A Groovy Freebie

Okay, I just thought it would be fun to make a 60s inspired freebie. This set is kind of a mini-kit, with 10 .png elements and an alpha set that includes upper case, lower case, numbers and symbols. I guess it's the biggest kit I've ever made. It was fun. In highschool I was kind of a flower-child wannabe, I guess it's resurfacing in fun ways.

Enjoy!

http://www.4shared.com/file/90057866/aaa87d9c/Peace_Love__Eternity_Set.html

Free Word Art!

It's a snowday here. I don't really want any more snow, but it is nice to have a day with no where to rush off to. School was cancelled and so was women's group, so we're having a pajama day. I feel like getting some stuff done, so here's a little something for you!

I just did a page for my daughter called "The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades." I couldn't resist making word art to go with it. Just too cute.

http://www.4shared.com/file/89606205/975b4033/The_Futures_So_Bright.html

The people who mean the most to me.

Today I got home from taking the girls to a playdate to find 2 messages on my machine. They were my sister and brother calling to tell me something important. When I finally tracked everyone down, they were at the hospital with my dad. He'd had a second heart attack.

My dad is okay, but I worry that I don't get to spend enough time with him. That my kids don't know what a great Grandpa he is. I worry that someday I'm going to have to say goodbye to my parents. I know it's inevitable. I know we'll be together in Heaven...but that doesn't change how scary it is to get that phone call.

I've got a great dad. When we were kids, we used to play dominoes with him. He pretty much taught me to do math in my head with it. I remember sitting around a towel in the living room sharing a big bag of peanuts. The shells went into the middle of the towel and then he cleaned it all up for us. My dad got me started reading. When I was young, 9 or 10 I had the first manifestations of my depression problems. He helped me by giving me a way into another world where I didn't have to stress about other kids or school or anything.

I have also been lucky enough to find a second father in my father-in-law. Of course, the more I love my in-laws, the more I know I'll have to part with them someday too. It's the way the world works, who would want to be here forever?

It just occurred to me. One day my daughters might be facing the same fears about my husband and I. I hope they will have as fond memories of us as we have our parents.

Here's Your Sign!

I am very excited about this new freebie. I have always loved the imagery of the zodiac, and I thought it might be fun to make a free set using some cute clipart -- again, thanks to the Microsoft Clip Gallery. Each month includes a PNG frame (shown in display with shadows), as well as three stickers. Please enjoy and post your creations, I'd love to see them!

Here are the links:

http://www.4shared.com/file/88726003/6a57ba19/Set_1.html

http://www.4shared.com/file/88726555/f8882982/Set_2.html
http://www.4shared.com/file/88725522/3b188508/Set_3.html

I was not super-careful grouping the months for upload to 4share, so you'll want to download all three sets to make sure you get your sign.

Free Yellow Swirl Alpha

I'm happy to present a new freebie. Here is Yellow Swirl Alpha, created using free clipart from Microsoft Clip Gallery and a free font called Baby Pirate (I found it at DAfont, see link list). The shadow is in example only. Please enjoy!

http://www.4shared.com/file/88521387/77bad3e3/Yellow_Swirl.html

Diaper Demands!

Okay, I've got a few demands for the diaper companies. Here they are:

1. They should be 100% leak-proof. Not, "less leaks than other leading brands". I'm talking 100%, all or nothing no leaks. We pay enough for these things, it's the least they can do.

2. They should be impossible for anyone under the age of 4 to remove.

3. They should be able to hold equavilant to the weight of the child wearing them. This is not so I don't have to change them all day long, but simply so that kids with bladders that could hold the Gulf of Mexico, like Lola, don't need clean sheets every single morning.

4. When the above rules become impossible to meet, the child should automatically be potty trained by the diapers, not the mom. I don't know if this would involve microchips....

Couldn't we find a way to make them biodegradeable? I'm not super-green or anything, but I know how many of these things I throw out each week, seems like we could make them a little more useful. Now please, no comments about how I should use cloth diapers. It doesn't work for us, believe me, I've tried. We are almost done with diapers. Lola uses the potty from time to time but even when she's trained in the day, who knows how long it will take to get her to wake up at night for the potty.

Ah, motherhood.

My first FREEBIE!!

Okay, here is my first freebie. It is a simple set of photo masks. They say "Faith", "Hope" and "Love". This set was inspired by a fellow scrapper who is one of my best friends. She's a great person, a wonderful mom and a strong christian. She's one of my role models. Please enjoy the set. I'd love to see what you do with them, and I hope you'll post a comment for me!

http://www.4shared.com/file/88021163/bd1d7fa9/Faith_Hope__Love.html



To use the masks, here are what I hope are easy directions. Open the picture you wish to alter in your photo editor. Then open the mask you wish to use. Copy the mask and paste it as a new layer in the original photo. It should "mask" your picture. Now I would use my magic wand selection tool to choose the black of the mask. From their I would invert the selection in the selection menu, but I don't know how it works in all programs. Once the selection is inverted, go back to the background layer (the original picture) and delete the highlighted area. This should remove the words from the picture. I then delete the mask layer and invert the selection on the original picture. I can copy it and paste it as a new image with a transparent background. My photo program allows me to export my pictures as .png files (they keep the transparent background so my background papers will show through on scrapbook pages) and that is what I would use. E-mail me if you need help. I kind of stumbled on this and it makes sense to me but I totally understand if it doesn't to others.

That awkward phase...and freebies soon!

Did I spell that right??

Anyway, most of us go through an awkward phase during our teen years. Apparently I am having a reoccurance now that I am 30. In the last month I've managed to slip and fall on ice twice, hit myself in the face with a car door and just yesterday I fell over a toy and landed on the corner of my daughter's bedframe with my lower back. Not to mention all the minor misshaps like stubbed toes and slammed fingers. I'm also amazingly adept at burning myself lately.

