picture.

If any one has a LO of a special person fighting this horrible disease, I would love to see it.

Happy Birthday Andrew

My son Andrew is 10 today. I can't believe he is already 10. His sister teased him about being "double digits" now. We are not having a birthday party for him I only let my kids have a party every other year. This year, it is his sister's turn to have a party. Rachael and Andrew's birthdays are only 2 weeks apart. It is too much for me to throw them both a party every year. That is why there is the every other year rule. We were planning to take him to Gatti town and let one friend come. That has been put on hold though. I went back to the doctor yesterday and I have a new area of pneumonia and only minimal improvement in the old pneumonia. I am on a second round of antibiotics now. Once I am feeling human again, we will take him to Gatti Town (for those of you who don't live in the south, Gatti Town is a pizza place with a game room attached. You collect tickets to earn overly priced prizes). We are going to grandma's house this evening to eat pizza and cake and ice cream. He already opened his presents. His grandma and great grandma got him a Creative Zen 2G MP3 player. He is so excited about that. We got him a super pack of Pokemon cards, a carrier for his Zen and a Wario, Master of Disguise game for is Nintendo DS. He has been suspecting all week that he was getting an MP3 player. He thought he was going to get an iPod though. My mom sent him an iTunes card with his birthday card. It is going to be a pain in the behind to use though. The Zen won't play MP4a and that is the format that iTunes uses. We are going to have to burn the songs to an audio disc then rip it again in a format that the Zen uses. I have to do the same thing when I buy music off the Walmart website for my daughter. She has an iPod and it can't use WMAs. These music people can be such a pain in the behind. I wish they would allow you to pick the format you want to use so you can use music from online store on any device.

Scrappin' Pink

This weekend is Scrappin' Pink. Many of the scrapbooking shops around the country are holding crops. All the proceedes go to the Susan B Komen Foundation. You can find out more information here- http://www.scrappink.com/ . My MIL has breast cancer. She was first diagnosed 10 years ago. She had a mastectomy and did some chemo and was declared cancer free. Last March, the cancer returned as a mass in her chest wall and a few tumors in her lung. She has gone through radiation and chemo and was once again declared cancer free. That only lasted a short time. She is now on oral chemo. My MIL is the strongest woman I know. She is such an inspiration to me. She never complaines, even when she feels horrible. She has had a lot of complications from the cancer and the chemo. I won't be able to attend any of the crops this weekend. I don't own a laptop, plus I am still battling pneumonia. I wanted to make this mini kit in honor of my MIL. If you are able, please attend one of the crops, or make a donation to the Susan B Komen Foundation. I hope you enjoy the kit.

get it here

Just for the Fall of It

I am doing a design contest at Just for the Scrap of It. Those of us that are doing the contest decided we wanted to do a collaborative kit before the contest starts. We were suppose to do mini kits, but I think most of us went a little overboard. If you follow all the links below my kit, you will end up with a huge fall kit.

Get it here

Here are the other blogs were you can get the other parts of this super, mega kit.

AmandaG - http://www.myscrapblog-amanda.blogspot.com/

Andrea - http://boyervillescraps.wordpress.com/

Collie- http://www.coliescorner.blogspot.com/

Fayth - http://apieceofscrap.blogspot.com/

JaydensMama - http://mommyofjayden.blogspot.com/

MutChip - http://grandmasscrap2.blogspot.com/

RoseMcDigital - http://rosemcdigiscrap.blogspot.com/

If you download all the "mini" kits, you will have over 75 papers and over 100 elements. I also have 2 desktop QP in mine. There are others that put surprises in theirs too. Please leave some love if you download. If you use any of our kits for a LO, please leave a link so we can admire your work and leave you some love. Also, some of these sites may not have their kit up until tomorrow.

I'm still alive

I don't have a lot to say today, but I wanted to post to say that I am still alive. I am still sick though. This pneumonia is really kicking my behind.

I have been working a lot on my designing. I will have a freebie tomorrow for everyone, as well as links to other kits that will coordinate with mine. I am doing a design contest at Just For the Scrap of It that will start in October. A bunch of us are doing a collaborative fall kit as a way to practice for the contest. I need to finish mine up today. I always get a little carried away when I make kits. This was suppose to be a mini kit, but it isn't very mini. From the look of it, none of us made mini kits. So, if you need fall related scrapping kits, check back tomorrow.

I'm off to finish my kit and rest some. I have been so tired lately. It is gett ing very old..

It's about time

I can't believe that it has been almost 2 weeks since I last posted here. I have been working on my designing a lot over the past 2 weeks. I have put in 2 design applications and will be doing the design contest at Just for the Scrap of It. I am so nervous already. I am not a competative person at all. I still can't believe I signed up for this. It should be fun though. I am also having a lot of fun doing LO for my CT.

Speaking of CT, I have a lot of updating to do on my CTs. This is a new kit that Kim Cameron has available in her store at Make It Scrappy. This is called Dreaming of Tuscany. The papers in it are beautiful. It is definitely a grown up kit. I have so many kiddy kits that I am really going to have to ponder how to use this. I have some great old pictures that should go well with this kit. It is on sale right now also.

Gina has opened a store on her blog site while she waits for Purple Paper Flowers to open up. Gina has a lot of really cute kits. Right now, she has a girl and boy Monkey kit available. They are really cute. You can find a link to her blog on my side bar.

Landi has this new kit coming out in her store soon. I think she was going to have it available on Friday. It is sooooo pretty. I have so many new CT kits that I don't even know where to start.

Here is a little update on what is going on around the Hodge household. I finally recovered from my surgery. Unfortunately, I also came down with a cold. I finally went to the doctor after I had fever for 5 days. I have a right, lower lobe pneumonia. It is huge. I went back to the doctor today for a follow up since I am not doing any better. I had to get a shot of rocephin (an antibiotic). She considered putting me in the hospital today because my oxygen level was slightly on the low side. I begger her not to so she is giving me one more day. If I am no better tomorrow, I will probably be off to the hospital. I am praying that the antibiotics help . I have to go back in tomorrow for another shot of antibiotic tomorrow if I am doing better. We were suppose to have a surprise party for my neice here on Saturday. She is turning 13. She is officially a teenager. We are having to reroute the party somewhere else now. I was going to try to have it here and just stay in my room the whole time but my doctor said "absolutely not". She wants me to chill and do nothing. I am even having a hard time scrapping. I just can't seem to concentrate and I find myself nodding off all the time.

Rachael has better news that I do. First, a little history. Rachael was a competative dancer from the time she was 4 until she was 12. We changed studios and got out of the competitions. Before we changed, Rachael was on pointe. The new studio didn't allow students to be on pointe until they were 14. Rachael didn't do ballet last year because they moved her class to Saturday. Now for the good news. Rachael's teacher said she is ready to go back on pointe. She is so excited. She loved pointe. She loves ballet. The bad news for me is that I have to go buy some new pointe shoes. She outgrew her old ones and they had only been worn for a month. Her pointe shoes are expensive, even more so than other girls in her glass. Rachael has a very strong arch and so she started off pointe in a hard shank. That makes the shoes more expensive. Rachael walked on her tip toes for the first 6 years of her life which is why her arches are so strong. I am so excited for her. She has wanted this for a while.

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