Coming Soon will be good news, new products, sneak peeks, a new blog entry, lots of ramblings, my results of my weight loss challenge, amongst other things. Hopefully it will be tonight but I have been working all night every night so it's hard to find the time. Love you guys and can't say thanks enough for all the great emails and words!
Hmmm.....
Take a moment
- John 8:36:If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.
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BIG SALE!
Forgot to post this!
In case you don't know what all is on these FABULOUS CDs by Meredith and I, here's some previews!
FIND these FABULOUS kits and CDs HERE:
Mere and Kim's His and Hers Collection at SBB
So go shop. This is SO cheap for such a huge huge huge collection!
Hey okay well feeling better this morning so I'll post some of what I was going to post last night. Still mad at Clay LOL! but trying to just get on with my day.
WOW already getting flooded with fabulous color schemes for the Rad contest. I can't wait til tonight to start pouring over them. I should be starting to break ground on it in the next few days! I've had a few ask how many colors per swatch. No real limit. I looked at my last Rad swatches and some had 4 colors some 7 :) So just be free!
Yay! Scrapartist is back up! And what does that mean? The first installment of my Friday releases has begun!! AND I get to debut the beginning of my new line of element packs. The Stockpile. We all stockpile goodies! And these are all staples to our scrapping. And two new Be kits! Hmm some of you might have seen of these eh?
Click these following images for big closer up previews of the new goodies!
Okay while we are talking scrapping stuff, before I move on to other life things, this is something everyone should hear about! Steph Krush at digital paper tearing is having a fundraising period at her site. Here's the quote from the site:
On October 14, 2006, I am walking, with my two daughters (2 1/2 and 4 months) in the NBTF - Angel Adventure in honor of my 3 1/2-year-old son, Asher Benjamin, who is fighting brain cancer. All proceeds from Digital Paper Tearing sales made on and between October 1, 2006 and October 13, 2006 will go to The National Brain Tumor Foundation - Angel Adventure. I will make an online payment on October 14, 2006, directly on my fundraising site, in the name of "Digital Paper Tearing" so you will be able to see how much was made. If you would like to donate directly, please click here to read more and sponsor my walk. Thanks so much for reading and for your support!
Steph's tears are hands down the best out there IMO. So everyone go NOW and rush over to digitalpapertearing and stock up on all the tears for a great cause. Isn't her little Asher the sweetest little thing ever?!
OKay well onto the things of life eh? Let's start with something fairly trivial but ahh makes me happy. SO WHAT IS ON TONIGHT? Do ya know? Do ya know?
Yay! The new season of Battlestar Galactica starts tonight. And if you haven't heard me say it 100 times over the last year, this is without a doubt THE BEST SHOW ON TV. It just is. The best writing, acting, gritty content and dialogue. It's dark and brooding and symbolic and FABULOUS. If you haven't seen any of it, you can get itunes episodes. AH live is looking up. Battlestar Galactica is starting again. :)
So didn't post about two nights ago but have walked and jogged on the treadmill everday since whenever it was I started - Tuesday was it? LOL! Maybe Monday if I'm lucky :) Anyways walked 17 minutes at between 3.8 - 4.0 since I am trying to up it, and jogged for 13 minutes. Even bumped that up and ran 3 of the minutes at a run instead of a jog. Yunno I always wanted to be a runner. Or at least have running a couple miles everyday as part of my exercise routine. Always have. So I hope to slowly lower the walking and up the jogging. I have gotten some emails about walking being better, etc. and I do understand that. But I want to get back into playing raquetball again and want to get good at it. And I have had this life long dream of being able to run a small marathon (not one of those 26 mile jobbies though). But maybe a half marathon. 12 miles or whatever it is. Lifelong dream. Maybe this is the time for once in my life to see my dream before me and move towards it. I can't say for sure but I see that dream closer than ever now. So....... has the exercise helped?
My weigh in today was 197. Down a full THREE POUNDS this week!! Rock on with my bad self. I usually have a low loss week after a week like this so I am not going to set any super high expectations for next week's but feels good to not be 199.5 and be SO close to going over 200 again that it felt like walking on eggshells. So to be three lbs away from 200 I feel like I will never go over it again!!! So exciting. So food stuff argh.
