I started this post last night but couldn’t get the random generator site to work. Fell asleep trying after midnight so happy belated Valentine’s day to everyone. Hope you spent it with your sweethearts. :) We finally went to see Fool’s Gold which was pretty good.

So I finally did get the random number site to work this morning (do people pay $60 for the deluxe version of that just for blog giveaways??) Anyway, I couldn’t decide whether to count starting first with the design blog or with the personal blog so I lucked out and the number that came up was low enough that I could pick one from each. :)

So the winners are Danielle from the comments on this blog. I’d already done a blog for but she’s got a new etsy shop so I’ll get her all hooked up with links and titles for that. Danielle, email me your new phone # and I’ll give you a call this weekend because I don’t think my emails are getting through to you lately. :)

And the winner from the design blog is Shawna Taylor. :) Congratulations!! Shawna, I’ll email you later today to find out which kit you’d like me to use. :)

Thanks so much everyone for the sweet comments and for entering the drawing. I’m still recovering from being computer-less for over a week and now starting full time work hours next week but I’m trying to respond by email to as many comments as possible. I appreciate the encouragement so much though. Really some days are great and I’m sure someday I’ll look back and understand the big picture better. Hopefully sooner rather than later. :)

So I haven’t posted much specifically here on this blog other than mentioning ‘my sweetheart’ here and there and he’s made a few sneaky guest appearances but I always get questions asking who this mystery guy is. I figured it’s about time I dedicate a post and thought what better timing than valentine’s (or the day after)?! :)

So this is the guy who has ALL of my heart.

He’s my once in a lifetime true love. I know without a doubt that he’s who I’m meant to spend the rest of my life with. I can’t wait to experience new things with him, travel to new places and just do the normal everyday things like fighting over who took the garbage out last. I will never take him for granted.

He’s my soulmate, my photographer, the greatest shopper in the world. :)

These scrapbook pages aren’t anything new (I haven’t scrapped in at least 6 months) but I’ve never shared them here on the blog. There are more but I won’t bombard you. If you want to see them you can check ‘em out here.

I haven’t gotten any of these notes in at least a couple weeks now *hint hint*. ;) But he’s a total gentleman. Seriously, the first time he got me a pop and took the cap off before handing it to me I think I totally melted. Who does that?! It’s the little things that are the big things after all, right? :)

Isn’t he perfect?! I’m pretty lucky. He’s a keeper. :) I love you babe. *muah*

In completely unrelated news, my sister Kimberly had her baby this morning. I got to see her at lunch and she’s absolutely adorable. I got pictures but I’m at work and don’t have a cord to transfer them but I’ll be back probably later tonight to post one or two. :)

Kay, gotta wrap things up for the day. Busy weekend of catch-up ahead and hopefully another trip to see my niece squeezed in there. Thanks for the warm welcome back to blog world. I really did miss it and hope to do much better at popping in now and then. Although hopefully with a little shorter posts. LOL

Happy belated Valentine’s Day and hope everyone has a great weekend!

Will a give-away make up for the fact that I haven’t posted here in almost 3 months???

I was hoping to post about this exciting news much earlier but my laptop crashed and I just finally got it back this weekend. If you know me at all, you know that losing my laptop for over a week is about the worst kind of torture one could put me through. Excruciating. Not to mention I had just days before that decided that cable tv was a luxury and that I didn’t really ‘need’ to watch Fox News 24 hours a day. I watch my favorite tv shows from 1 am to 2 when I change from work mode to wind-down mode in bed. So yes, my laptop even sleeps with me. It was a lonely lonely week. :( On top of all that our area lost power last Sunday for about 6 hours so while everyone else was watching the super bowl I was about 3 hours into a power outage and starting to get cold and lose the only available sunlight to crochet by. I spent the next 2 hours reading a book by candle light.

