Spooktacular CU Templates

Well I finally got a new product in store. These are my Spooktacular Halloween layered templates. They come in photoshop files with all layers in tact or also in png files for those who can’t open up psd’s. There are 5 different Halloween templates that I drew up with my Wacom tablet and there is also a bonus doodled word phrase included. The regular price is $3.00 but right now I have them (and other products) on sale in my stores 31% off for Halloween! This sale will go til Nov 1st before prices are changed back to regular. So if you grab them right now you can get them for $2.07. They are PU/S4H/CU OK and have been quality checked by both the stores I sell at.

Grab them at either my ESS store or my Digiridoo store! While your in either store, check around my other products too, there are lots of other 31% off deals going on this weekend.

Here Goes Nothing!

So I’m taking a journaling class at Shimelle.com called True Stories (you can see the button in my sidebar!) And it’s all about journaling. I’m behind already, though I’m trying real hard to not look at it that way since technically I should blog and journal all the time, not just for the 3 weeks I’ll be getting prompts from this class!

The first major idea was that of doing a FAQ type of journaling for the questions you find yourself being asked. So the 5 questions I came up with that I get asked a lot are (in no particular order):

1. What do you do at home all day?

2. You knit?

3. When are you guys tying the knot?

4. Are you guys having more kids?

5. Is there anything you don’t have?

Seriously these are questions I have been asked more times than I can even care to remember. I came up with my answers and I’m certain that at least a few of these will end up on layouts, though maybe not in their entirety.

1. I don’t know that there is any sort of typical day in my house, so this of course varies from day to day. I do know that most of the people who ask this question assume that I sit on my butt all day and that being a stay at home mom must be the easiest thing in the world. But, I beg to differ. I can guarantee that most days I do more work at home than a lot of my working friends do at their jobs. Most of my days involve power struggles with at least one of my kids. My days also seem to routinely involve cleaning and re-cleaning certain areas of our house (read as kids bedroom, playroom and kitchen!) Yes, those 3 rooms have to be cleaned at least 2 times a day, sometimes more. I try to keep up on laundry so every day seems to involve at least one load of laundry and usually some re-folding of clothes in the girls dressers when I go to put new clothes in. It’s also expected of me to actually entertain my kids, which is some days easier than others, while I’m maintaining the cleanliness of the rest of the house, doing the laundry, figuring out what’s for supper, making sure that kids get meals and snacks, feeding and playing with the baby and making sure he naps, and making sure that girls are at least kind of clean during the day. Night time brings on a whole other struggle to get all the kids bathed and in bed without insane amounts of screaming and fighting by either myself or them. Not to mention that in and amongst these daily tasks I also attempt to find some time for myself to do anything not related to kids or cleaning. Not the easiest thing in the world. Some days my “me time” might be the 5 minutes I had to shower while other days I might have time to actually sit down and do some scrapbooking or browse the internet. I am also a digital scrapbook product designer so I try to fit in time to work on new products for my stores. It’s a struggle to find time to get much of anything done that is just for me. Don’t even get me started on attempting to relax or socialize!

2. Yes, I knit. I LOVE to knit. It is yet another one of those things that I rarely manage to find time for even though I thoroughly enjoy it. There is just something about it that helps me to relax and calm down, even if only for a few minutes. I have yet to attempt anything more intense than a dish cloth but they seem to be the perfect size at the moment. I would love to make some of the cuter, more intricate things I see on sites like Ravelry and Knitty, but I can’t keep up with large patterns due to child interference. I am also working on my horrible crochet skills too since it seems larger projects take less time to do when they are crocheted.

3. This question is always a tricky one to answer. We have 3 kids together and have been together for a while now, but I honestly can’t give a straight answer to this one. I’ll be fine either way. If we stay together unmarried it would be fine, if we end up married that would be fine too. Neither one of us has ever really made a big deal over the whole marriage thing. Even if we ever did, it wouldn’t be a big ordeal. It would be us in Vegas, or us on a beach somewhere. Yes, we are that couple. I don’t want a big frou frou wedding. Thank you very much.

