Found these little cards here and filled one out digitally Friday night.

Feeling a little better now but it’s been a rough week. Seeing a grandmother who was always so strong and independent become so frail is tough. Seeing her casket carried to the gravesite next to my grandfathers by my brother and cousins was even more difficult. But to be honest I think it’s entirely different circumstances that made the loss of my grandma this week particularly difficult. Circumstances that I chose for myself that I don’t regret but that seem to emphasize otherwise bearable feelings of being alone. The email from my mom letting us know that Grandma had peacefully passed on came late Tuesday night after any friends that I could call had already gone to bed. Going to bed alone each night is a lonely feeling anyway but it’s emphasized when you could really just use a hug. Going home to an empty house after the visitation Thursday night was equally emotional for me, emphasized by a severe storm (which I normally love) and tornado warnings nearby (which is a bit scary when you’re in a 2nd floor apartment). I live alone by choice so I’m not looking for pity. I just want to remember what this time in life was like for me and this is my only journal so those of you who read unfortunately get the bad with the good.

Fortunately there is good to share too. I’m feeling better today. Wishing there were 2 more days to the weekend. But I got to spend alot of the day yesterday surrounded by the most adorable nieces and nephews on the planet. Sharing tiny cookie bites with Ainsley, watching Isa wink, cuddling with Selah in the nursery and getting one of the world’s best hugs from Paige just a few of the good bits.

And I haven’t even blogged about me new sweet baby niece that I got to hold for quite awhile Thursday night. She was such a honey. This is Gracyn Kay. You can see lots more pictures of her here.

Off to work today and then working on blog designs tonight. I decided it was time to start a separate blog to post about the design stuff. I felt like it was sortof taking over this blog. So if you are interested in what’s going on in the blog design part of life you’ll find all that here from now on. I have a lot of ideas for this new blog including links to fun blogging tools, advice on posting, tutorials and of course posts about the current blogs I’m working on. So, the following is the last (well, last regular) peek at a blog that I’ll be finishing up hopefully tonight…

And finally a fun little quiz that I stumbled across and had to check it out for myself. I think it was right on for me. Funny cuz I really never think of myself as having an accent. Apparently mine is an Inland North accent. What’s yours?

Have a great Monday.

So, blog updates… the banner I posted in my last post over a month ago IS for my dear friend Jayne. Shabby Juls got it right. :) Jayne’s got some fun things to add to the sidebar area and then we’ll make some minor adjustments but for the most part it’s done and one of my favorites so far. :)

And then one that I did awhile back that I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about before was for a little shop in Oklahoma City called Basiques Boutique owned by the sweetest mother/daughter team. I’m thrilled that they’re going to actually start selling some of their gorgeous items online so stay tuned. Here’s what we came up with for the banner using one of their gorgeous wall paintings. How fun is that?! :)

Another blog that’s almost finished but close enough to show is Jo-Anne Coletti’s. She paints gorgeous rose paintings and has recently released a CD of digital scrapbooking papers and elements. It was fun to use some of her own elements in the design. One thing you might notice about her blog is that I’m now offering the complete custom design package for blogger customers. Pretty exciting since I’ve had a number of requests for that. :)

I’ve got 3 blogs that are in their final design stages of pulling everything together and coordinating with the client on sidebar items and I’ve got a few that I’m waiting for feedback on their initial design. (A couple that were sent out over 2 weeks ago so I’m hoping they’re just on vacation or something and not trying to figure out how to tell me the banner is not at all what they were looking for. LOL)

I also have been wanting to switch my blog over to wordpress for a LONG time and finally decided to take a weekend (and it took the better part of an entire weekend) to learn wordpress once and for all. I had just gone through a very discouraging situation with a client where I almost decide to hang up my blog designing hat. An idea that I had that I thought would be a fun option to offer to future blog clients, one that I’d put a lot of creative energy and work into was given to another designer and it just sucked the fun right out of this designing stuff. I don’t get a lot of original, completely-not-done-before, creative ideas and this was one that I was pretty excited about. What made me even more happy was that the client was super excited about my idea too. Well, now the credit for that fun idea will go to another designer. If someone is interested in having a fantabulous about page done for them I am more than happy to haul out the fun ideas with all the bells and whistles that I have now stashed away in my little creative cabinet but I don’t think I’ll be advertising it as an ala carte option for now because I don’t want it to appear that I’m copying someone else’s creative idea. Sooooo, instead of continuing to feel abused and taken advantage of I chose to let the situation motivate me to learn more aspects of this blog design world and find something different to offer.