Anyway, back to the give-away so that those of you sent here by the fabulous Shabby Miss Jenn can move on to more interesting blogs in your list (you know, the ones who post more often than quarterly). :) Shabby Miss Jenn has created some shabby blog kits that include everything you need to make your blog look beautiful. The kits themselves were designed entirely by Miss Jenn and they’re amazing. Hopefully in the future I’ll be able to collaborate on some designs as well but for now my part comes in for those that don’t care to mess with all the code to get things looking just so. For me it provides a nice break from the more intense creative side of designing but I get to still help people make their blogs more personal and fun to look at. :) I’ll be taking on a very limited number of custom blog designs over the next few months so this will keep me up on the code (read geeky) side of things because I really don’t want to have to re-learn all that stuff after being away from it for 3 months. I’m a use it or lose it type person for sure. Sooo, that’s a bit about this exciting new collaboration and to celebrate I thought it would be fun to give away a shabby blog installation and Miss Jenn, being the sweetheart that she is, has offered to throw in the shabby blog kit of your choice. :) Just leave a comment here (make sure to include your email address) and on Valentine’s Day I’ll randomly pick a lucky winner. :)

Lots of emails to catch up on and a few banners to recreate (luckily easier the second time around than the 1st). Those of you waiting please be patient and I promise I’ll make the wait up to you. I’ve got everything loaded back on the computer and the next few days off to get caught up.

So… the past few months in a nutshell:

Holidays for the most part - SUCKED. The week leading up to Christmas was great. Got some VERY sweet gifts from my sweetheart. I got clothes (which I desperately needed and oddly enough he’s the only person who I trust to clothes shop for me without me even there) and stocking stuffers like razors (’cuz they’re so stinkin’ expensive and I’m trying to manage on my own here and sometimes that means luxuries like a sharp razor are the last thing on the shopping list, ya know, behind milk and laundry detergent). Oh, and a power tooth brush. (hmmm, now that I actually list these things, you think there’s a personal hygiene concern here? I swear I brush and shave daily even when I’m too busy.) Anyway, moving on ‘cuz this post is already getting too long… Christmas Eve I spent with my family and got to see my nieces and nephews open their presents. Can’t beat that. Christmas day I spent alone. Wow is that ever about the worst day to be alone. I tried to pretend it was just a normal Tuesday but wasn’t that successful. The new year’s holiday was more of the same. I just wanted the holidays to be over. Luckily I had a birthday in January which went much better. Dinner with my parents the night before. I did spend most of my actual birthday working but I took a break for lunch with Nikki and a little mall walking that afternoon. Dinner at one of my favorite restaurants that night with my sweetheart and then a girls movie night to see 27 dresses.

Project 365 … I decided to jump in on the photo a day challenge here. I was really disappointed in how few photos I have from the past year and I’ve been wanting to learn more about my camera so I thought this would be the perfect challenge for me. Shockingly I’ve actually taken at least one photo almost every day this year and I’m learning a lot already about my camera settings and lighting and even a little about myself. I figured if I’m going to make it through the year I’m not going to beat myself up on rules. The important thing is to document something from my life each day. For me that won’t always mean a self-portrait but the idea is that most of them would be. And once in a great while it’s okay if someone else even took the photo as long as it’s a photo documenting that day of my life in some small way. And I love the prompts that Anna comes up with each day but I’m not letting a difficult prompt hold me back from taking a photo. If I did I would’ve skipped day 1 and what kind of way is that to start a year long challenge?! I’ve missed a few days so far, lost a couple days when my computer crashed and have over a week still sitting on my camera not downloaded yet but you can see the ones that I have posted here or through the flickr link on the right. So if you don’t see me here for awhile you can always check the flickr to make sure I haven’t dropped off the planet.

Life and loneliness …So I had the opportunity to work with Dr. Brene Brown on a blog design recently and she sent me a copy of her book that the blog is somewhat in conjunction with. Brene has been so fun to work with. To be honest I think if it weren’t for the computer crash, canceled cable and even power outage it may have taken me a better part of the year to read the book she’d sent because I rarely can clear my mind enough to read. The book is called ‘I Thought It Was Just Me’ and the sub-title is ‘women reclaiming power and courage in a culture of shame’.