4. I am not planning on us having anymore kids. I’m pretty certain that 3 kids by age 23 is plenty, especially when they happened basically in a 4 year span! The man has however, (jokingly I hope) talked about a 4th kid already. He was talking about a 4th kid before the 3rd one was physically born. The last pregnancy was pretty rough on me considering how nice and easy the first 2 had been and I think that’s my body going “Oh. My. God. Please stop having babies now!” However, this is how things worked out and how it played out so far. I wouldn’t trade any of my kids for the world, although some days I think kids should come with mute buttons or ear plugs at the least! I guess I’m saying and hoping that there are no more kids in our future right now, but of course if it happens, it happens. (DO NOT FREAK OUT MOTHER! Re-read the part about hoping it doesn’t happen!!) I also guess that if it happens again I am going to go after the company that makes Alesse, because it obviously can’t work if I end up pregnant again!

5. The question of stuff is one I really detest. I think mostly because 90% of the people who ask it also use it as a statement and mean to make me feel uncomfortable. Yes, we have a lot of stuff. More than most people we know, more than most people our age, more than most people in general. So what?! There are lots of days where I would trade the stuff in for more time together as a family. The man works lots of hours at his job, plus is a volunteer firefighter (yes, they get paid) and also owns his own business so that we can afford to have this stuff. That leaves very little time for relaxing as a family and just being. There are days where I see the stuff and shake my head at the insanity of having it, but there are lots more days where that stuff comes in handy for us or for our friends. There is also a great deal of it that allows us to do fun things as a family, so I can’t be that against it. The good part of having it always outweighs the bad. Always.

I have of course edited some of the answers for blogging since I originally just wrote them all out in my notebook and they were messy or not ordered properly. I think that is the main thing I like about physically writing things down. I can just write and then look back through it and edit and move things around when I do type it up. I guess I could just type my rambling up but I would probably end up printing it out and editing a hard copy anyways. I think this class is going to be awesome and I can already see how it’s changing how I look at my journaling, which is one of the things I wanted to work on so that I could make my scrapbook layouts more me and more personal and more important to the people who will get to read them later.

But for now I should go, the baby is awake and I have to figure out what we’re doing for supper yet. I really just want to order pizza but we will see! Have a wonderful day all!

A Couple Things!

Ok, well today I have a couple things to let you all in on!!

First off, I have a sneak peek of a kit coming out tomorrow from Geek Chic Scraps. I am in LOVE with the colors she used in this awesome kit and I can not wait to be able to work with it!! So keep an eye on Tara’s blog to see the reveal shortly!!

Oooo…pretty right?! RIGHT?! Yay!!

Now, for some more “Oooo pretty” I have my layout done for the second week of DSA’s Battle of the Creative Teams!! I love this weeks layout! We had to “scrap lift” 2 of our team members layouts into 1. Scrap lifting is always fun, but combining elements of 2 layouts into one is not normally my strong suit! I managed though and came out with a layout that I have no real problems with, which is not easy to do as I like to be highly critical of everything I do. For this layout I used the kit Sweet Daydream from Geek Chic Scraps. I was a little worried with the pink in the kit that it would be too girly for my layout since I wanted to put all the kids on it, but I was wrong (again) and it worked out fantastically! I also used her Just Say It Vol. 1 for the little word strips, and I fell in love!! They are awesome and I’m looking forward to being able to incorporate them into more layouts (and maybe snag her other sets of them too!) So without further chatter from me, here is my layout this week:

My third piece of business here today is just a nice reminder that right now you can get the awesome Halloween Collaboration kit that all us ESS designers created by going to the ESS blog every day and downloading a portion of it from now (well yesterday) until the end of the month. Seriously this kit is huge! And what can be better than free?! I am in love with the part that I did for it and am just waiting til it’s all been handed out before I show it off here, but yes, seriously in love with it!

I have a few other things to share, but those will have to follow in the days ahead! For now I just thought I’d give a little update while I’m taking a cleaning break! Hope everyone’s having a fantastic Thursday!!!

More and More Back to Normal

So things are slowly becoming more normal in the new house, and I’m slowly trying to get my life back closer to normal. I believe that as of today I have unpacked and half organized all my art supplies, so yay for that!!! I have enrolled in a couple workshops for various things because I have realized that being creative is such a huge part of my life and the past few years I’ve just been too focused on work and the kids to do much of anything for me.