Maybe my self concious is upset with me or something. I just don't know.

I also think that I will be able to start posting freebies soon. I'm working on some right now. They aren't anything fabulous, but everyone has to start somewhere, right?

Out with the old & wanting what you have.

Today was a cleaning day. We bought Goofball a new lamp for her room, so we rearranged her room which, of course, led to cleaning. Her room wasn't too hard, but Lola's room was terrible. How can kids make such huge messes? Then we decided to clean the basement, which is where the other half of the toys are. I put two huge boxes aside for the garage sale this spring. Yay!

As for wanting what you have, today I saw a quilt on clearance for $28. It was $110 when I first saw it. At the time we decided it was way, way too expensive, so we bought a different set. To see it now on clearance and know that it is exactly what I wanted breaks my heart. We can't afford it, not really. Everything costs so much, especially the stuff we can't live without like laundry detergent and cat food. *sigh* So I know I didn't need that quilt. I know that someday I'll be able to buy things like that when the kids are older and the money flows a little more freely. Besides, if I bought something really nice like that now, and it was really nice, the kids would mess it up and of course it would be covered in cat hair all the time....

Are you who you think you are?

I will keep this short, to prevent it from becoming a big vent session, but what if I am not the person I've thought myself to be for so long? In my first blog I tried to describe myself and I didn't use negative words....but after two seperate incidents this last week, I've had to re-examine who I am.

Am I really putting all I can into being a great mom? Do I expect too much from my friends. Am I a real friend at all?

I've spent a lot of time thinking about these things and I have come to the conclusion that I do the best I can in everything I do. I take every part of my life seriously, from family and friends to work and hobbies. But I also try to enjoy myself and live life to the fullest.

So, am I who I think I am?? I think I am. I also think there is room for improvement, and maybe being able to see that is more important than anything else.

Facebook??

Okay, so I've not done my best to keep up with the times. I admit it. I don't text. I don't have a myspace page. I don't even really understand how to use facebook. But I am trying. I've tried so hard to broaden my horizons in literature by reading stuff from all over the library, I've overcome my fear of new people and started a women's group, and now I've made an attempt to learn to use Facebook.

What I don't get is that for some people, it's the only way to communicate. I would rather have an e-mail or phone call. To each his own, right?

You get what you deserve.

My little one, 'Lola' has given new meaning to the term terrible twos. She is absolutely crazy. Today on the way home from daycare, she climbed out of her carseat and tried to climb into the front seat with me. I almost went off the road trying to keep her in the back. So then I told her she had to go straight to her room for a nap. The only way to keep her in her room is the lock the door. So I did. I know, I'm a horrible, horrible mom...

Anyway, when she got up from her nap, I went in to clean up her walls and closet door, which she had artfully decorated with an orange crayon and a purple colored pencil. I discovered the outlet right buy her bed was blackened. She had tried to plug in her lamp with a silver necklace wound around the prongs! She could have killed herself or started a fire or Lord knows what.

'Lola's' Grandpa fixed the outlet for me, replacing it. He thinks we need to save it for a scrapbook page, with the fitting title, Shocking Behavior! I went to the store and I bought some of those doorknob baby locks. It's safer than locking the door and having to find a coin to unlock it. And believe me, I'll be extra careful about keeping the outlet covers in from now on.

Have you ever been told that your children will be just as bad as you were? My husband's parents insist he wasn't bad, so the crazy gene seems to come from me. I participated in some wicked schemes hatched by my sisters and brother, but surely I was an angel...or perhaps my memories don't properly reflect who the mastermind was. All I do know for sure is that my twin brother's youngest daughter is quite a handful. So at least I'm not taking the full dose of karma.

It's harder than I thought...

Well, I've been looking here and there on my favorite sites to figure out how to create my own freebies for other scrappers. Unfortunately, I don't think it's going to be as easy as I thought. So, I'm going to keep thinking about it and hopefully increasing my skill-set by scrapping and creating display posters for the library.

I wonder if there are books available that can teach me the kind of graphics and web skills I need. I am sure there are, and I am sure I can get them through the library. For free! Is there anything better than getting something for free?

Speaking of which, I hit some fabulous sales this weekend. I got 2 pairs of jeans today for about$12 and yesterday I got a pair of khakis for $.25, well, $.27 with tax. It's crazy! The only problem with being a thrift and clearence shopper is that they don't always have all the sizes. I think my size, __ (conviently left blank) is a very common size. As is my shoe size and my bra size. Hmm...maybe I'm average. Maybe it's those size 1 and size 2 girls who are abnormal. There's something to think about there....

Scrapping myself...

So I've been scrapping for my kids for years. And then last year I realized that someday my kids will grow up and take their books with them! So, since I've done hybrid scrapping for them all this time, I decided my own books would be traditional. Recently I discovered I can have 12x12 pages printed, and with the help of fabulous software, I really threw myself into creating some great scrapbook pages for my girls and my cats.

I have decided that someday I'd like to create freebies for other scrappers, kind of paying forward the favor of all the great free stuff I've gotten from other designers. I know to offer the freebies I need a blog. So here it is. But I decided I had to make a fabulous header and I discovered one thing in particular: It is hard to scrap myself. I've done pages of me with my kids and pages of me with my husband. But never a page just about me, expressing who I am, or at least who I see myself as.

Who do I see myself as? I guess the following words describe me: Wife, mother, friend, daughter, sister, book-nerd (I work at the library and LOVE LOVE LOVE it), artist, cat-lover, and eclectic --did I spell that right?!?