World Autism Awareness Day

Please spread the word! As many of you know, most of my students have autism, and it is rising at near epidemic rates, yet there are still many who know very little about it. Check out available resources, research and community support at Autism Speaks.

My busiest month is almost here

...which is both exciting AND stressful! Let's see... I'm getting blond highlights back (the old reliable) so my mom will be very happy! :) My sister and I were referred to as "Brownie" and "Blondie" respectively as children and apparently we need to remain that way. Ha ha!

I have tons of meetings coming up too for my kiddos headed to kindergarten and end of the year stuff. I am also presenting a few trainings for staff and parents with my teammates which is giving me gray hair (now you see that my reason for the blond highlighting is NOT to make mom happy)!

Next week I have surgery which I'm only moderately nervous about, but I'll be sore and out of whack for a bit, and that has me more worried than the process itself. It's tough to tell the kiddos to go easy on mama or the teacher for that matter- I think my title should include "child wrangler" and "human jungle gym"! That week is also when Jaxon has kindergarten round-up and kinder buddy day which I'm excited about. I can't wait to see what he thinks about the whole thing.

The last but not least of the stresses... I turn 30 this month. Yes folks, it's all downhill from here! Ha ha! I wasn't all that concerned about it until my friends kept reminding me about it... and now I'm thinking I'll make 30 fun. Maybe it'll be my year to lose those last 10 pounds I want to rid myself of, and get more organized, and I WILL do more for myself this year. So, if I'm not around much this month, you'll know why. Anyway, keep your fingers crossed that all goes well.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes...

Ok, so I'm a dork, but is that really news? Yet again I'm playing around with my blog. I changed my template and then fiddled with all of the html code (I realize that this adds "techie" and/or "geek" to my title as well)! Anyway, I'll probably have a new blinkie sometime soon too. Well, back to scrappin'...

Spring Break = lots of scrap time!

Spring Break starts tomorrow after school and I am SO excited! I have no plans other than to relax, hang out with the kids and scrap (oh and clean house)! I am on a guest CT spot for Theresa Borntreger this month so expect to see some new things from me. and I plan on doing the bonus and optional challenges for ADSR this week too.

Also, as you know I'm VERY lucky to be on Andrea Gold's CT, so I'd like to take a minute to thank her for reading my mind when creating her newest product! :) Ha ha! My hubby's grandma passed away recently and she was always quite the cook. Everyone loves her recipes, so I thought it'd be nice to type them up and send copies to all of the aunts, uncles and cousins (this was BEFORE I realized how many recipes she had)! These new recipe brag book templates are a must have in my book! Check them out here while she's got them on sale!

My messy Marley

Perhaps she has a green thumb? I need to add some LOs to my slide, but don't have the time right now, so here's a quick one.

:) Credits: Andrea Gold's new "Pink Parfait" page kit.

And one more from the same kit...Andrea Gold's new "Pink Parfait" page kit and Template Set #25

ADSR3 is coming!!!!

What is ADSR3? The Amazing DigiScrap Race of course. Ok I admit, I didn't know what it was until I saw a post about it on GDS, but I'm SO glad I did. Here's some info about it:
At NDISB, we've come up with a cool internet digital scrapping game that will mirror the excitement of the TV reality show "The Amazing Race." Teams of two will traverse the digital scrapping world, site by site, completing challenges and collecting prizes along the way. Everyone who completes the week's challenges in the allotted time frame will move on to the next week, where they can collect even MORE prizes! And at the end of the race, everyone who has travelled around the digiworld and completed each and every challenge will be entered into a drawing for the GRAND prize!

A gal from GDS named Melody and I have teamed up. Our team is Electric Harmony (you know- Schock/Electric and Melody/Harmony). It sounded like an 80s cover band at first, but darn it, we're going to ROCK ADSR! Ha ha! Melody even made a blinkie for us... check it out in the sidebar... we are going to have so much fun. :)

The bad news is GDS is down right now for site maintenance. I know it won't be long, but I have found such a digi-home at GDS that I miss it already. Ha ha!

The good news is my sweet husband surprised me on Valentines Day with a new Sony H3 Cybershot (we weren't going to "do" Valentines, so I had nothing for him, but he didn't seem to mind too much). AND, Andrea Gold has some GREAT new mini-kits and full page kits going into the store at GDS. Keep an eye out for them... her new one "Pink Parfait" is going to be a new favorite of mine already I can tell! More LOs coming soon...

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!