One paragraph that really hit home with me said this:

"We believe that the most terrifying and destructive feeling that a person can experience is psychological isolation. This is not the same as being alone. It is a feeling that one is locked out of the possibility of human connection and of being powerless to change the situation. In the extreme, psychological isolation can lead to a sense of hopelessness and desperation. People will do almost anything to escape this combination of condemned isolation and powerlessness."

For quite some time now I’ve been feeling incredibly lonely. The kind of loneliness that doesn’t go away even when I’m in a crowd of people or with friends. Even before reading this book I’d been giving a lot of thought to the idea that my loneliness is more than a product of just living alone. I mean that’s definitely a factor. I’m tired of coming home to an empty apartment (other than Pixel which definitely helps), tired of grocery shopping alone, tired of not having anyone here to talk to or just know they’re in the other room, and tired of sleeping in bed alone. I mean sure, sleeping diagonally across the bed is nice and all but it’s just not the same as having someone next to you. Anyway, I know these are products of choices I’ve made and right now the right choice is to be on my own, it’s just been a really long year and I know for sure that I’m not really cut out to do this long term.

But I think the loneliness lately is actually more a product of the fact that I’ve intentionally isolated myself from pretty much everyone who cares about me. I think largely because I kept thinking that in a few weeks or maybe a couple months I’ll have this life thing in order. That everything will be neatly tied up in a pretty package and then I can let those who I’ve kept at arms length back into my life. And hopefully by then that pretty package will have a few extra hours in there so that I can spend more time with these friends. That is if they’re still around.

Anyway, I’m rambling but I guess I just want to say thank you to those friends who still check in even when I drop off the planet for months at a time. Hopefully I’ll either learn enough from reading Brene’s book or all the chaos and tough parts of life will start taking a turn for the better and I can start rebuilding bridges that I’ve torn down over the past year.

Wow, that got much heavier than I intended. Luckily I probably lost most of you right after the blog giveaway right??? Kay, I’ve been jotting down thoughts to blog about on the backs of receipts and junk mail for 3 months so let’s see…

Movie Reviews …

Juno - Love loved LOVED it. So many great lines. Funny all the way through. If you haven’t seen it you must!

Gone Baby Gone - Very thought provoking. Kinda rough but very well written and I didn’t even know Ben Affleck had a brother. Great line from the movie - "He lied to me. Now I can’t think of one reason big enough for him to lie about that’s small enough not to matter."

Fracture - Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling. Amazing on screen together.

Dedication - This one I haven’t seen yet but it should be in my mailbox right now. Love Mandy Moore (as a singer and actress) and I’ve wanted to see this since I first saw the trailer months ago. Somehow I think it skipped the theatres around here which works out actually kinda good since I don’t have cable and I’m running out of good movies to watch when I need something playing in the background. Oh, and the website for it is quite artsy and creative. Gotta love that. :)

No Reservations - very sweet, great movie to rent for valentine’s day.

What I want to see this valentine’s day… Definitely, Maybe oh, and I still have to see this. Not a fan of the long hair version Matthew McConaughey but he and Kate Hudson are always great together.

Movies and music are two of my favorite things. For my current music faves you can always check out the blog-pod. I try to keep that fresh even when I haven’t posted here in awhile. :)

To-Do List …

• Shower
• Get caught up on blog design work this week
• Try to get caught up on emails
• Take daily photos
• Read the rest of Brene’s book
• Mail out packages (I still have Christmas gifts waiting to be mailed and it’s Feb!)
• Post more on blog

Wow, if you made it through reading all of this you deserve 2 entries for the giveaway. LOL Those of you who made it through, pop over to the design blog and leave a comment there for an extra chance. :)

Hello scrapbooking, digital photo people.  Shawn made the mistake of giving me her password so I should put a disclaimer that she has no knowlege of this post.  Thus, don’t hold it against her.   :)

I don’t really know what to write because I can’t really relate to the scrapbooking community.  I do take pictures, but I rarely download them to my computer.  I even discovered undeveloped film in a box that contains some high school stuff.  I can only assume the film is from either highschool for my first year in college.   I just threw it away though.  I figured it must not be important if I forgot about it. 