Yesterday was not a fabulous food day. I ate cookies eek a lot of them but compensated calorie wise and thank goodness that it worked out. I was convinced that I was going to be up on the weigh in.
Today 's plan (you can see I have done horribly following my plans.) I really do want to learn to follow my plans. Not to be a slave to them. I want to be flexible but having a plan food wise always works out better for me.
B - um didn't eat any slept in til WAY late :)
Lunch - an insane amount of my zuchinni fries. Yummy. Of course now baby Adric has decided that he loves them too and stands next to me eating them as fast as he can out of my bowl.
Snack - half green apple with peanut butter
Dinner - Spahetti for them, Big salad with Chicken, italian seasoning and kidney beans oh and ground sunflower seed crumbles. Yummy.
I have been wanting to explain a little about what South Beach diet is and why I like it. Here's the short version. I hate most low carb diets. I find them unhealthy in many many ways. So I saw my mom's South Beach book for a year and never read it. I saw them explain about it on the View once and really loved the concept. So I read the book and loved it. Most low carb diets have too little carbs, spend all this time counting carbs without focusing on the KIND of carbs. So most people on low carb diets have an unbalanced diet. And when they do carbs, it is counting the carbs and most of the time end up eating refined carbs combined with protein powder, etc in low carb bars, etc. It's not health focused, it's weight focused. Too low carbs for too long stresses the kidneys and is generally unhealthy. But South Beach is the exact opposite of that! It is health focuses not weight focused. Here's the lowdown:
Three Phases.
Phase 1 - 1 week - 2 weeks and is super low carbs, with the only carbs coming naturally from veggies. This phase is used for 2 weeks when you first start to regulate blood sugar levels and start breaking the sugar addiction. Also Phase 1 can be returned to for a week or so when you find yourself cheating a bit too much and are up a few lbs. When you first start Phase 1 the first time ever you usually lose between 8-12 lbs in those two weeks YAY!
Phase 2 - Slowly reintrouding healthy carbs back into diet - fruit, whole grains, etc. After two weeks of Phase 1 you are now very carb conscious lol and work on having mostly low carb type meals but allow small amounts of healthy carbs combined with healthy proteins and veggies and work towards a truly healthy life long lifestyle.
Phase 3 - More leeway, this is the maintaining mode! Once you are at your goal weight you can eat more carbs but still maintain a good balance. Stay on phase 3 as long as you are maintaining. If you start gaining again go back to Phase 2 or even Phase 1 for a short time.
NO COUNTING CARBS. I would hate to have to be doing that. It's all about learning to balance your eating without measuring and counting, to eat naturally and in a way you can do the rest of your life. LOVE IT! And it's working. I am officially down 25 lbs! Wow that sounds like a lot to me. Now granted there are a million pounds to go lol! But still, fabulous.
Quick fun thing. These great friends of our family, that we always consider family has an 18 yo son who went to Southern CA for his birthday. My gramma called today to say he WON the whole showcase showdown on the Price is Right! Cool eh? His episode is December 1st I think.
Okay so I will leave you with these super cute pics of my sweet angel.
Later Gators!
TGIF
Hey! Late Thursday night for me. Kind of having a rough night. Mad at Clay. Kind of tainting my mood. I'll try to not let it make my post too down :) Well off the bat I'll say that SA is down and I don't know when it will be up so I guess I will be postponing my first ever Friday release. lol. I get myself all worked up all week, work all week to get a number of things done and have to wait. SO I'll show something else business related:
So I am gathering the colors for the new Rad Collection and thought I'd do a little fun contest. I have 5 color swatches finalized and need two more. So send me your colors! Search the web, look at old pictures, get me your unique color swatches. I choose yours, you will win the ENTIRE RAD 2 COLLECTION ! ! With the popularity of the last Rad Collection that's a huge prize! You can submit as many color swatches as you'd like and I will accept submission as long as it takes to find 2 fabulous unique swatches! Email them to me at frankcassiesmom@comcast.net put Rad 2 Colors in the subject. Good luck!
I had all these things on the list that I was going to talk about tonight but am just not super chipper. So I will carry them over to tomorrow and will have a novel tomorrow!
Night.
