JustaBlog

Aye aye aye.

So... As always, have been out for the last two days due to computer problems. I swear it's a nightmare. I owe everyone stuff. I haven't returned emails. I just feel the worst. I am soo stressed about it all. Every few days something is going wrong. Despite wiping and doing a complete reinstall. Clay took everything out and gave it a big giant cleaning. When he pulled things iike the memory out, it was caked with ick in there, despite the fact that he blows it out regularly. He is hoping this will help the general performance now that he cleaned all the connections, etc. Let's hope. I just don't know how I am going to get this contest layout done. I have to spend tonight getting all the SBB stuff I am behind on in. Have it all done, just need to save different sizes for the layouts and zip stuff, etc. And try and get a few emails out that need doing. And to do my layout, there is SOOO much that needs to be done. I just can't believe it all. Just pray this computer doesn't completely die before I can get everything backed up that needs backing up.  Oy. Okay not lots to say really, just poking my head in for a minute, Am a little annoyed now that the Carolee's Creations finalists are up that I ran out of time to get my entry done. Oh well. Wasn't meant to be. But honeslty left and right in the Pub people toot about paper lines they have that just came out and so often I just am unimpressed. There is an insane amount of talent in the digiscrapping community yet it seems that so many paper scrappers hop on PS and because of their paper connections get a paper line. Maybe it's just jealousy rearing it's ugly head. That must be it. Listen to my complaining, totally green. Oh well. I'm over it already. That rant was shortlived. TTYL.

I'm back

So I missed my moment. lol. The moment when I was to find out that I was in the final 7 of the UDS contest. Was kind of nice to return to half my screen full of hello popups. But... there was good reason. Well not good, but a valid reason.

So... My mom was supposed to take Cassie and Frankie with her to a BBQ. I had no clean clothes for anyone and couldn't find shoes for Frankie (um yeah I'm a good mom lol) so we ran to Target. I was able to leave Adric at home, so Cassie asked to sit inside the cart. That is a big no-no usually but there was no baby in tow so she sat inside the cart. In the boys aisle, I looked for shirts for Frank. Turned my head to look at a shirt, turned back, pulled the cart towards me, not realizing that Cassie has sat up on the edge of the cart. I had pulled the cart right out from under her. She went rear over teakettle and boy hit the back of her head sooooo hard on the floor she started screaming in a crazy way. I couldn't get her to stop crying so I put her in the front of the cart with her legs through the little holes, and off we went to hurry and finish getting Frankie shoes. In the shoe aisle, she started to say she couldn't see! Then she said she was soo sleepy she couldn't stay awake and kept falling asleep sitting up. So needless to say I hightailed it out of there. We were 5 minutes from home so ran home and got Adric dressed and my mom took us to the hospital. On the way she started throwing up. Classic concussion stuff. Poor baby doll. So we go to the ER. They treated her like a queen, she slept right through her catscan, and they took us to a room. Turns out there was this little blurry spot on the CT. So the radiologist looks at it, isn't sure. So the neurologist looks at it, not sure. The neurosurgeon looks at it, hmm not sure. (DId I say at least 4-5 hours had passed by now??) So they decide they want to send it to Oakland for the pediatric neurosurgeon to look at it and make sure that it was just a computer thing and not blood. So.... more hours are to come waiting for that. My poor mom had Frankie and Adric for 3 hours while this all started. Finally Clay got there after we had been there 5 hours. That made Cassie happy. But poor Mom had 4-5 hours with a sleeping Cassie, no magazines alone in a room to sit. The guy in the room across from us fell 40 feet out of a tree and was pretty banged up. He had a big bandage on his head and his arm was all splinted and wrapped up. I could hear most of what they talked about. So he's been there an hour or so before they realize that the EMTs didn't put in his chart that he had a compound fracture under that splint and his bone was sticking out. Hmm no wonder every time they went in there and asked what was hurting the most he said about his arm was starting to throb. Oy. So at least they then got him an iv with a morphine drip and scheduled him for the OR. But man, sitting there for an hour or more. Hmm actually they said he fell at 10 AM and we didn't come in til at least 4 PM. So that was probably 7 hours with that bone sticking out?? Goodness gracious. So anyways... Clay comes, he forgets to grab me the new magazines I had JUST bought that were on the front seat of the van before my mom leaves. Argh. So I send him off to get food and a magazine. Of COURSE Borders had only the old magazines and nothing new so I ended up with the old MM that I have read a million times, but I didn't tell Clay that. I mean the man went and brought me a scrap mag, orange chicken and chow mein. Fabulous. The super nice nurses brought Cassie a tv with videos, so we turned off the light, I got in bed with her and we watched 101 Dalmations. Finally, after 7 long hours in the ER they say she is fine and they had just kept her longer to make sure she hadn't gotten dehydrated from the vomiting (she was still doing that til we left, even once in the car on the way home). So thankfully, all was well, and we went home. Got her to bed, knowing I had to wake her at 3AM and 6 AM to check her and was soooo happy, beyond thrilled to see the hellos and emails congratulating me. I love all you guys. Thanks. And Cassie is fine now, had a little headache today and the ped today gave her the big thumbs up, so all is well. Hopefully she doesn't have any headache tomorrow.