So this is my new home on the web and I’m SO excited to start offering full wordpress custom design and setup option to clients. What’s AWESOME about wordpress is that there is no monthly fee for it and it’s incredibly customizable. Like crazy customizable. I can’t wait to play around more with my own design but for now I’m just tickled with little things like how fun the comments icons are and how nicely they show up right after my signature. It’s the little things like that that can totally make my day. :)

So here’s the current pricing for the various blog design options. I’ll be finishing up the blogs I’m currently working on by this weekend so if you’re interested in a custom design e-mail me or you can fill out the questionnaire here. Not to sound like an infomercial here but these are introductory prices and will likely change after I’ve had a chance to realize (as I often do) that I’m only making about 50 cents an hour on these projects. LOL I will also be likely increasing the prices of the design options in blogger and typepad but until I have time to make those changes on my website pricing page you can jump in on the current rates. :)

Kay, infomercial over. :)

I saw this little photo project posted by Rachel awhile back and since a word immediately came to mind AND I have a fancy little remote for my camera I decided to join in. You can see lots more here.  But yeah, I’m beat. So if you decide to jump in on the photo project send me a link so I can check out how you’re feeling. :) 

I also feel inspired, motivated and blessed so it’s not all bad. :)

So here’s my current balanced to-do list:

I decided that my to do list template needed a little updating. Still balanced, just different. I uploaded the new template so you can grab it here if anyone’s interested.

And then I joined in a little challenge at one of my favorite blogs and they posted this little list of girl-power questions yesterday.  Here’s mine. :)

1. Name - Shawn
2. Pink - Love it or Hate it? love it
3. Signature shade of lipstick, lipgloss, etc. - pink gloss (little bit sparkly)
4. Do you have a best girl friend? I have many - the VERY best
5. Do you have a woman mentor? not that I can think of
6. Are you a woman mentor to someone else? I highly doubt it
7. Tomboy or Princess? Princess
8. Favorite Girl Band can’t think of a girl band but favorite girl artist - hands down Sara Bareilles
9. Are you a mom? Do you want to be one? just to pixel and actually no
10. Do you and your mom have any rituals? not that I know of
11. Fashion magazines - yea or nay. nay
12. Do you have a feel good outfit? do feel good shoes count?
13. Have you called your grandma or special aunt, or special older lady lately? saw my grandma for the last time Friday night
14. Signature Scent? angel although I rarely wear perfume
15. Favorite female tv character I can’t pick a favorite
16. Favorite place to hang out with gal pals? a good chick flick with popcorn
17. Did you ever ditch your girl friends to be with a guy? Do you still? I’m sure I have
18. Friend you call when you need a laugh? Jayne
19. Friend you call when you need a shoulder to cry on? Jill and/or Nikki, depends how late it is. :)
20. Have you reminded your friends of how much they mean to you lately? not nearly enough

Can you tell I’m trying to make up for a month of not blogging? Kay, back to work and then dinner with Jill tonight and funeral visitation for my grandma. Tomorrow is the funeral and then I’m looking forward to a rather quiet weekend and catching up with out-of-town cousins. Back soon with some photos of recent sewing projects and hopefully an etsy store update.

Have a great day!

