But I’ve been busy.  I’ve installed a couple of carts, worked on a couple of kits, had homework and been busy with stuff for DH.  I’m sitting here typing on my new new laptop that came with the program I’m in for school.  It’s a Dell, not as big as my Toshiba and the screen isn’t as pretty, but it definitely gets the job done.  They were kind enough to give us a Latitude which isn’t the bottom of the line and it does have 1 GB of memory, so I should even be able to scrap on it.  I haven’t decided if I’m selling the Toshiba or keeping it.  It’s possible that DH might get his company to buy it from me, we’ll see.

What’s going on in digiworld?  I’ve seen a couple of new shops open, even worked on a couple.  Tomorrow the new DSD Megakit comes out and it is FAB!  Here’s a peek for you:

Awesome, huh?  I also worked on a collaborative kit with Amber Clegg of Ams Digi Scraps and it will be available tomorrow as well.  Today, I hope to work on an exclusive for ACOT with a swatch I got for Bree…and I’m the DSD Diva of the Month next month, so I have to get my sampler done for that as well.  Wow, I’d better get busy, huh?

Okay, then, I’m off to do some work…enjoy your Sunday!

This is for layout #2 of the CK Top Ten Fresh Faces Challenge…

The floral paper is from Shabby Princess Spring Breeze, the background paper is from me, the paper strip and stitching are also from SP, the little flowers are from Dani Mogstad.

Now, I really, really gotta shower and get these kids outside!  We’ve had a great week, but they’ve been inside all morning and I can so tell they need to get outside!  Enjoy your day!

Here’s the layout I did for Bree’s 2 Inspired Divas Challenge this week:

I hope to work a bit on my new challenge later as well as do the next layout for the CK Top Ten Fresh Faces challenge (see blinkie in my sidebar), but now I think it’s time to shower and get my day started.

Hope you enjoy yours!

It’s Bree’s week and she’s got a rockin’ sketch for us:

Check it out!  I think I’ll refill my coffee and see what I can do with it…

Don’t forget the sale!  There’s some great stuff there at some great prices!

I am trying to do a graphic and update my shop front page, but Photoshop doesn’t want to cooperate. Anyway, I just put up an “Oldies but Goodies” sale in my shop…most of my older kits are 50% off…this includes these favorites:

My host just told me we’ll be down for a bit this morning for some server maintenance, so if you have trouble, please check back! I’m also trying to get my American Child kit back up in the shop, but I have to re-upload the zip, so it may be a bit. Anyway, go check out the awesome prices on these kits! Click on any of the images to go to that item in the shop or here to view the whole sale category!

Just want to say that since I have no time to create these days, I am volunteering my services as a scrapper to anyone who needs a DT member.  Heck, if you’re a designer, I’m even open to trading kits!  Just give me something to scrap with!!  I’m on Ashley Olson’s team and she rocks and I’ve been using her stuff alot lately and I am an honorary member of Kimberly Giarrusso’s team since I helped with her shop, Traci Sims is also kind enough to help support my habit, but I just hate asking for kits!  I feel like a mooch, LOL!  Well, so maybe I am, but since I’m not designing, I’m not exactly raking in the cash, LOL, so you do what you have to to support your habit, right?

Well, meanwhile, here’s yet another with a kit off of the Express Yourself CD and part of an ongoing challenge that I am putting together right now…look for more info soon!

Isn’t she beautiful?  Okay, gotta run…just wanted to ummm, shamelessly beg for some new material, LOL!

Have a great night…maybe I’ll actually design something later !  I have a collaborative kit coming soon and I’m excited about it so maybe it’ll get me inspired!  Anyway, I’m off…see you tomorrow when I tell more about my new ongoing challenge!

Been a couple of days, so I thought I’d post.  We’ve had a busy weekend and week so far, but Monday is always my busy day because that’s school night.  I have to admit, though, school is fun.  I’m in a group of 12 and so far, learning very basic stuff that I pretty much already know.  It’s nice to have a grown up night with grown ups and discuss something besides TV, toys, books, games, snacks and dress up clothes, LOL.  We meet from 6 to 10 PM so we get a dinner break and get to chat a bit during that, so I really am enjoying it.  I think that this was definitely the right decision for me as far as school goes and am very happy that I decided to go this route.

