Vinnie's place is open!

You guys know Vinnie Pearce? She is opening her own shop and it's open to play, although the shop is supposed to open tomorrow. The forum has been open for a few days which I didn't know. She has a gallery and we have been playing a few games. It looks like a neat place and it's just what I need, another place to go visit and spend time which I don't have, LOL. I am really curious to see what kind of supplies she is going to have. I just love her style, she is so talented! This is the address Pixel Canvas check her out!

I did a few LOs yesterday, she had a challenge going and gave away a free kit which I used for one of them. this is my DD and my DH dancing at a friend's wedding. He looks so happy and she looks like she is all grown up with that strapless gown of hers. Holy Cow, I am going to have to lock her in a room until she is ready to get married, LOL. The next one is hubby again, this time with the middle DD. Same place, same activity. Daddy and his girls, it's just so cute. They grow up way too fast for my taste.

credits one credits two

The Champion LO was the challenge from Vinnie. We had to use a freebie template she gave us and blend the picture with a textured paper, use 2-4 embellishments and stitching. This is so Michael, too funny! Here are the credits for this one. Yesterday was his birthday, he is nine years old now and he thinks he is so big! He only had two little boys over, so I just let them play outside. It was more like a play date rather than a birthday party, but they didn't seem to mind at all. He had a good time and it was so much easier on the ears and nerves this way, LOL.

I still have to finish my last LO for the writer class. I finally came up with an idea for it, but am lacking pictures, so I will have to remedy that situation. The playground is pretty quiet these days and so is Debbie's site. I was going to take Debbie's travel class, but I am really hesitant, I have so much on my plate right now, I don't know if I can do it! Maybe I will sign up and just keep the material for later. Her sketches seem to be really neat, judging from the sample she let us download. I would really like to go through some of the tutorials I bought from Cassie Jones at DD. I've had them for a while and just never did them. Plus I need to go through Jessica's classes again with my CS3, so I can learn the program. Just going through Pattie's template class taught me some things I didn't know I had, great! Well, I will close now, it's getting late already again and I need to check out a few blogs yet.

Sweet Innocence

My girls came home the other day, totally disgusted. My oldest was going on and on about the whole story. From what I understand one girls in her class (7th grade) is "dating" a boy from 6th grade, my middle DD's class. So the two of them have to listen to their classmates bragging about how they are getting together at games and how they kissed. I don't know if it's true and in itself it isn't really that big a deal, but we are talking 12 and 11 year olds and it seems to be very distracting. So I just gave the principal a heads up about the whole story and let her take care of it. We are talking Catholic School here. The whole point of the story is that my girls were so upset about it. I love it! Please, Lord, give me a few more years without having to worry about problems with boys! They just sounded so innocent and responsible at the same time. Anyway, I thought it was kind of cute. I am thinking if this was my kid doing that kind of thing, I would like to know about it.

I have been busy doing a few more LOs. I like the challenges at Designer Digitals, especially with the Guest CT contest going on. Like I said before, there is a lot of inspiration there. I have learned a lot just looking around.I started working on another Shutterfly book, here are the first 2 pages

Credits for these here

This is going to be about our trip to Virginia this past summer. I just love Katie's new templates. I reduced them to 80%, I love all the white space. Here is the next set

credits for these here

Then there are a couple of extra pages . Another template challenge from Debbie Hodge's site, using Pattie Knox's Speedbytes. I really like her templates. Both LO's were done with photos taken at our friend's house. She was playing with the kids, doing Simon Says and they were having a ball! They just love her to pieces.

credits credits

Winged beauty is a copycat challenge at Designer Digitals, I really liked the colors. I will post the credits later. (I know I said that the last time, I will do it). The last one was the Thursday template challenge at DD, using one of Pattie's Speedbytes. These are my rosebushes, blooming one last time. I love the color, I didn't touch the photos either. Tomorrow I will post the credits, I promise! I am sure you all really want to know, LOL! credits credits

Update

It's about time, I would say. I think 2 classes are really too much at the same time, especially the writing class, it is so intense and thought provoking. I need a lot more time for those. The class is amazing though, very thorough and just great. I haven't done a page for Designer Digitals all week or left a comment for that matter. I just went through the blogs I follow, I am not quite done yet, but I slacked even with those, I regret to say. I have to play catch-up with everything. Here are some pages I completed. This is from Jessica's class, journaling about a conversation with somebody. I really enjoyed this one, it was cute. The other one is about me, it is a letter so my baby self. That took some thinking, but I enjoyed this one too. There were some great stories in the gallery. I love the techniques we learn with each one too. I learned to make an odd shaped journaling block with the pen tool. How great! All kinds of little things.