I know I know you just fainted because you saw that I did ANOTHER blog entry. Three days in a row now. I think I can I think I can. Oy the day was fine. Well in actuality it was ick. My mom comes home on Saturday and wanted the house spotless. Well without the pressure of having her here I haven't done anything in DAYS since she left and the house looks like a bomb went off. All that I have to do is really stressing me out. And of course what did I do today? I sat at the computer - not even working! - and I did do some exercise so that's good. But aside from that I didn't do anything. So not only do I sit here feeling somewhat like a lazy bum but also reflecting on this sedentary lifestyle I have been living since moving here to CA. When we lived in TN, I got on the computer for an hour or two in the morning and that was it. Now keep in mind we had already fed the dogs and chickens, gathered eggs, watered the garden all by the time my morning computer started. I had chicken coops to clean, baby chicks to take care of, garden to plant and weed, went on walks on the long dirt road with the chidren in the double stroller. My dream life. And ACTIVE. Now I find myself spending most of the day sitting. I hate it. This is not the life I want. Now I don't want to go in the car and go places. I don't want that, but I need to start having an active MOVING life. Cleaning, dancing, exercising, taking the family for a walk after dinner, things like that. I will be writing out a new schedule soon so we'll see how that all works in.
SO let's get this food thing and exercise out of the way then I have something to mention to all the ladies that emailed and commented to me about how they feel like they have lost control over EVERYTHING like I do.
So what I really ate today:
B - well once again ARGH ended up not really eating breakfast so I ate "brunch" and had 1 poached egg, and a salad with blue cheese dressing and kidney beans
L - So I ended up dipping celery in egg salad for lunch YUM.
S - hmm no snack
D - taco salad - ground turkey taco meat, black beans and lettuce.
Dessert - ate the South Beach Ricotta cream with peaches. Though this is great and acceptable, I am starting to realize that I am not eating this when I am hungry but am starting to use it like a crutch and eating it every night.
Plan for tomorrow?
B - Oatmeal for fam, steel cut oats for me
L - spriralized zuchinni with a little cheese
S - half a green apple with 1 TBSP with peanut butter
D - Sauteed chicken breast with lemon, steamed green beans and potatoes for fam
NO dessert :)
Okay so actually did exercise on the treadmill. Couldn't very well let Clay win by having him come home and say he did all that for nothing right? So I did my bicep curl challenge. Though with the challenge it was to do as many as we could do in 15 minutes right? So we could use a minimum of 1 lb weights. So here's the dilemma. Do you use higher weights because you know your biceps are pretty strong and that you need the challenge? Or use the lower weights and get higher numbers for your team? It's hard. This one I used the smaller weights since I didn't practice ahead of time and know it would be so easy. My first set I did 630 (which was alternating arms so one right one left counts as ONE) and my second set was 897. But back to the treadmill. So I walked on the treadmill while I did the 15 minute challenge. So had to walk pretty fast for me to keep up the pace with the arms so walked 15 minutes at about 3.8 mph. Then jogged *gasp* for 10 minutes at 4.5 I think it was. Then walked another 5 minutes at about 3.5. Okay so that's all pretty boring wasn't it? HA! But I was feeling so proud of myself that I did 30 minutes of cardio and 10 minutes of it was jogging! But do you ever have a hard time feeling proud because you feel like you KNOW you won't be able to succeed in continuing to exercise like that everyday like you'd like to? I am really struggling with that. What does Dr Phil call it? Your inner voice or something. It seems that I really do tell myself I will fail. All the time I think. It's another enough is enough moment. I want all this to stop. I want to love myself and have faith in myself. I just never do. How to start doing that? I don't know. Is it dependant on starting to be able to follow through with things? Or is it something that starts in me despite whether or not I succeed?
It makes me think of the book you see over in my "I'm reading" thing over there <----------- Loving God with all Your Mind. It's about taking our thoughts captive. Anyways it's fabulous and the core of the first few chapters is the verse:
Phillipians 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
It has really shaken me to really try and think on what is TRUE. It really helped get me through the spots I had with Clay lately. Thinking only on what I know to be true not what I think may be true or whatever. But this is true about myself as well. I need to think on what is true. It is true that I ran on the treadmill and worked out hard last night. It's true I exercised a good 20 minutes already today. That is the truth, not that I won't exercise to my potential the rest of the days ahead. Okay enough rambling about that.
