Hi Everybody...Been Awhile

Planning to redesign my blog soon, think I need to spice it up. But right now I wanted to tell you about a new kit by Laura Burger at Pixelqueens.net. The name of the kit is "Like Sisters" and it is so incredibly beautiful and best of all on sale until the 26th. So, here is the kit:



and here are two LO's I did with the kit.





If you have not been to the Pixel Queens store, you need to hop over there now and sign up for their newsletter. You will get this free kit called "we heart aRT" designed by Laura Burger and Randi Oh just for signing up. Take a look:

FREEBIE

Newsletter FREEBIE sign-up LINK

and here is a LO I made with the kit of my beautiful niece Carley having fun at the Hanna Andersson store at Woodfield Mall. Just too gorgeous.




On the personal side, we are heading down to St. Louis for the weekend to see family. My daughter is home for the week from college where she changed her major to Pre-vet and I am soooo proud of her for giving her dream a shot. Lots of Science classes to catch up on, but I know she can do it!

We had a great time in Iowa for family weekend and met lots of her friends and enjoyed the football game. Brings back memories of USC days. Son is still playing Lacrosse and taking ACT exams.

Freebies

Lastly, if you want to see the kits I have created for the Gingerscraps contest here are previews and links to the Gingerscraps site where you can download them for free. The last one was especially challenging because we had to use a song, movie or book as inspiration and anyone who knows me will tell you I love old musicals. My husband's favorite is Brigadoon, I love South Pacific! So for our wedding song we chose Some Enchanted Evening, I can just hear Mario Lanza's voice singing this song. It gives me goosebumps. So that was my inspiration and we were to do up to 12 papers and 20 elements. I did 19 elements but had many more in my head but ran out of time. I am very picky and always quality check my elements which is time consuming but I think it's very important. So I will stop rambling and tell you to hurry over and check out the kits! There are some other fantastic free kits by some very talented designers so check those out too!

This is the kit for Week 1 - It is called Forest Park- after the beautiful park in St. Louis and in honor of my father-in-law.



LINK

Here is week 2 - It is called Java Delite - in honor of my friend Wendy who hangs out with me at the organic coffee house in Crystal Lake.



LINK
And here is week 3 - Some Enchanted Evening - for my husband Bob



LINK

Here is the overall LINK to the contest so you can see all the wonderful posts. Remember download links are in the descriptions. Enjoy!

Now for the Good

Now if I can stop the tears from rolling down my cheeks, I want to tell you all the good things that have happened. First, Christy Skaggs accepted me on her CT. I was CT'ing for Shannon Harris until she retired. I love Christy's designs and her team is great. Please check out her kits at GDS. Then, more joy, after entering the Supreme Team Contest at GDS for the 5th time, I was finally selected. YAY. I love working with the kits and it definitely stretches my LO skills and makes me think out of the box. It is a 3 month assignment and I love it! And right now I have my fingers crossed that I will finally become a designer. I have entered the GingerBread Ladies contest at Gingerscraps.net. I have been taking design classes for several years and play around making things for myself and my sister, but now I am hoping to really be able to design. Gingerscraps is a wonderful site. I entered their Survivor contest awhile back and even though I did not win, I think one of my favorite LOs of all time is the one I did of myself eating bugs. It is such a hoot!

November was a sad month

So many things have happened over the last month that I don't know where to begin. I'll start with the sad. My father-in-law passed away on Saturday, November 21, 2009. He was 87 years old, but he was in great health, at least according to his doctor whom he saw a week before he died. Who's to know when your time is up. He was standing out on the street corner in St. Louis doing charity work (old newsboys day) which he had done for 50+ years and was doing great when a woman saw him fall down. She thought he missed a step on the curb and went over and administered CPR because she could not find a pulse, a doctor also stopped to help and administer CPR. They did resuscitate him and an ambulance took him to the hospital. Originally, they thought it was a heart attack. We immediate left for St. Louis, a 5 hour drive (after taking the kids out of school) and found him all hooked up to a ventilator and monitors at Barnes Hospital. The doctors were pretty grim and after running tests determined it was not a heart attack but that his heart just stopped-anyway it turned out that he never woke up and the ventilator was keeping him alive, barely. As soon as the whole family arrived (some coming from LA, PA, NH, TX) we abided by his wishes and removed the ventilator. He died peacefully. He was a great man and a gentleman. He loved animals and they loved him. He would never kill a living thing. He would capture a bee or moth that had gotten in the house and take it outside. He loved nature and spent hours on his lawn and he was generous to a fault! It was so amazing at the funeral. People came from all over, even his former postman. Neighbors we had never met brought food and air mattresses. No one had a bad word for my father-in-law...Like I said he was a great man and I will miss him so much!!!