So what can I talk about?  How about Shawn.  She spends about 95% of her time working on blog orders, about 2% of her time with me and 3% of her time with everything else.  That 3% does include her showering and cleaning up, so you can imagine the smell from her apartment.  Yes Shawn, I was joking. 

I know Shawn LOVES working on blogs.  It is definitly something she is very passionate about.  She is EXTREMELY gifted when it comes to that artsy stuff.  She must have a solid reputation because she’s getting blog orders everyday.  That’s why she barely posts anymore.  Remember the days when she would post everday?

This week Shawn is house sitting for a mutual friend.  Their house is in the boonies so she’s even more isolated from the world.  The house sits way off the road and surrounded by woods.  I thought about dressing up like Jason from Friday the 13th and scarying her.  However, I really love my relationshp with her and would like to continue to pursue that relationship. 

Anyways, now you all know where she’s been.  I know she misses talking with everyone and posting on her blog, but right now just trying to get caught up with the blog orders.   Until next time….peace.

PS.  I can promise you Shawn broke out into a cold sweat when she saw my post on here.  But it’s not so bad is it Shawn?  I only had to edit it 20-30 times.  ;)

Took a little break to upload a new playlist for your blog listening. I know at least a few of you listen to it now and then (Nikki). The current set is quite a mixture based on the little bit of the CMA’s that I caught and VH1’s top 20. Especially loving Natasha Bedingfield’s new song and Alicia Keys who has a new album coming out tomorrow I believe. And who knew that Santana had collaborated with Chad Kroeger from Nickelback?! Great combination. I’ve also noticed recently that I seem to like just about every song that Fallout Boy comes out with. So there’s a little country, a little spanish rock, some pop/soul and my current fave song from Christian radio. How’s that for a well-rounded playlist? Only a couple more weeks till Christmas music playlists. :)

And because I can’t post again without some sort of image or video here’s a song from a movie that I’m still totally captured by. I’m not really a big dvd collector but I’m pretty sure I’ll be adding this one to my small collection once it comes out.

…to say that I’m at the office today but then have a few days off to work on blog designs. Yay! The past couple weeks has been a bit chaotic with extra hours at both of my regular jobs. Definitely not complaining about extra hours but it’ll be nice to be able to focus on design stuff for a few days. I got a lot done over the weekend and I’m waiting on final approvals for a couple blogs to finish them up as well as a few that I’m hoping to send out tonight but I’m thinking with 3 whole days to play I could take on 1 or 2 more orders. I know I have that new blog for posting about this design stuff but I thought I’d give my regular blog readers a heads up that I’ve got a couple spots open and that after those I’ll be adjusting my pricing for future orders. I’d like to find a balance where I keep busy enough but not so busy that I can’t give each blog the attention that I’d like to. Sooo, if you’ve been thinking about doing a little blog remodeling you can fill out the questionnaire here. Not sure exactly what the new pricing will be yet but it will likely be a bit more of an a la carte type pricing. We’ll see.

Kay, back to work so I can get out at 5. If I take a break from designing maybe I’ll get a picture of my new LONG overdue haircut and fresh color. I have never appreciated a cut so much in my life.  Oh, and if you have girls check out Melody’s blog tomorrow for a drawing.  :)

Oooh, and I finally figured out how to add the links for RSS feeds. They’re over there on the right at the top of the page. :)

Wow is this hard for me to post without a single picture. Kills me. LOL Maybe I can make it up with new tunes to listen to while blogging. I’ll have those up here shortly. :)

PS: Anyone gonna watch the Bachelor tonight? I’m still routin’ for DeAnna by the way. I must’ve missed whatever Lisa didn’t like about her.  Can’t wait to see who he picks. And have any of you seen the new VH1 show called The Shot? I just caught it for the first time yesterday and I’m already hooked. :)

Since faith was the theme over at the Fancy Word for Simple blog this week and Sandra wanted to hear about my experience at Wellspring last week I figured it would be a good topic for a blog post today. (Well, actually I’ve been intending to blog about it since Monday but it’s been a hectic week)

So Nikki and I decided to go to a church that I used to go to about 2 1/2 years ago. It got me thinking again about what factors there are when it comes to picking a church to call home.