SO I was truly amazed by how many women talked to me about how they are going through the same things as I am. So here's my thinking. Anyone up to some little challenges here and there? Not necessarily scrap challenges, but weekly challenges of baby steps towards all of our goal to REgain control over these areas of our lives? Not necessarily any certain diet or flylady or whatever, though using some of those resources would be helpful :) And at the end of each week whoever consistantly does the little challenges with me will get a little scrap treat from me as a prize for taking the time to love yourself enough to have spent a whole week trying to do something great for yourself. Sometimes the treats may be big. But I honestly need some participation to think of taking the time to do it. SO leave me a comment if you're in. If I get at least a good sized handful I will go ahead. Plus I am talking to another designer of starting a big weight loss challenge so keep your eyes out for that.
Not too much longer until Friday when my first Friday releases start. I think there will be 6 things maybe 7 that release Friday. Hip hip hooray! lol.
Am going to start my DST gallery tomorrow with just two older layouts. They are in my peas gallery. I don't want to carry too many things over to my DST gallery from peas, just ones I might consider still submitting. Here's the first two:
My mom gave me a little money to get myself something special so Monday I shopped at Jen Wilson's 50% off sale. Got all these things and spent $20. Oy. 
Now I guess I need to just start scrapping then eh? All this stuff I have never used and love. I'm a hoarder.
Okay night! Gotta finish watching LOST and then the 15 or 19 or whatever then the Biggest Loser I taped and JOG again on the treadmill. Ack! Night.
Actually another one eh?
So.. actually going to try another blog entry. Two whole days in a row. Definitely won't be the novel it was yesterday though considering it's 11:35, I haven't done my exercise yet and am super super tired. Today is a challenge day on my BL challenge thing and have only done one set of bicep curls. We have to use at least one pound weights and and we have to do two 15 minute sessions and record our numbers. One pound weights were really too small for this challenge. They should have done at least two pounds. So go grab your 1 lb can of peas and do 15 minutes worth of bicep curls and drop me a line and see if you beat my highest score!! :) And I Clay went to watch a movie at his friend's house and it annoyed me a lot so I got all snippy about how he hadn't moved the treadmill into my bedroom so I could use it tonight and that I had to use it tonight. And that he couldn't take the projector for his movie since it's the only tv in the room where I now have the treadmill and can't do the treadmill without the tv to distract me. So..... I feel a bit obligated to use the treadmill tonight so that I can say "of course I did, I jogged on it while watching tv on the giant fabulous projector" when he assumes I never used it. Dude so Clay buys this projector at a garage sale for $4. It's a $800 projector. In our bedroom we have this one big white wall and we have a giant mini movie theater on it now. I love it. Best garage sale score for us to date.
Thanks to everyone who left me a comment and enjoyed the freebie kit. The links are gone but had almost 500 downloads of it WOW! You guys are crazy! I am amazed at how many comments I got from people saying they feel like I am their twin. I may start posting the details of these struggles more and more and say what I thought worked and didn't with me. I will start by breaking down why I love South Beach tomorrow. Then move onto organization, etc. Let's all get together and try and gain control over these parts of ourselves that we feel powerless too. (Lu if you read this I can't begin to tell you what an inspiration you continue to be to me) We don't need to limp through this life feeling like we will never be the person we feel we have the potential to be. I have always had a piece of this quote on my blog (well until recently) but if you haven't heard it in a while, take a moment and REread this:
‘Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond imagination. It is our light more than our darkness which scares us. We ask ourselves – who are we to be brilliant, beautiful, talented, and fabulous. But honestly, who are you to not be so?
You are a child of God, small games do not work in this world. For those around us to feel peace, it is not example to make ourselves small. We were born to express the glory of god that lives in us. It is not in some of us, it is in all of us. While we allow our light to shine, we unconsciously give permission for others to do the same. When we liberate ourselves from our own fears, simply our presence may liberate others.’
And once done stop and read it again. Enough is enough I say. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we sabotage anything good we try and give ourselves. Or me I guess :) Me, me. So anyways I will be trying to more than ever share the things I learn on this journey and encourage any of you that read this blog to leave a comment if you have anything you find is really working for you whether that be for scheduling, organizational skills, um child rearing, weight loss, exercise, well any aspect of life considering I feel these days that every part of my life is a struggle. Oh add laundry to the list!