This here is another page from the Somerset Mountain Craft Days we went to. It will go with the Log house picture. I love turning the photos into drawings, the effect is so simple and yet so dramatic. Gotta love Photoshop! We learned how to create wordart and make it into a quote brush for future use. That I really expected to be easier. I had such a time lining the words up, increasing the size and so forth. It is fun, don't get me wrong, but now I can see why people simply buy wordart instead of creating it. It's a lot of work and takes quite some imagination. This is the Log House LO. I thought I already posted it, but I guess I didn't.  These people actually put this up and had some sleep overs during the year. I was told it wasn't the most comfortable place but a lot of fun. I wouldn't mind trying something like that, without the kids of course. I couldn't imagine them in cramped quarters like that, one room, one fireplace, no TV!

Well, the family is waiting for me to go to Sam's. I haven't been there in a few months, so I expect I will come home with a lot less money than I am leaving with. That place tends to do that to me! We will get to see our friends though, which is always fun. The kids love them to pieces and we don't get to be with them too often, as they live about 1 hour away. Hopefully I'll have some more later on! Ciao, arrivederci, auf Wiedersehen, Tschuess, bis bald, see you later!

Too many classes

at least that is the excuse de jour! I haven't posted on this blog for what seems like forever. This class with Jessica is really taking up a lot of time and doing the template class with Pattie on top of it.... why do I do this to myself, I wonder?! I really enjoy the writing class, we are supposed to set and write for 15 minutes a day, free writing, about anything at all. The first day I wrote almost 5 pages, amazing. I thought I had nothing to say. I just don't know what to do with all those ramblings. Unless there are matching photos I have a tough time making them into pages. It is a really interesting class. On one day we get the writing assignment and the next day we use that text on a template LO. Liv and Jess are taking turns giving the assignment. They really have put an awful lot of time and effort into these lessons, they are so well written and composed and just delightful! I highly recommend it. Let me see if I can come up with the pages I have

credits one, credits two, credits three

done so far These are the ones from their class. Now the whole composition was there already. All we had to do was to add the photos and papers, so they are not very individual. I changed a few little things here and there. I really liked the part of the last one where we used Wordl to add this word overlay at the bottom, so easy and fast. The words actually come from this blog, too cool!

Then there are the pages I did for Pattie's template class

Summer memories One last time

Remember

They are fun too and we get free kits from Designer Digitals to go with them.

Yesterday was the day of the big chat at Designer Digitals, all day long, every hour about a different subject with a freebie to go along. I did three LOs during the day. One had to be finished in 30 minutes, that is always a tough one for me, it takes me that long to pick a photo, LOL

change Five Things

the third one was actually the circle one, I used it twice, always frugal! That was a really stressful day, I had Gabrielle's birthday party going on from 3 to 5, so I could only take peeks at the computer here and there. My little girl is 13! Officially a teenager! Where did the time go? I know that the next 10 years are just going to fly by too. How cheerful! I will save the sad rambling for my journaling, LOL . Well, I will add the credits later, hubby is waiting to watch a movie

More pages done

Wow I am really getting stuff done these days, there is nothing like a little motivation, like challenges. That always gets me moving. I did this one here on my DH. We went to this party and all the guys got together to play volley ball, when I saw him take a peek at his watch. That is so like him, he just does not feel comfortable at parties. He likes to get together with some close friends and talk about his job or politics and religion. At least he tried to go along with everybody else and he played with the kids too, so I was grateful for that. It was a beautiful day and we all had fun. On the second page (which I originally hadn't planned) I added some pictures that show him playing as proof of his participation. I will try to put the pages next to each other, I

don't know if it will work though. I guess not, this is the closest I could get them, so it will have to do. Here are the credits for #1 and #2

This morning I finished a challenge at Designer Digital, the journaling challenge, which is brand new. That was just a quickie, but I like it nevertheless. Here are the credits

Today was also the beginning of the type writer class at Jessica Sprague's. We are off to a great start. The introduction was long and specific and just great. We had to sit down and write about something for at least 15 minutes. I am not a writer but I filled 5 pages in my notebook on a trip to the fair on Saturday. 5 pages!!! I didn't realize I had this much to say about anything, LOL. Now to shorten the whole thing and make it work for a LO. That will come tomorrow I guess. Liv (who is teaching the class with Jessica) has such a wonderful writing style, so descriptive and flowery, plus she is simply amazing!

More Time

That is what I need! I just don't seem to be able to keep up with everything and create at the same time! I have Google Reader, which is really great, it makes it so much easier to check on the blogs I follow. Then there are the different sites I read, the forums I belong to, the challenges I want to do and so on and so on....