Well that is now over! I bought myself some new clothes last week for the first time since the last time I went maternity clothes shopping. I can’t even begin to describe how much better I feel now that I have some normal non-maternity clothes that are newer than about 6 years old. After I realized how nice that felt, I thought that maybe it was about time I did something else for me, something I enjoyed in the past. So here I am, with unpacked art supplies waiting to work on some of the projects and techniques in the workshops I signed up for. I really think it will help me feel more like myself again and help me be a better person, which of course helps me be a better mom and a happier more whole person. I will be posting the things I work on here and talking about them as well, so be on the lookout for that!

I am in the Battle of the Creative Teams for Geek Chic Scraps and our first round entries were due last night. I had a layout all nice and mostly done for it, but then hated it and redid the whole thing with a new kit. I’m still not fully happy with the layout, but it was a vast improvement on the original!

MOST of the supplies I used came from the kit Thankful for You which was just released at Scrap Matters yesterday! I did however also use some other products by her as well, I used some parts of Book Worm and Falling for You which I’ve done full pages with in the past. I also used an alpha out of Kind of a Big Deal and 2 alphas that are sold alone (Recycled Newspaper and Ohh Shiny) and the white stitches came from Scrappers Toolbox Vol. 1 by Tara (Geek Chic Scraps) as well. We had a “recipe” for this first challenge and the hardest part of it for me was probably using 10 ribbons. I’m still not happy with the ribbons, but I am my own worst critic and others have told me that they aren’t as bad as I seem to think so we’re ok! I am anxiously awaiting the results of Week 1, and looking forward to the challenge for week 2 to come out.

But for now I must go, lots of things in the works for the next week until the man is done school!

Lovin Life

That’s right, at this very moment I’m loving my life! We’re pretty close to being completely unpacked now, furniture we have is in place, furniture we need has been ordered in. The baby has nicely transitioned to his crib and the girls bunk beds are only a week away. Halloween candy has been purchased, we have the babies costume. The girls costumes have been found, but not yet purchased. The man said he’ll do it right away, and bring them up for the girls to wear. We managed to get most of our “ready for winter” yard work done, lawn was mowed one last time, leaves raked and blown, I got about half the flowers cut back and we tilled the garden. The garages have been mostly organized and the trucks, lawn mowers, etc. have all been washed. I’ve been able to do some designing in my new, more me style. I’ve also been able to do some scrapping! Things are just all falling back into place and it feels wonderful!

We’re doing our Thanksgiving supper tonight, even though Thanksgiving is really tomorrow. The man and his mom have to head back south tomorrow so he can be back for school Tuesday morning. Since it’s an 8 hour drive we decided just to do our big meal tonight. That means 2 things. 1) Deep fried turkey!!!! 2) Stretchy pants. We’ve got our turkey deep fryer all found and ready to go, we have brand new oil for it and a nice full propane tank. It will be nice to do it on a cement driveway instead of trying to find a flat spot in the grass, so yay! We’ll also be having salad, vegetables, potatoes, biscuits, cranberry sauce, stuffing and pumpkin pie for dessert! I’m pretty excited and so is my stomach.

I’ve been able to scrap a bit lately and have 2 new layouts. The first one is a milestone because after scrapping only girls for the last few years I finally tackled my first boy layout! It was nice, different and not as scary as I made it out to be in my head!  I’m glad that I did it too because with a baby boy around there will be a lot of layouts to scrap of him. The second layout I made I can’t share just yet, because the kit I used hasn’t been released but it was a fun kit to play with too! Both pages are made with products from Colie’s Corner, her design style meshes well with the way I like to scrap, so it’s always fun to play with new things.

Isn’t he adorable!!!!! The kit I used for this layout is called Serenity and it worked perfectly! I loved that plaid paper right off the bat and knew I had to use it. I also used a template set by Colie for this, For Starters template set 33. I flipped it because I wanted to and changed some element placement and removed some elements as well. I love the way this page came out though and I love that I was still able to use flowers on a boy layout (that was a major concern for me!)

I’m looking forward to being able to be productive this week, hopefully get some designing done. I have another collaboration contribution in the works as well as the very starting of an actual kit! I’m hoping I can get a few smaller things done this week too, so hopefully everything goes well and I’m able to get some actual work done! With all the leftovers I’m sure that we’ll have I shouldn’t have to cook for a week, so that saves a whole lot of time right there. The sheer fact that so much stuff is now set up and organized helps a ton too, it lowers my stress levels tenfold.