So the contest... I can't believe I am where I am in this contest. I thought maybe second round at the farthest. So here I am with this assignment....
This week’s challenge is a getting ahead of the crowd and making a statement. What is the next hottest trend in digital scrapbooking? Be creative, be unique, be a trendsetter! The trend can involve use of new elements, style, composition of layout, photo treatment…anything! Let your imagination run free and inspire something new. Please be sure to submit a small statement describing your new trend.

Holy Smokes! I am really scared about this one. This one is.. man I don't even have words for how hard this one is going to be. It scares me to death. I mean look at scrap mags. There are maybe 3 major trends IF THAT a year. Sure little blips here and there, but very few real trends each year. And I am not a trendsetter! I mean I am not a big pubilshed scrapper or even on a single CT. I second guess every layout I have ever done. So come up with a major trend? Boy. Who am I to even entertain the notion that I could possible be someone to say what may be the next new trend in digiscrapping?  Needless to say it will haunt me. And the thing is... It's already basically Tuesday and I haven't started. And for the way I think digiscrapping is going, I need some time to get things together. Oh I am terrified. Aren't I silly? I am open to any philospohical discussions on where digiscrapping is going if you are feeling chatty! Just drop me a line in the next two days.

Thanks everyone for being so supportive. Pray for me! I have SBB stuff to turn in tomorrow night (well I will be doing it tomorrow, doesn't mean it was sure tomorrow! *SIGH*) and this layout thing is making me sick to even think about.

Nighty night, sleep tight.

the Final Round is almost here.

WOW Have you guys all checked out the Ultimate Digiscrapper Contest gallery this week? FAB FAB FAB. Just FAbulous. I can't believe that final round is almost here. 4 1/2 hours til the announcement of the top 7. I never thought I would get even this far. I am constantly amazed at how much this contest has challenged me in very personal ways, pushed my scrapping to limits I have yet to go, and truly the amount of talent I am seeing in these galleries! Just amazing. But there is only 7 moving on this time, and only one winner to be crowned. And honestly there are so many stunning layouts in so many styles that I really think it's anyone's game this time. I am thinking that I might go so far as to offer my predictions and see how close I get. The judges have all voted already and the votes are being, or have already been, tallied. So here's my guesses. Now my disclaimer, these layouts are chosen for many reasons, not just because I think they are the best, in some respects there are some layouts I might like better in respect to different design ideas they use. But I think that the judges will also be judging on creativity, etc and the layouts that are different styles will be given extra glances IMO. So these guesses reflect more what I think the judges will score highly than what are necessarily my personal preference. So NO hard feeling from anyone. So off to the predictions.

Firstly we'll say ME/frankcassiesmom since I want to try and be hopeful.
DAni Mogstad/dmogs
Jessica Sprague/Rosagirl
CD
MandaBean
Chris Ford/cfordrun

Picking the last one has proven very difficult so why don't I list my handful of "these might be the last one on my prediction list but I am too indecisive" layouts.
Robin Carlton
Amy Martin/alb52
Aneal
Ryonut Mom
AmyK
Olive Juice
better stop now since I think I could list everyone!

Good Luck Ladies!

Key resolution

So Clay comes home and apologizes for how he treated me today and wants to have a good evening. Pray for us. That's hard for us to do these days.

So the keys. So we are keyless all day. Finally Clay says he has looked everywhere they could possibly be unless he did something stupid like put them in the freezer in the bag when he put the ice cream he bought away. Yep. The keys. In the freezer. Lovely.

Then.. poor Clay is very frustrated, Frankie has been acting up BAD today. And he watched him while Cassie and I ran out and got dinner. So when I get home I tell him we are out of water. My mom has one of those things where you put the big bottles on top and cold water comes out when you push the little thing. So as he is doing it... he drops it and the whole bottom breaks out. Goodness that is a lot of water! Carpet is soaked in the dining room. Oy. After the Adric toilet flooding the carpets and the guy coming out I am really paranoid that it will get mildewy or something if we don't call someone to suck it up. Tell me I am just being paranoid and getting it dry with towels and vacuuming it with the shop vac over and over will be enough. I can't deal with having to tell my mom.

So my "let's have a fun night together" hubby is back in frustration mode. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted. Wish us luck.

Sale stuff, etc

Just a quick little post here.

