Scrapbooking Freebie! :)

So, I tried my hand at designing for the first time this month, with the ESS March Color Challenge. I'm pretty pleased with my end result, but I definitely know the areas I want to focus on improving in the future. Designing this mini-kit has been a lot of fun - if you like the way it looks, feel free to download and use it! And, you know, to come back here and tell me about what you've made! I would love to see your pages (even if you make them in combination with someone else's kits. I'm not picky!)

Also, I would like to say a big thanks to all the current digi designers out there - your stuff is gorgeous, and you inspire me every day. Thank you so much for doing what you do, and giving me the courage to dabble in it myself!

This kit is for personal use only, and the drop shadows are only in the preview. Click on the preview to be taken to the download page.



Enjoy!

Slow going...

Well, this is a new one for me. As some of you know, Nathan got mea bamboo tablet for Christmas. Which is great, and it's an interesting toy. But wow is it difficult to work with. Talk about a steep learning curve! So I have decided that until I am more comfortable with it, I am going to force myself to use it constantly. Makes sense, right? If I use it all the time, then I will become familiar with it much more quickly. And once I'm familiar, using it won't be nearly so frustrating.

That's the thought, anyway.

All this writing so far has been from my tablet, with the pen, and I've only had 1 spelling error. I think that is pretty impressive.

Anyway, news: Nathan and I got a great tip from his sister about a sale running at Kroger, and some coupons we could print off the internet that would let us stock up on pasta for literally NOTHING! Between the store sale & the coupons we got 12 boxes of pasta (spaghetti, linguini, rotini, and penne) for free! We ended up saving about $31 off our grocery bill today, all told. I'm very proud of us.

Then, later we went to JCPennys, to get a new shirt for Nathan so he can impress the bigwigs in Arkansas next week. Oh, yeah, did I mention, Nathan's going BACK to Arkansas? TOMORROW AFTER CHURCH?

/grumble

But, fortunately, this is going to be his last trip away from home for quite a while. Why is that, you ask? Because his boss' boss decided to green light Nathan's cell phone store! :D This is big news! We were not expecting it nearly so soon, with his only having been promoted asst. manager in November of last year, but apparently everyone all the way up to the company VP is super impressed with him, so off he goes for training.

I'll ask him to update the blog at least once while he's gone. It's the least he can do, leaving me here all by my lonesome for ANOTHER WHOLE WEEK. (S'not, you know, like I don't have 5 scrapbooking forums, a facebook, designing, new toys, my cats, opera rehearsal, and such to distract me.... Nah!)

Anyway... We went to JCPennys with a gift card he got for Christmas to buy a new shirt for him to take down, and they were having a really nice sale (spend $25, save $10). So we ended up with two shirts that were labeled as clearance ($37 total), they took $10 off, and then we used his $20 gift card - so we only spent $7 and change on two really nice shirts. As we finished, the cashier told us we had saved $65 (!!!) off the original price of the shirts. HOLY CRAP! I'm so excited about that.

Aaaanyway, it's late, and I need to play with the Singing Time schedule before I go to bed tonight. Have to get April together for the pianist and such. BUT, I do have more good news, before I sign off - I'll be giving my first Digi Scrapping lesson tomorrow after church, to one of my friends from High School. :)

I'm super excited about getting to show her my hobby, and I hope she finds it as fun as I do. I'll report back with news at some point next week about how it went!

New in Robyn Pali's Store TODAY 3/25!

Robyn has just released some really cute digital scrapbooking templates for you! :) Multi-photo/Multi-paper templates that look really clean and elegant when you scrap with them. I think they're just awesome - don't you?

You can head on over to Robyn's ESS Store to purchase these.

I made this layout using her Apples & Pears kit, and one of her new templates:



Doesn't look much like her kit, does it? I used the glitter fills that came with the kit, and then used Blend Modes like Overlay, Color Burn, Screen, etc. on the papers and elements, to create the gold/red/black color scheme. It's really easy to do that with any kit, and voila! It's almost like you have another complete kit - without the hassle of having to recolor each individual element. I've found that this is a GREAT way to stretch your digi scrap stash. :)

So what are you waiting for? I want to see what YOU create with Robyn's awesome new templates!

Laundry Folding Day

Yes, today shall go down in history as the day that I folded and put away laundry.

...No, seriously, folks. I've done a ton of laundry in the past few days, and, being my pregnant, tired, irritable self, have let it sit in laundry baskets for far too long. TODAY, my friends, my bedroom starts to look a little cleaner, because CLOTHING WILL BE PUT AWAY IN DRESSERS!

So I have decreed, so it shall be.