I, however, am off for now. Lots of things I want to finish up today and lots of things to get ready for tonight. Hope all my fellow Canadians are having a fantastic Thanksgiving long weekend, and of course that all my American friends are having great weekends as well!

It’s Coming!

The staff at Enchanted Studio Scraps have been planning some Halloween fun for you! Come check us out in the forums for all kinds of Spook-tacular activities! The Scavenger Hunt starts this Friday, Oct 8th. If you find all 10 of the pumpkins that are hidden you will win an ESS Mega Kit of your choice. Also for the whole month of October the regular ESS challenges are all Halloween themed as well, so there is tons of fun to be had! If you need some new Halloween scrap supplies there are a whole lot of Halloween themed products in the store right now too, so stop in and take a look around.

In other news, I am in fact designing again, so yay! I have been working on a few things here and there, but I’m going with as little CU as possible and have been adding in a lot of hand drawn doodle elements. Once I find my scanner I’m going to be in fighting shape because I’ll be able to add handcrafted elements as well, which will be super fun! So be on the lookout for some new products from me (finally!)

The house is coming along. I started to unpack kids clothes today but didn’t get too far. I got the babies stuff all set up, and started working on the girls clothes. Man do they have a lot of clothing, it’s going to be an insane feat of organization to get it all put away! Tomorrow I think I’m going to tackle me and the mans clothing first, then find any other unpacking I can do that will put off getting their clothes out as long as possible…ok, I know I shouldn’t. If I’m good then I’ll just get their stuff out, sorted, organized and put away.

It’s Thanksgiving here this weekend coming up, so I need to have the house as organized as possible by Friday. Not an easy task, but I will give it all I can. The man is coming home for the weekend from school before heading back for his last 2 weeks of it. I can not wait for him to be done. Can not. He will, however, hopefully be smart and hook our satellite dish up this weekend while he’s here because if he doesn’t there’s a good chance he will be doing it in the snow when he gets back from school! I really don’t think I can go much longer without having the TV all set up. I don’t watch it a ton, but I do have certain shows I like to watch and of course I got to see the 1st episode of the new seasons and then have been tv-less since. I also enjoy listening to the radio station and DJ programmed stations on the satellite because we have it hooked up to a nice sound system and it’s much easier than rifling through CD’s. (We have no good in service radio station in our area because we live to far north to have one that isn’t news or doesn’t have the evening church hours cut in.)

But since the little guy has calmed down a bit I’m off to do some more designing for awhile! Hope you all have a wonderful evening!!

Woo Hoo! Could This be THE Return of my Scrapping Mojo?!

I scrapped a layout completely template and scrap lift inspiration free last night! Go me! I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I felt the desire to go above and beyond and do a layout on my own from scratch, but it’s safe to say it’s been a while. I had fun, really enjoyed the process. Cut irregular squares and layered and layered and layered them!

I used a super cute and fun collaboration kit by Sweet Mesquite and Berry Sweet Designs called Messy Girl. I wish I’d had some of my old pictures because I have some great ones of our oldest daughter playing on her quad and in many other messy situations. I found these pictures to be quite suiting too. These girls sure do know how to make one heck of a good mess! Of anything and everything.

Today we did a ton of running around. I finally found the box I was looking for so I was able to deposit a check and return a movie (both of which had been packed inside it!) I also managed to get down to the post office and do our change of address/mail forwarding form with them. A few other errands were run out of the house as well as some more downstairs organizing and cleaning.

The house is very slowly getting unpacked. I can’t wait to be done and back in normal routines again! It will make things so much nicer and so much easier to deal with. Tomorrow I’m taking a slight break from unpacking to do some normal tidying up. Clean bathrooms, laundry, clean up kitchen, vacuum and wash the floors. Then after that I’m going to keep on going with the unpacking. I want to haul the rest of the Christmas stuff down to the basement to put in the storage area under the stairs, unpack the last box (that I’ve found) of kitchen stuff and get the girls clothes unpacked and sorted and put away. That is my goal. I rented myself a movie to watch tomorrow night when I get all that done and have the kids bathed and the girls in bed. My incentive for hopefully achieving a good chunk of my overall weekend goal.

But, I have a cranky, upset baby right now, so I’m off! Hope everyone has a great start to their weekends.