Sales. As you notice, I am not one to have my stuff on sale every month. And I am not having a sale this weekend, BUT... don't despair (like you are LOL). June is going to be a tad different in this regard! So keep your eyes and ears open in a week or so. Off to cleaning and finishing my SBB team layouts!

Sat Morning Ramblings

Okay a quick little ramble before I clean the living room and dining room. So I finally went to IKEA. My first trip to Ikea ever. First things first, someone should have told us that Ikea was like this other country. We walked in and looked around and had no idea what to do lol. To the right was the checkout, though we couldn't figure out how one even went about getting to the other side. And the big bin of big yellow bags, um what were we supposed to do? Take one, get a cart? what? So we start looking for a cart, only these weird half carts with hanger things which we later learned were more like strollers. Anyways. So finally someone who I think was Swedish and hardly spoke English showed us the way upstairs. But I must say one upstairs we were in heaven. I longed for money in that moment, longed for my own house again to decorate. Boy it was FAbulous up there. We walked slowly through everything, room to room. I have always loved the Rooms to Go type setups and whoever puts these together are amazing. I mean this whole dorm room set up with bunk bed with couch, desk, chair, shelves, whole mini wall of cubicles, etc was $800. Neato. I love looking and saying wow for $800 we would have everything we would need. Though I have no college aged little and no $800 so... I must say though there was this absolutely GORGEOUS double apron sink for $200. I mean we sat there in awe of it. $200? Okay around $275 with faucet. But still. I now know what I will be getting for when we move back to TN. If we do I guess. Oh well about that. So in the end, my mom bought a new pillow, and some bowls. kitchen towels, and a gift for my cousin. I just bought a couple magazine holders and some neat CD cases. Oh an mom bought one of those cute little wooden framed blackboards like you see them make on Martha Stewart. She just bought it because she couldn't believe it was like $12 lol. On the way out we grabbed a bite to eat since we were recommended the cinnamon rolls. I got a beef hotdog. I regret not getting myself a Lingonberry drink to taste it. kept talking about it the whole time we ate. The cinnamon rolls - eh. But the next morning I made some butter frosting and warmed the rolls and they were pretty good. But honestly I can't stand a cinnamon roll that just has a tiny drissle of frosting. Just seems wrong. We had a great time. And have so many ideas now for organizing and such. Love it.

So did get my Ultimate Digiscrapper layout done. Boy I was stressing over that one! With the computer going down twice, I just had no inspiration at all for the layout. I woke up Friday morning, the computer was still not booting and my hubby didn't feel like getting up to fix it *sigh*. I restarted and restarted and it wouldn't boot no matter what. So went in and talked to my mom, and when I returned it was fine!! I couldn't believe it. When I lay in bed that morning, I prayed. I apologized for having such a trivial request when there we so many things in my life that needed prayer and weren't getting it, but still prayed for inspiration. I really had nothing. I was spent. As I laid there I had this image of a bird flying in freedom. So I sat down, and 5 hours later, had my layout. I love it now. It went through a lot to get where it is now, and it was truly a labor of love. I feel good about what I have done. I used to paint in high school. I really loved it. And was really good at it *blush* But since scrapping, I am afraid to let go and be artistic in any way. I really think that I don't think of myself as that creative and like everything else in my life, am afraid to step out and do something that might show that to be true. So when we got the Freestyle challenge, I knew that there was this part of me that needed to try and just paint. SO I played a fiddled and painted. I journaled without going back and revising it, and just love it in the end. I hope to be able to find some sort of middle ground in my scrapping. I still love a pretty linear look in my scrapping and don't exactly know how to find a place where slightly linear and free art can combine into a style that feels like me. This contest has been really neat. I am very sorry that so many felt so negative about it. I know that I have grown so much and I hope that everyone can learn to look at contests as growing experiences as well. I mean MMM and HOF are coming up and I have no delusions of having a chance to win those and will enter them anyways. Do them, have fun, let contests make you push yourself.  My contest layout is here:  FREE LAYOUT

Men make me crazy. So Clay can't find his keys yesterday and he wants to go to the store to buy some sweets of some kind. HE spent way to much money on it all, but that's a whole different story. So he borrows my keys - which are ALWAYS on the hook where they should be, because mine have a spare key to his Honda. 5 minutes after he gets back I decide I want to get the mail (the mail key is on my keyring) and run to the LSS to check out the first kit they put together for this big contest they are having. 5 minutes! And he has lost my keys. He looked for about 2 minutes and said "sorry can't find em" So now it's Saturday morning, and we have NO keys to any car. My mom is gone all day and we can't go anywhere, I can't get the mail. Argh. Though wouldn't it rock if my Designing with Type came in the mail today? Though it probably won't come til Monday or Tuesday you never know what will happen. So pray we find those keys. We are in big trouble if we can't.