Kay, here are some random things I’ve been giving a lot of thought. Well, partially random. I guess they all have to do with things that I enjoy doing. And they all have to do with ways to make a little extra spending money. So I guess they’re not completely random. I have two part time jobs that I love. I don’t really want to give either of them up because I know I’ve got it GREAT at both. Flexibility, great hours (although more would be even greater), great pay, a kick butt laptop that I can use personally (more than I even do at work)… I’d really be a fool to leave either job. They pay the bills (although sometimes JUST) but it would be really nice to find a way to make a little extra without giving up either of these job and doing something that I enjoy doing. That’s everyone’s dream right? So here’s my random thoughts on the various things that I love:

LOVE sewing them. LOVE picking out the fabrics to sew them with. LOVE hearing how much people *heart* them when they arrive in the mail. Not a huge fan of doing the custom order type stuff. Really just not my thing I guess. What I love is making something that I would carry myself. At the same time obviously it’s important to make something that people out there just HAVE to have.

So, here’s where I’d love some feedback. If you were looking to buy a handmade bag what styles are you drawn to? Are there colors or patterns that you’d love to see? Is there a certain size that’s just right? Would you be looking for something a little more unique? I’ve been playing around with embellishing some of my newer bags (to be posted soon I promise). Do you think that makes them a little harder to sell since I may be narrowing my audience a bit or is that just what someone would be looking for when buying handmade goods? These are the tough decisions that come along with trying to make money at something you love, right?  I just thought maybe getting some feedback might help me with what direction to take the whole purse sewing thing.

At one point I had big dreams of doing digital scrapping for hire. I even had a website darn near ready to go live. It was going to be sort of a collaboration with myself and a few other scrapping friends where people could choose which of us to work with on a project based on which of our styles best matched their taste. Seemed genius but I think life just got busy and there were a few questions that we never really got ironed out so it got put on the back burner. Still would LOVE to do this but not really sure how to find the clients and there are so many questions of commercial use policies that I wonder if it would be worth it. I’m someone who tends to use many different designers on a single page. I could see myself scrapping a page and having a tally of 5 kits that I’d need to re-purchase for the clients project and I would think that would eat into any profits pretty quickly. I haven’t really checked recently if there’s still a list of commercial use designers out there. Anyone know? To me if I couldn’t scrap the pages for others the way I normally would for myself then  a) I’m not sure I’d enjoy it and b) I would think the client would be disappointed in the end-result if they hired me to do an album based on my current style. Wouldn’t it be great if things could just be much simpler? Have any of you done scrapping for hire at all? I’d love to hear your experiences with it and how you handle some of the issues involved. Another avenue I could take with this particular idea would be to offer wedding album design. I’d like to find a photographer (ideally locally) that has a photography style that would be fun to work with and team up to provide an album for their clients that’s a little more personal than the typical wedding album style. I was lucky enough to play with some of Shari’s amazing wedding photos a couple years ago and it was definitely something I would enjoy doing more but having great photos to work with makes all the difference.

I’ve also done some digi-scrapping classes. Love doing these and it’s so fun seeing people get so excited about the hobby. I know there’s some others of you who do this (Kari). How do you reach new clients? I think it would be great to teach these classes at a local scrapbook store but are they more open to that now days? I’ve considered contacting one that’s right near my apartment but I’m so intimidated by it and I’m not really one to sell myself. Gotta work on that. Do any of you teach at an LSS? I’ve noticed there are going to be seminars on just that at CHA this year so maybe they’ll start embracing that after attending some of those classes. :)

Another idea I’ve been tossing around is blog banner design. Do you think people would love to have a custom designed blog header? Enough to pay maybe $20 for one? And then the question again is how to advertise such a thing. I could add a little blurb in my side-bar but I think probably 90% of the people who visit this little ‘ol blog are perfectly capable of creating their own blog banner. I’d imagine most of you are also digi-scrappers and very familiar with graphic design. Hmmmm