We are so very lucky to live where we live.  We have a creek that borders our property and yesterday, the babes and I walked down there and played for a bit and they had a ball.  Here’s a few pics:

There was a tragedy…the yellow and red boat got lost.  He left it in the water when he came to eat lunch and it floated away.  Bummer.  They’ve had that since their first birthday.  So, after class last night, I went to Walmart to find a new one, but there were no boats to be found.  I did get them new “creekin” shoes and the swimsuits with the built in floaties, so the trip wasn’t a total bust.  Oh, and speaking of lunch, well, as is my kiddos typical style, one likes potato chips, one likes doritos, so we took both.  But, Tiki, my siberian husky, found the potato chips while we were in the water and had himself a snack…the whole dang bag!  Oh, well, we had Uncrustables, chocolate cupcakes and water and went back to the water.  Overall, it was a pretty good morning and we plan to go back later this morning.

Okay, let’s talk scrapping for a sec.  I need to go over to ACOT and do the judging for my contests today so the winners can get their goodies.  We also have something exciting coming to DSD, so be on the lookout for that next month when the May Megakit comes out.  I keep trying to want to design some kits to go in my shop, but every day I see new designers coming onto the scene and I just wonder, if my sales have been as slow as they’ve been so far, how will they be with new people continuing to come onto the scene daily?  Is it worth the frustration to even try to design?  It really isn’t that much fun anymore, I’m sad to say.  I don’t see the inspiration everywhere I look like I used to.  I just ask myself if it’s worth the hours I’ll spend on a kit to sell it only a handful of times.  Is it worth the frustration I feel when I go to the various message boards and see how wonderful some other designers are and feel invisible?  I’m sorry for being such a whiner, I don’t mean to be.  But, I have so seriously considered just trying out for a few more design teams so I’ll have kits to scrap with and quitting designing altogether.  I either need to do that or find a way to get some visibility because I’m tired of being in the middle.  I either want to do it and do it well and be successful and have decent sales on my kits OR just stop and be a scrapper and help to promote DSD and maybe put more of my time into Digital Memories Magazine and helping Jen turn that into the successful publication that she visualizes and that it has the potential to be.  I dunno.  Again, sorry for the pity party, no comments necessary, but the nature of women is that we like to talk, we like to vent, we like to express our frustrations out loud, and no one IRL wants to listen to me, least of all my hubby, so you guys are stuck with it.  Feel free to skim, LOL.

On another note, if you haven’t checked out DSD lately, go check out the new home page.  I just added a cool page that lists the blogs of the designers, CT members and community members and it’s pretty cool to have them all in one place.  Are you a community member with a blog?  You can actually add yours there as well.  Go check it out!

My fabulous webhost helped me move my blog over from Typepad and overall, I’ve been really happy, but I’ve missed the awesome photo albums Typepad offered.  He installed Gallery for me and it has a plugin to make it work with Wordpress, but it didn’t let me choose which albums it showed thumbnails from in my sidebar and I really wanted that capability.  So, I decided to do a bit of digging and found a fabulous plugin that works with Coppermine Photo Gallery and lets me do exactly what I wanted to do.  It is installed and working perfectly and I love it!

Did a couple of layouts today, here’s one:

That’s a mix of the Playful and Optimistic kits off of the Express Yourself CD.  That is another of a set of photos I took last month.  I love her expression.  The photo was a bit out of focus, but I loved it so much, I decided to use it anyway.

One more, with more goodies from that CD…this is the Relaxed Kit and this is the second layout I’ve used it for.  I love the colors in this one:

This is for a member issued challenge over at DSP.  KarenB challenged other scrappers to lift all 10 of the Top 10 Fresh Faces in the CK Top Ten Issue and this is the first.  The original layout is here.  Aren’t those photos the cutest things ever?  I had to be really careful how I composed the shots because Daddy was right next to him in his undies shaving, too, and I don’t think I’d have gotten away with scrapping these if I’d gotten that in them!

On another note, I’m working on a blog list for DSD, of all the designers, staff, team and community members and I hope to have it finished soon.  When it’s working, you should be able to fill out a form and submit your own blog addy to be added to our list…cool, huh?

Okay, well, my connection is pretty bad tonight and we have a big day tomorrow, so I’ll close.  I did get one step closer to actually doing some design work today, I created about three palettes, so maybe next week I’ll get inspired and actually create something!  Meanwhile, I’m scrapping again and really enjoying it and that’s all that matters to me right now.

Enjoy your Holiday!