I really like Wellspring. From the moment I pull up to the sign at the entrance I’m happy to be there. I know the building itself shouldn’t be a factor. And I’m actually typically very turned off by a church that puts ridiculous amounts of money into their ‘church campus’. Most of these elaborate churches come off as cold to me. Not warm or welcoming at all.  My favorite church that I’ve attended met in a highschool on Sundays and had their church office at the local health club. They didn’t ever want to be defined by a church building but by the people who went there. Unfortunately that church no longer exists so who knows, maybe there’s something to be said for having a building to call home. I’d still like to think not though. All that being said, Wellspring has a BEAUTIFUL church building. I went to their website in search of photos to include in my post and stumbled on the original architect drawings and not surprisingly it was designed by my favorite local architect.

I know it’s not supposed to be the important thing about church but I do love the warmth that this church has achieved even in it’s design. Pulling up the long drive you feel almost like you’re pulling up to a lodge. Walking through the doors into the church it has that same feeling. Huge fireplace, comfy couches and chairs set up in conversational areas in the lobby, a nursery that looks like a cotton candy factory, a coffee shop with fresh cookies and donuts and even red bull behind the counter to keep the teens awake during church. And speaking of teens, the hang out room for their meetings looks like a night club. A vintage Volkswagen beetle, pool table, more couches and a bar (again stocked with red bull). The entire atmosphere is geared towards being a fun inviting place for kids to hang out. If you want to see photos of the inside you can take a virtual tour here.

So yeah, one of the things I love about this place is in fact the building. What can I say, I’m just wired that way to appreciate warm cottage style surroundings. It makes me smile. I can’t help it.

But there are other things that I love about this church. Like the fact that everyone is incredibly friendly. Like just the right amount of friendly really. Warm smiles and greetings from just about everyone you encounter. Very welcoming. Sad to say that I’ve encountered churches where this is not so much the case. I’d definitely put this at a higher importance than the appearance of the church itself. :)

Then there’s the singing. I LOVE music and I love to sing. I wasn’t blessed with the solo voices that my sisters all got but I enjoy singing none-the-less. Music and lyrics move me more so than just plain words, written or spoken. Something about the music just gives it more impact for me. I guess it’s another way I’m wired. Wellspring sings alot and I love that.

They also have an excellent preacher. I find myself thinking about the message throughout the week and to me that’s important. So often in my church-going past I sat through the service, and I listened (really I did) but once I walked through the doors to leave I didn’t give the sermon another thought. I would say hearing a message that I can relate to life throughout the next week and beyond is definitely an important factor in finding a church home. Arguably more important than a nice building and friendly church members. :) You can listen to the message from our service last week here. (Today’s message isn’t up quite yet).

So now for the one and only con that I’m struggling with at Wellspring. Each and every week (or at least most weeks) they have what i would consider an alter call. I dunno, I guess for me it comes off as showy. I also quite often look at church from a perspective of ‘how would someone unfamiliar with church life feel coming into this church/service for the first time?’ Personally if it were me I think I’d be intimidated and feel quite awkward in the alter call situation. I have the same frustration with churches where they sing songs or recite things where a visitor would feel as if they’ve missed some sort of handout or class they should’ve gone to before attending the service. So I dunno, I really struggle with this. I’ve talked with a few people about it this week and they all seemed to agree but for some reason I feel a bit like a sub-standard Christian for having an issue with this.

Anyway, this has gotten MUCH longer than I intended but I’d love to hear your thoughts on what’s important to you in a church you’d call home and if you’re brave, what’s your view on alter calls?

Oh, and I loaded up the blogpod with songs of faith that are particularly moving to me. They’ve been up all week just waiting for this post. :) I did find some new great songs that I’m dying to upload so if you want to hear my songs of faith soundtrack listen soon because I’ll likely be swapping a few out for some new favorites by tomorrow night. :)

Off to bed now. I’m exhausted. Lots more to post about maybe from the office tomorrow if the phones are quiet enough during break. I’ve been busy finishing up a few blog designs and struggling with a couple new designs. I’ve posted a few of the recent projects over on the design blog.

Happy Veteran’s Day!