Well have a few layouts for SBB to do today as well so may post again.
Later.

I was wrong.

All that hope I thought I had in my marriage with the walks and whatnot was illfounded. I am not thinking there is any hope anymore. Oh well.

One of these days

My computer will just die. Here I am Friday morning, and TWICE this week the computer refused to boot for a couple days. It is Friday morning and I have TONS of team stuff to do and my contest layouts not even started. I think I could scream. As long as it holds on to when I get paid and I can buy an external and do a quick backup in case of emergency and continue burning stuff in normal fashion. SO say a scrapping prayer for me as I need to do a million layouts today. I don't think my stress level can handle too much more computer problems. Just can't.

American Idol VENT

There are many who might not realize, too many, that despite the fact that you apologize to the West Coasters, if you are on my bloglines, I WILL check if you post a new post and WILL SEE that you put who won American Idol an hour and a half before I get it here in the West Coast. Your apologies become meaningless the second my night of watching American Idol became meaningless.

Now this is just my opinion, but IT SUCKS bad to announce on your blog when all you had to do was wait an hour and a half out of consideration for everyone else. OR at least put a bunch of returns so we can't see it unless we scroll. ARGH.

NOTE TO ALL WEST COASTERS OR TIVOERS - No more checking ANYONE'S blog until after American Idol because you can't trust that we all are considerate bloggers. HRUMPH HRUMPH.

Tuesday

A few things to ramble before I go read. Yes... I have started reading again. Thank goodness. I am reading Night by Ellie Wiesel. The Oprah book. Not going to say what I think of it til I am done.

Firstly, I was digigal of the day today!!  Neato huh? And the lame thing is, I actually stayed off the computer most of the morning, and almost all day, didn't hello with any of my peeps (yes CD all is okay) and missed my digigal of the dayness for the most part. I didn't get my little mini intro done until late tonight. So I did some fun giveaways. After I posted the second one, the internet went out again. This stuff is all starting to make me laugh. The computer seems to have some sort of problem every other day and now I just need to go with it. I am a little concerned since we are having problems getting my pictures and I have 6 layouts due in a day, and then have to do my contest layout too. AAHHH. Hmm might go post one more super fun giveaway to pass my digigal torch.

Okay so off to some FUN goings on of the day. Okay one fun going on, then a cute hubby thing after. But so... I am a pretty laid back Mom when it comes to things like children playing in the mud, getting dirty, etc. So my little Adric today. Oh this child. So here he is, he has a runny nose, that despite my nose wiping, has a yucky icky face. He is wearing his sister's big girl Dora shoes. He is wearing only a diaper (he hates clothes unless we are going somewhere and takes them off the second we get home) and I shamefully admit it was in dire need of changing - well only a giant saggy peepee diaper, not stinky. And right before the incident he was caught smearing toothpaste all over his face. So... mental picture? Dirty snot face, toothpaste all over face, horrible saggy diaper and giant 5 year old shoes on a naked two year old? LOVELY. So... The fence to our neighbor's house has two boards that were loose. So I get a knock on the door. I, myself, have a horrible messy living room, am wearing this dreadful frumpy dress and my hair is dirty, and unbrushed, just pulled back. Not a vision myself. So knock at the door. It is my perfect neighbor. You know these :) tiny, always perfect clothes, never hear yelling from their house, she has a spotless house, children at a fancy school, she sings OPERA as she cleans the house, all her children's puzzles have a special rack and none of the pieces are lost. (MAN her garage sale was COOL) So here she is. Turns out, my Adric climbed through the slats in the fence, and when they looked on their back porch, he was happily sitting on their chair with his giant clown shoes on. She thinks it's cute and is being very nice, laughing a lot over the whole thing. Enter her hubby. So I stand up on a chair on our side and he is going to pass me Adric. I make an uneasy joke about how it had to be this day of all days. Him, no smile, no nothing. Just holding Adric like he might give him cooties. Imagine him reaching way out, handing me Adric and Adric's diaper is soooooooo saggy when held like that I could just DIE!  So darn funny I can hardly stand it. Now they know the real "us". Won't be invited over there for dinner. We might give em cooties :P

Clay has decided that when she is home he wants us to go on a walk every night at 7:30 ALONE so we can just have a few minutes to ourselves a few nights a week (Keep in mind my mom does some sort of church thing Tues-Thursday, sometimes Sat, and always Sun) and that the other days we can take the children. Yunno for the first time in a long time I just had hope. Hope that we might make it through this whole thing intact. There are lots of tiny little things that have been a lot better too, and I am trying to learn to appreciate them. It is very hard though. All the divorces and infidelity around me in friends has made me very scared at times. I hate being truly scared. But I have hope. Hey I have HOPE? New thing for me it seems. It's good.

Night. Off to read.

Good Night and Good Luck