Then there’s…

I LOVE creating slide shows. For the life of me I can’t figure out how to save them in a way that they can be inserted in a blog post but I WILL conquer that task. I just finished creating one the other night and have done a few others in the past. You can check them out here. The three earlier videos I’d actually love to redo now that I’m more comfortable with the software. I, for one, have such a love of music so something about seeing my photos set to a favorite song or one that reminds me of the event the photos were taken at just makes it so great. There are certain things that I think are so difficult to capture everything in a scrapbook page or even a whole album sometimes. Like a vacation or even something as simple as going to see Disney on Ice or a birthday party. I’ve never been good for some reason at scrapping those types of things but I can put together a slide show that makes me feel like I’m right back in that moment. Anyway, it’s something I enjoy doing and have gotten pretty comfortable with the software for it so I’d love to find a way to do it more often and make a little extra spending money at the same time. :)

And then not entirely unrelated there’s my love for…

I need to bring my camera in for a minor repair but after that I would LOVE to start doing some local photo shoots and get some practice to start building just a small side photography business. I have a great camera, a couple great lenses and some amazing professional actions for post processing work. Currently I seem to have to take about 100 photos to get 3 or 4 spectacular ones but with some practice, and a bit of studying what works and what doesn’t, I think taking photos for other people would be immensely rewarding. I already have my first guinnea pig family lined up, just have to firm up a date that works but I’m really excited about the idea of making photography something more than just a hobby. :)

So that’s the random ideas that I’ve been tossing around in my head. Would love to hear any advice or feedback on any or all of the above.

And this is where I should really start a completely separate post because now it’s going completely random and waaayyyy too long for anyone to possibly still be reading but oh well.

Here’s a recent photo of Pixel (per request)

This is the look she gives me after she’s just been scolded. Like ‘what? what’d I do?’. Typically lately I’m scolding her for any number of things like sneaking into my bathroom and getting my shower poof to chew on, or into the bedroom closet to find a flip flop ‘cuz apparently they’re the preferred type of shoes or her most recent silly adventure that seems to just make her SO happy is going into the spare bathroom and grabbing the last piece of tissue on the toilet paper roll and running as far down the hall and into the living room as she can get. It’s amazing how much toilet paper I’ve gone through from this little stunt of hers. Ugh! It’s a good thing she’s crazy cute.

I think it’s been about a week now since I’ve finished a LO. I was on a really good roll there for awhile and hoping to get back to it maybe tomorrow. I did have a pretty exciting morning though on Tuesday on the scrapping front. I was wondering why there seemed to be an unusual # of comments left on an older LO in my gallery at SisTv. Have I mentioned this site before? LOL Still infatuated with it and quite possibly even MORE this week :) So I started thinking that maybe my sweet friend Jayne was pimpin’ me in the forums there again. That’s what friends are for right? So I head over to the forum and scan through the threads on the first page and see a thread announcing that the new catwalk was posted and I thought ‘NO, GET OUT! I couldn’t be on the catwalk’. But YES! I WAS on the catwalk. And chosen by none other than Big Sis herself the founder of the site. Pretty exciting stuff. Made my day. :)  You can see the LO that was picked here. Funny cuz I wasn’t even sure I was happy with how it turned out and figured I’d likely go back and make a few changes. Guess maybe not. :)

Kay, believe it or not I had more to blog about but since almost the entire post has been sitting on my computer for over a week now I guess I better just post it and blog again later. Hope everyone’s having a great weekend. Mine has actually been pretty lonely and pretty crappy so I guess it’s a good thing I wrote most of this on a much brighter note. Also not looking forward at all to the holiday week ahead which I know is completely bizarre but weekends and holidays lately are not my thing. I actually prefer the work week where I keep myself busy. Fortunately I do have a busy work week ahead so that’ll help.

I do have a little tutorial to post that should’ve gone along with this post a week or so ago and maybe I’ll be back to post a LO or two if I get some scrappin’ time in after church tomorrow.