Where does the time go!

OK, I keep saying I will get better at posting and then two months goes by. I keep asking myself where does the time go. First, we did go on vacation to Minnesota although it wasn't the same this year as my in-laws were in a car accident on the way up and their car was totalled. Luckily, no one was hurt including their dog, Barkley and we were not far behind them so they could stay overnight at our motel and we could rent a car for them. As soon as we got back on July 26, Steven had to pack for camp, he is in a Counselor-in-Training Program and I had to take him to Wisconsin the next morning for the start of his first week of camp. He had a week session with 8 year old boys then came home for the weekend and then I took him back to camp for another one week session with 8 year old boys and then he came back and once more up to Wisconsin or a two week session. This time his cabin included 11 12-year old boys (and he is only 15) but from his postcard he seems to be having a great time and I'll pick him up on Saturday at the end of this session. During the first week he was at camp, I had to get Brynn ready for her foreign-exchange trip to Spain. She was flying to Madrid (her first time overseas) by herself and then the group would take a bus to Granada where she would stay with a host family for 4 weeks. Based on her facebook page and calls, she is having a great time. She goes to the University in the morning for Spanish language, home for lunch with her host mom, siesta time and then they go do things as a group. Yesterday they took her to a ranch outside of Granada where they went horseback riding. Then on August 14th our foreign exchange student from Germany, Fabian came in to O'Hare and we picked him up at noon, then I took him to the HS to register and pay his fees, then shopping for soccer cleats and shin guards and then we let him rest. He had soccer try-outs the next morning and he made the JV Team. So he has been going to soccer practice everyday. We also took him to my husband's company picnic--very American, hotdogs, hamburgers, potato salad and coleslaw and of course watermelon. He is staying with us for the school year. So I will have a Senior, Junior and Sophomore. Should keep me busy! Oh and during this whole time I was in the Survivor Contest over at Ginger Scraps. I made it to the second to final round and then missed the final round by 4 votes. So I am off the island. In my next post, I'll show you some of the LO's. Just wanted to catch you up on things.

So much has happened

So much has happened that I couldn't possibly put it in one blog. I did spend three weeks in California. It was originally supposed to be 2 but with everything that needed to get done, I spent an additonal week. I have to tell you that US Airways was a pain in the butt. I wanted to change my ticket to one week later, the same flight, etc... thought I would only have to pay the $150 change fee, but no they said it was the change fee plus the difference in price which would have made the one way ticket over $275 more than I paid for the roundtrip. So after hassling over the internet with their Customer Relations department which has no phone number-you can only e-mail them I just booked on another airline. Got a $159 fare on American, flew from San Jose to Orange County then directly to Chicago and it was a far better flight. They had a movie, two beverage services on the flight an audio system (which was was disabled on US Airways now). All in all it was a great decision and probably the last time I will fly US Airways. In fact, I was booking my daughter's flight to Madrid using United Miles and they wanted to put her on US Airways coming back and I said no. So now she is going and coming on Lufthansa which is known for its service. (Can you tell I'm still pissed off and its been over a month).

The good news is I did participate in the design contest, but with the demands in California (I never realized how time consuming designing is) I only was able to make the deadline on two rounds. The plus is, I have decided to give away the two kits as freebies in the next few days. Would love to have your feedback on kits and it you want to link me to any LO's you do with the kits, I would love to show them off to everyone.

Anyway, more to come tomorrow. School gets out on Wednesday, so no more teaching and then summer vacation. YEAH!

To be or not to be

Hi Everyone, again it's been too long. I really don't know where the time goes. I've been having a great time on Silly Bean Scraps Creative Team. I have a great group of people to work with and it forces me to scrap out of the box. I just wish there was more time in the day. Between working, volunteering at the animal shelter, the kids activities and my sister giving birth to her first child, I just can't seem to keep up with my blog or my life for that matter. My husband says I spend too much time on the computer scrapping, I think I don't spend enough time. So that's where my question comes in, To be a designer or not to be a designer. I have signed up at at Designs in Digital for the 2nd annual NDIDDS. It is a design contest and the winner gets a designer position. This contest is special in that they give you challenges and tutories and even some CU products to use in creating. I probably don't have a chance to win, but hopefully this will be a great learning experience. I would love to design as well as some of my favs. The contest starts on May 1st and there should be lots of freebies from everyone entering. I promise to keep you posted. In the meanwhile, I will be traveling to California to help my sister with my new niece. So more to come!

Ravelle