Some Cute Things

Just wanted to drop in and say that I made this with Scrapvine's "Jungle, Baby" kit. :)
I'm so excited about this kit (and my Scrapvine membership)! I requested a kit that matched Maggie's nursery theme, and she totally delivered! :)



I also made these two sig images for myself this week. The first is for Enchanted Studio Scraps and uses the Furry Friends collab kit by Robyn Pali Designs and My4Princesses Designs. The second is for Digi Shop Talk and uses the kit Moments by Sweet Shoppe Designs.

New Apples & Pears Kit by Robyn Pali Designs!

Hello readers and scrapbooking friends! :) I just wanted to let you know that Robyn of Robyn Pali Designs has released a new kit called "Apples & Pears"! It's full of gorgeous greens and pinks, has an amazingly detailed alpha, and is such a joy to work with!

Click on the picture above to buy it from her store! OR - if you're feeling lucky (well, are you, punk?) you can head on over to Enchanted Studio Scraps and enter to win it for FREE!
Here are two of the layouts I've made with this kit so far:


P.S. I also used the new template kit on sale in Robyn's store with the first layout - you should check it out. The set includes three VERY versatile scrapbooking templates!

Hmm.

Have I mentioned, like, ever, that I suck at updating this thing?

I need to get better at it - how am I going to document our lives if huge chunks keep getting left out???

Anyway, news:

1. I am officially 30 weeks pregnant. :D Holy cow, time flies! It's hard to imagine that Nathan and I only have 10 more weeks (if we're lucky) before someone very small changes our lives forever! We have ultrasound pictures of Maggie's face now (it looks a little more like normal than it did around Christmas), just post-thumb sucking. We got to see her do that on the ultrasound itself, though,which was pretty cool. And man is she kicking up a storm! I feel like all she ever does is wiggle - and conversely, squeeze my bladder/stomach to within an inch of incontinence either way. I'm constantly fighting the need to throw up now. This trimester? Starting out WAY worse than the first one.

2. I am a little guiltily excited to report that my best friend will NOT be moving away to California after she gets married this summer. Plans, like usual for everyone I know, have changed several times since they were first made, but it appears that she and Adam are going to be staying in Kentucky, at least for a little while. (Yay!)

3. I would like to take a moent and note how much I hate typing on my husband's computer. Ugh. The track-pad is so big that I literally have to hold my hands off the keyboard with only my fingers touching in order to type without accidentally clicking away from the part of the text I'm typing in. I find myself having to stop every few sentences and give my wrists a rest. Guess I'm going to have to clean off the desk in the bedroom now, since the only reason I'm using his computer is that it's actually on a desk, and I don't really have enough lap to support my laptop anymore. /sigh

4. Going back to my first point, I am stumped as to how I'm going to keep my house clean with a newborn in it. I can barely manage now, when she's not doing anything more than poking at my intestines/stomach. I have half a mind to go through the dirty laundry and throw most of it out. I can't keep up with it, and it's not like we don't have a FULL dresser, armoire, and closet already. With the winter coats/sweaters in storage AND the strictly summer clothes in storage too. Blargh.

5. Also, I think it is possible that Jack is allergic to seafood. We changed their food a couple months ago to the "Premium" brand of the wal-mart, generic, huge-bag-of cat food, that has flavors like tuna, salmon, and shrimp in it. Since then, he's had steadily increasing fits of vomiting up half-digested food. At first it was only once a week, if that, but in the last week it's been almost every day. After weighing out a couple of other options, Nathan and I have decided to switch back to the 'normal' catfood - turkey, ham, beef flavors - and see if that puts an end to the vomiting. If it doesn't, we're going to have to take him to the vet. :/ I would like to avoid that option if I could, since he is a very normal, healthy, playful, year-old cat other than the vomiting issue. And, you know, since the vet is freaking expensive.

6. Nathan is in Cincinnatti, OH, this week. The University of Cincinnatti runs on quarters, rather than semesters, and it's the end of the Winter term, so he's out doing a student textbook buyback. There are over 41,000 students at UofC, so this ought to be a pretty lucrative venture, once the kids have enough of their exams done that they want to sell their books. He's set up in a trailer near one of the main campus exits, and by some off-campus housing, and he says it hasn't been horrible, for a Monday/Tuesday when the weather has been bad. But he's advertised and everything, and people are coming to sell him books, so I have faith that the rest of this week will be good.

Anyway, that's all I feel like reporting on today. I'm going to go back and at least fill in pictures and short posts from the past month or so in the next day or two. I'll let you know when I get set up at my own desk, and can post things from there. (My laptop rules, and Nathan's laptop drools - get it straight, people.) :D

'Till next time!