So, as Brittany says…Until

I was looking through my book of scraps over at two peas and I stumbled across this gem and thought I’d share here. I think eventually this will make it onto a scrap page but at the moment I’m stuck on how to best do that. I’ve got another post started but I’m too tired to finish it tonight so for now here’s some advice that I thought was priceless:

How to Quit Life & Start Living
Jim Allen

1. Recognize that LIFE is what you get when you’re born. . .
. . . LIVING is what you do with it! You can sit back and wait for life to happen to you or you can make it happen yourself. As Maya Angelou once said, "Life likes to be taken by the lapel and told, I’m with you kid. Let’s go!"

2. Define life. . . it leads to the fine life.
Life is not a slogan, no matter what Nike, McDonald’s, ABC, NBC, or any other media giant might have you believe. While those "Life is. . . ." t-shirts are often witty, the philosophy they propose, like the shirts themselves, are rarely "one size fits all." Define life and living on your own terms and you’ve a better chance of getting both.

3. Take charge of your life.
Geoffrey Abert said that when you take charge of your life, "there is no longer need to ask permission of other people or society at large. When you ask permission, you give someone veto power over your life." To start living your life, you’ve got to be in control of it.

4. Little things mean a lot.
Life throws a lot of little negative things in our way that must be dealt with or else they will greatly diminish how we enjoy our days. Stephen Vincent Benet said it best: "Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways." 

7. Use everything.
You are blessed with a particular set of skills and talents that NO ONE else has. Use every skill and talent to live your life as joyfully and abundantly as possible. Leave this life as Erma Bombeck wished to: "When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.”’

I’ve got some thoughts that I’ve been meaning to post about in regards to finding ways to do what I love and make a little extra money at the same time. Isn’t there a quote about that somewhere? I’m sure I’ve heard one. Anyway, I have 2 part time jobs that I love and they’re enough to pay the rent and almost enough to pay for gas to get to said jobs but it would nice to have a little spending money now and then. Anyway, I would love to find a way to take the things I love, sewing, digital scrapbooking and photography and figure out the best way to make a little extra money doing them. I have lots to chatter about that here on the blog and would love some feedback but I haven’t had time to put all my current thoughts into a post. So hopefully that post is coming soon.

I wanted to at least post quickly and give you a link to the great font I mentioned yesterday. I saw this font in a LO posted at SisTv by Jen S who is a fabulous paper scrapper. Apparently it’s the same font used by Basic Grey for their cut-out letters which I would totally use if I were a paper scrapper. :) Anyway, I just thought it was the coolest font for when you want something clean and simple but with a little more pizzazz than the Times New Roman. :) You can download it free HERE.

It’s a gorgeous day and I get to spend the afternoon at the beach and tonight my bff Jill and sister Kimmy are coming out to do dinner and learn some digi-scrapping. Fun stuff.

Oh, and for some strange reason I’m just now receiving all the comments left here on the last few posts in batches in my email. Not sure what’s up with that but there are quite a few that I want to respond to so hopefully later tonight I’ll get to that. :) I’m hoping it’s just a typepad issue and not my email again but if you’ve emailed recently and not heard back try again since it seems things may be trickling through.

Off to get some sun. I hear last week was what they refer to as ‘beach week’ here in Holland so I’m hoping there are a few less teeny boppers frolicking in the sun today. We’ll see. :)

Have a great day!

Well, this started out as just a blog post image using Nancy’s new comic strip frames but I decided to make it into a scrap page. These are some of the photos I mentioned in my post yesterday taken at a local park.

CREDITS HERE

I did a little shopping on Sunday with some paypal money that my sweet friend Jill sent me for some purse items (SO not necessary but fun to spend). Here’s what I got: 

2 Kits by Leora Sanford

both available at Designer Digitals

and the Being Me Element pack from Weeds and Wildflowers.

I think I’ve already used one of the kits more than any kit I’ve ever purchased. Parts of it have shown up in each of my last 3 LOs and yet I don’t think any of them look anything alike. Gotta love that. :)

Gotta run but I’ve got a font discovery shared with me by a new friend at SisTv that I HAVE to share here and still a long list of other things on my mind that I have to share/ask here and get some of your thoughts. No time now but maybe later tonight.

Have a great Tuesday!