Back in time for the Superbowl...

Well, most importantly, we are back from Kansas and Grandma's service was lovely. We got to spend a lot of time with Brian's aunts, uncles and cousins which was really nice as well. She was such a wonderful lady and it was great to think back on her life. We flew in during a snowstorm (they got 5 inches that day) and I was in shock. We don't "do" snow in Texas, and on the off chance it does snow, it lasts a day at best. It was 15 degrees when we flew in...eeek! Anyway, luckily it warmed up some ("warmed up" for Kansas is in the 40s by the way)! So we're glad to be back in Texas! :)

We made it home just in time to watch the Superbowl (thanks to TIVO we could rewind the first 5 minutes we missed and catch up during commercials) and the GIANTS won!!!! Since our teams didn't make it, Brian and I were both REALLY rooting for the Giants, but didn't think they'd be able to win. As the game went on and they kept sacking Brady and doing well on offense, we thought "Well this may be a game"... but holy moly they WON!

The bad news On my trip, my camera was safely under my seat in my carry-on... or so I thought. Someone sitting behind me was kicking under the seat and now the lens keeps giving me an error, so basically my camera is broken so I have no "snow" pics to show the kids. Then, on the way home, my EHD cable was lost (I think it must have fallen out of my bag when we changed planes). The good news My husband said I can get a second EHD (good to backup the backup anyway right)? AND a new camera!!! WOO HOO!!! So, if you have a camera you LOVE, please e-mail me with your camera, what you love about it and what you wish you could change (link to e-mail is on the sidebar). I want to get to shopping before Brian realizes how much this may cost him! :) Thanks... more Layouts added to the slide so check it out!

A huge loss...

My husband's grandma passed away today. We spent all weekend with her and I am so thankful for that time. We may be headed to Kansas for the funeral, so it may be a few days before I have an update for you. Please keep us in your prayers and be sure to take a moment to let your own family know how much you love them. S

My new Slide!

Well I've gotten on an organizing tear with ACDSee 10 Photo Manager (I have WAY more stuff than you can even imagine)! So I combined all of my locations for LOs into one folder and realized I had lots of LOs finished and not on the blog.
So I saved them all as jpegs and made a slide. If you have not yet checked these out, you can find them Slide.com and the best part? They're free! Plus it saves space on the blog which is always nice too. I have lots of QPs I've scrapped too, but I'll save those for another slide. :)
Looking back at some of my LOs is really interesting. The "old ones" look so... amateur. Rough edges, no shadows or layer effects, etc. I've learned so much that I want to go back and "fix" my old ones. But for some reason, many of my first LOs I merged before saving instead of leaving in layers...ARGH! You live and learn I guess. I still think of myself as a "newbie" as there is still so much I want to learn, but I definitely can see how I've grown! :) SS

EXCITING news!!!!

I am SO excited, I can barely contain myself!!!! You know I have a "top 3" list of designers right? Well, when I saw one of my top 3 having a CT call, I couldn't help but try for it. I knew if I didn't, I'd wish I had, so I went for it fully expecting NOT to be selected. Well she went from adding 4 to 6 spots and I was checking the blog and GDS to see who she ended up selecting (to be honest, I was kind of obsessive about it checking every time I had a free moment to see if she'd made her announcement just so I could say congrats to the new CT members and "at least I tried!")

So when I saw her post announcing her CT additions, I was SO excited that I actually screamed- about giving Brian a heart attack! Check it out here!

It seems my schedule became less hectic just in the nick of time for this CT call. So now I'm on 2 CTs for 2 of my favorite designers- how cool is that!?! Anyway more news and LOs to come soon!

More work this weekend...

Some vacation this has turner out to be! We've still been working on home projects and boy is it a LOT of work. We started going through the kids closets and I have TONS of kids clothes (4 years worth to be exact) to take pictures of and sell (that's not counting the donations over the past few years and the 6 bags we donated yesterday!!!) I guess I was hanging onto them in case we decided to have more children, but now we're moving them out. Fingers crossed I can get rid of them all- I'm taking pics as I go, so I should have some interesting before and after LOs!

Brian's grandma is settling into her new home and it sounds like all is well. It is a person's home who cares for 2 other older people and she will still have the hospice workers coming in as well. This ended up being a good alternative as she refused to go into a nursing home, but we couldn't provide for her during the workday. We hope to go visit this week now that she's had a chance to settle in. She is just a mile or so down the road from us so we'll be able to visit often.