I did a few more pages for Designer Digitals, nothing great, but at least I got some stuff done. Every time I go on that site, I just want to crawl under a rock and hide. Man, those women are good! They are always the same names who's stuff I like, just amazing. Monday is the beginning of the class at Jessica's, the type writer class. I am a little scared about this one, I am not really good at writing stuff down. But I guess that will be a good class to take then. Then there is the class at Debbie Hodge's site. It's a class on templates by Pattie Knox from Designer Digitals, I think I mentioned it before. So that's starting too. Some ladies from the Spraground have started a tutorial group, where some tuts are posted for everybody. It is really great, but we put it on hold until after the class is over. That is really a good thing, I just can't do another thing. My family is going to throw me out pretty soon, LOL. This is a LO I just did today. My DD took the picture yesterday on the way to piano. I just stopped on the bridge and she took the photos. I can't believe how nice they looked, nothing like the small depressed town we really live in. Amazing how photographs can lie! Here are the credits. Then there is this one, my oldest DD. We were at this wedding this past Saturday and she was all dressed up in this strapless dress, looking like an 18year old. I really like this page, it shows her off so well. Credits are here

The last one is this one here. I picked some photos from our VA beach vacation. Now I am kind of thinking I made a mistake, since I really wanted to make a book about the vacation and use K. Pertiet's templates for it. Oh well, I can always use this one separately. Credits here. This was actually a challenge from the Spraground. We were supposed to use a screenshot of a map in the LO.

I am excited about the classes starting on Monday, although I really wanted to go through Jessica's instructions again and use the CS3 version, since I don't know the half of it. Again, there is just not enough time in the day to play, what should a girl do? I hope I am not boring you all to tears here. Just look at the pictures and be happy and just ignore my rambling of the day.

My DD has a little friend sleeping over, so I better get everybody ready and then spend some time with DH and watch a movie before I zonk out! Talk to you all soon

DS trouble

This was really a funny story. I heard this crying from upstairs last night. It was really loud crying, sobbing with tears. I thought DS was hurt or at least the girls were picking on him, he sounded so upset. So I go upstairs to check on him, and there he is with his stupid DS, playing this game and he is losing this turn! He is yelling at the gameboy, crying his eyes out, totally hilarious! It got to the point where his sister yelled at him to be quiet because she was trying to do her homework. Of course he told her to shut up (which I don't allow),  to which she replied "make me", and his turn was to tell her he was going to kill her. Needless to say, he lost his gameboy for the rest of the night! I don't tolerate language like that to begin with, but the intensity of his dispair over a game was ridiculous. Anyway, I thought it was kind of funny aside from all of that. I did sneak a couple of pictures of him playing though (like any good mother would :), right?) Here is the page I created with that , and here are the credits . 

We got to spend some time at the pool the other day, the weather was so nice and who knows how many more times they will be able to swim. I hate to keep them inside and do nothing but homework, winter will be here soon enough. Of course the heater had been on and the water was like a bathtub, so they really had a good time (I turned the heater down now)/ We took some pictures of them under water, which looked really funny. And of course puppy kisses, which are the best kind of kisses in my book :) Today was another beautiful day, but we just didn't have the time to go out there, too much to do. Tomorrow maybe, DS is bringing a little classmate home to play, so we'll see how that's going to work out. He got his first note from the teacher today, I had really hoped we would be done with this nonsense. He was talking, laughing and making faces during assembly, plus he wasn't paying attention in class and goofing off. Well, I threatened him with the loss of his gameboy if I get another note, and I mean it. He knows that I am serious, enough is enough!  What a little pest he can be, LOL. 

Live Writer

This is great! Jeanne in Colorado had this thing on her blog and of course I had to stick my nose into it. Nothing new can get past me, for Pete's sake. It's from Microsoft and basically you can type your blog post on here and then post it later. This is easier to see, it looks exactly the way it's going to look on your blog (did you ever get frustrated posting your stuff and it's all messed up, the pictures aren't where they are supposed to be, the text goes any which way?). This thing even has spell check and different fonts. I am loving it already and I just started typing on it now. This lady here has it on her blog, so go check her out. She is really nice too, I had to ask her for some help and she replied very promptly (as did Jeanne btw.) . The name of her blog is Organized Mom.

On another note, Designer Digitals just started their  guest CT contest and the LOs are flooding in. There is no way I am even thinking I might win, but it is such a great incentive to scrap! The pages being posted are just gorgeous, what a great inspiration! I did a fast page last night, nothing special, but I like it nevertheless. I had taken some pictures around the pool area to be used as overlays or texture, so I stuck on on K. Pertiet's paper and I liked the result, just breaks it up a little. I have to play with that a little more. Anyway, here are the credits if you want to find out more. It's almost embarrassing to be posting there, but what the hey, I might as well do it.