When we decided to consolidate some of our challenges to make it easier for everyone, Bree and I combined the Sketch and Scraplift challenges and are alternating weeks to host. We didn’t have a name for our new co-hosted events, but last night it hit me and Bree loved it as much as I did. She even made us a graphic…check us out!

Isn’t that cool?!? I think I’ll make us a blinkie because I just think it’s such a fun name! Anyway, this is my week and I am doing a scraplift challenge, which you can see here. I got a layout done for it last night…I so love this kit by Shabby Princess!

I am still working on one set of photos, but there are so many great ones in there, I can’t help it, LOL! Here’s another layout I did, this one with Julie Howard’s Simply Girl kit, available exclusively at ACOT:

If you’ve seen many of my layouts, you know I’m a minimalist, but this just turned out to be such a fun layout, I love it! There are so many great embies in this kit, I had to make good use of them. And the arrow was just a PS custom shape that I used as a pattern to cut the arrows out of the green background paper…anyway, so fun! I just love it!

Now, on to life in general…but I need coffee first, LOL…BRB! Aaahhh, okay, that’s better! So, I finally got my office cleaned back up…wanna see?

So there it is…still needs a bit of work, note the open shelves above the closet for which I’ve been going to make curtains for about a year, LOL.  The tub of movies under the table because if I give the kiddos open access to them, they’re all over the living room.  The cord isn’t normally stretched across the room, but my laptop was dead and needed a charge and that was the easiest place to charge it right now.  Anyway, this is my space…just thought I’d share.

I just got an ad through the c-s yahoo group for a challenge over at DSP, hosted by Karen B, that sounds like fun.  The CK TOP TEN NEW FACES challenge…she’s challenging us to scraplift all of the layouts by the Top Ten New Faces in the CK Top Ten Issue.  I just went and dug out the issue and this sounds like fun.  I haven’t been over to DSP in months and it’s not my usual hangout, for sure, but I think it’s a great challenge and I’m going to try my best to participate.  I think I’ll set up a little album for my layouts in the sidebar, or maybe a mini photo blog.  After all, I’m finally pretty much finished with the new home page at DSD, so I need a new project, LOL!

Okay, well, my MIL is back and we have a few plans for the day, plus laundry has piled up again, so I should close.  We have a busy weekend, but there should be some great photo ops, so hopefully that means some great scrapping material…look for more layouts next week!  Meanwhile, have a fabulous weekend!  Take lots of photos of your holiday events, but don’t be so busy photographing that you forget to enjoy it!

and dang it, I still haven’t found my battery charger for my camera.  Well, either I’ll find it soon or I’ll just enjoy the playdate without photos…and since I’m meeting my friend Stacy and we haven’t gotten together for a while, we’ll have some catching up to do, anyway.  Stacy and I met in another online community, an infertility site called Fertile Thoughts.  We actually met while we were both going through IVF, but didn’t realize we were neighbors until after we both were pregnant.  So, we met one day at the mall for lunch and had lunch almost every Friday after that for the duration of my pregnancy.  She had her little girl exactly three weeks after my babies were born and I can still see in my head a picture of Stacy, sitting on the sofa in my hospital room with Bailey perched atop her big belly, just a little preview of what was to come for her in the next few weeks.  Anyway, Stacy and her husband were blessed with a miracle surprise baby who is almost a year old now and keeps her very busy.  She’s a great friend and we stayed in touch even while I was living a couple of hours away and I’m so glad we did.  Love ya, girlfriend!

In other news, the new homepage for DSD is basically finished, I just have to have my host move it from the dummy site to the real site and for some reason, I haven’t been able to find him since yesterday morning.  But, as soon as I can catch up with him, we’ll get it moved.  It may require some tweaking, but I think it will be good overall.  I did leave up the old home page and it will look like it looks now, with just new posts and other info that everyone wanted to continue to have easy access to.

So, I have a little bookkeeping to wrap up this morning and more things on my to-do list, but I so hope to have all my loose ends tied up by the end of the week.  I’d really love to get a kit done since I’ve had a few creative flashes lately, LOL…but we’ll see.  MIL is gone for today and tomorrow, but will be back Thursday and we have a busy weekend, too, so it may not happen.  At least I’ve gotten some new kits from Shabby Princess to work with and bought a few others, too, so at least I can satisfy my urge to scrap .

I’ll close now so I can finish up this bookkeeping…have a great day!