I'm hoping to get some of her pictures scanned in and make some family LOs with them (I don't have much as far as extended family goes, but since my mom is a geneology buff, it makes sense that I should have some historical LOs). I'm also thinking I'd like to scrap her recipes into hardbound books for all of the grandkids.

Off to finish conquering the closets and then I'll scrap this afternoon... it's back to work tomorrow and the students return Tuesday! :) I almost forgot, I'll post pics of the new haircolor soon too (it's a bit more red than I imagined, but still cute I think!)

Ok let's catch up...

I've been busy lately with lots of house projects- we put in a new kitchen sink and faucet (which sounds silly, but I swear it makes SUCH a difference in my kitchen), we finally got extension ladders tall enough to hang the big iron wall art in our 2-story foyer, and decided to switch out Jaxon and Marley's rooms. That in itself was quite an undertaking because Marley's room was lilac, so of course we had to repaint it blue before we could move Jaxon in and then move all the furniture, etc. I still have not finished redoing their closets, but that, as well as painting Marley's "new" room, will just have to wait! I'll probably have some great before and after LOs too! Ha ha! But, I've got lots of scrapping to catch up on and plan on getting to work soon.

I wanted to quickly share my secret project- it was a calendar that I made using shutterfly. They had it so that instead of using one of their photo ploppers, you could have an entire blank canvas to put your pictures in- perfect for a digiscrap calendar! I'm including it on a slide below. The credits for the calendar all go to a few of my favorites- DigiTreats and Peppermint Creative for the materials and Andrea Gold for the templates- if you'd like more specifics on a certain LO, e-mail me or leave a comment and I'll be sure to share the details with you. :) Happy New Year!

I'm a TERRIBLE blogger...

And scrapper lately too! I've had NO time to scrap other than a top secret project I was working on for Christmas (which thankfully I got done just in the nick of time)... so I'll REALLY have to make it up to Pamela and scrap like crazy to catch back up! So if you're looking for a great kit (for ANY occasion) check her out at SAS. :)

After Christmas, I'll have lots of pictures to post and layouts to do too! I'm also trying my hand at hybrid stuff (I've never really even printed out my stuff so its a big deal)! Anyway, have a great holiday season and I'll be back soon (promise...) Stephanie :)

Busy bee...

I've not had much time to scrap (until today...thanks to my VERY patient husband who has tolerated me being on the laptop all evening!) So I will post some layouts asap.

I need to do some CT layouts, but I've been kind of "blocked" so I've been using templates (I know that's fine, but I can't help but feel like it's "cheating" if I don't make the LO from scratch!)

Anyway, I'll be back soon to post some LOs... just didn't want anyone to think I'd disappeared! :)

Happy Digital Scrapbooking Day!

Well, Marley is "famous" yet again! :) Check out my layout with my little queen and be sure to snag the QP download here. I enjoyed making it and hope you like it too!

***UPDATE- OK, since I'm just a scrapper and not a designer, I'm not used to people DLing and commenting on my stuff. The QP freebie I made for my fabulous designer Princess Pamela at Digitreats, just hit 1,400 DLs! I am so excited!!! "They like it...they really, really like it!" (Yes I'm a dork! LOL!)

Halloween!

We had Jaxon's "best buddy" Joshua come over to trick or treat with us this year and the boys were SO excited!!! They had already been in costume earlier in the day at school, but it was still really exciting for them. I don't think I've ever seen Jaxon that wound up! :) We were waiting for a pizza to arrive and then decided to go ahead and get started. Brian and Marley stayed behind to hand out candy and wait for the pizza while we headed down the street. Then we got the cell phone call that the pizza had arrived, came home, refueled with pizza, and then we all went back out for round 2. We didn't get far before Joshua had to use the bathroom, so we headed back to the house and called it a night. Even though we didn't hit as many houses as we'd hoped, we all had a great time! Here's one LO of the boys on the run... more to come soon.



Credits: All Hallows Eve freebie overlay from KJConners, halloween paper 7 from Jasjul at Stone Accents Studio, and the frightfully delightful wordart doesn't have author info (I must have forgotten to rename it, but I'm sure I found it from the IkeaGoddess blog- if you recognize it, let me know so I can give proper credit). Fonts: Bleeding cowboys and Pea Angedawn.