Food today was not so good. Don't even want to talk about it. Okay so it could have been worse. Had a few too many of these super high fiber WW crackers with cream cheese and salami and then went on to eat some cookie dough from the cookies I made for Clay. Could be worse but I'm SO scared I will wake up over 200 again. I am was 199.5 as of this morning so one bad day of eating and yep will be over tomorrow morning. But tonight I will jog on the treadmill HA and tomorrow work out extra hard exercising and hopefully get it back under before my weigh in Friday morning. OY.
So menu for tomorrow.
Oh no Clay moved my menus! I hadn't typed them out yet since Clay had the printer unhooked. And ACK where did he put my papers?! Man what's the use of working hard on the menu, shopping just for the menu then losing it? So let's wing it.
Breakfast - Bacon, eggs and bagels for fam, poached eggs with piece of ham for me.
Snack - half an apple with 1 TB peanut butter (the peanut butter you push the button and grind it for you is hands down the best IMO)
Lunch - Turkey wraps in WW tortilla for fam in lettuce with cilantro mayo for me like the othe day (they were SOOOO good)
Snack - Celery filled with egg salad
Dinner - Frito Pie (we didn't eat this Tuesday since Clay and Frank were gone) and taco salad for me
Dessert - If hungry South Beach lemon Ricotta and half a peach. Just LOVE this.
Will do a weigh in when I wake up and see how bad the damage is.
So Frankie went to his first Awana meeting today. We don't tend to do that kind of thing since as a family we choose not to leave our children with other adults except rarely a close family member. But Clay decided (yay!) that he felt he needed to start doing something with Frankie to help mend their relationship. So Clay is going to go and stay for each Awana meeting. So they get there and they decide they really NEED Clay to be an Awana leader. What?? So suddenly they hand Clay 3 children a leader polo short give him a 30 second "this is what you do" and send him off with Frank and the other 3 boys. Now he says they rocked the bean bag relay and beat all the other teams and he thought that was exciting. He was proud for sure. And he says they gave him all the hyper difficult boys and it was very interesting given where he is right now it was interesting to hear him say that he really felt that God led these boys to him to have a strong male influence in their lives. So all in all that was kind of crazy eh? Clay is an Awana leader. A once a week commitment from now until May. Wow. I truly Pray it goes well.
My sweet baby doll Adric sporadically has an imaginary friend these days named Eric. He doesn't seem to do much except "stand over there by you" but he says "come on Eric" etc. when he leaves the room. He's only 2! Okay a few months from 3 but hey an imaginary friend? He's a smart dude. lol! But Eric? Where's that name from? Maybe a version of his name? Maybe Eric from 7th heaven that we watch everyday? Who knows. But I never expected him to do it that's for sure.
So I think I am finally going to start my DST gallery. After all this time. In fact I don't think I have uploaded a single layout ANYWHERE since June!! Doesn't mean I have not done some layouts :) Have about 40 plus a handful of MMM layouts and probably 10 more in the In Progress folder that I haven't moved yet. So 50 layouts no one but my helloers have seen. It's going to take forever though to upload a number of my favorite older layouts then all these new ones. Or maybe should I just do all the new ones? Oh I dunno. But will hopefully start tomorrow night with my first 5 layouts at DST. I'll post them here as they go in also. I did actually SCRAP tonight. I haven't done a single layout in at least a month.
Okay so I decided last minute to just call my layout done and post it here. I am experimenting with some different things scrapwise. I find myself liking more and more linear simple type stuff. So this is different than what people tend to remember me scrapping like but of course I haven't posted since June lol!~
Credits: Michelle Coleman's stamped alpha and paint strokes, other paint by Meredith Fenwick, Katie Pertiet's messy stiches, everything else by me from Thrift Chic, Be Yourself, and the OC paper pack from the Rad Collection. Fonts: Adler, Susie's Hand.
So there it is. My weird layout. Now it's 12:30 and am off to bed. Night!
I'm baaacckk.....
Well here's my reintroduction to the blogging world. Did ya miss me? I admit it feels weird to know that there are people out there that read this thing and actually do miss me when I'm gone. It's so easy once you get used to not blogging for a long time to put off returning. Because I know that once I do I have some sort of responsibility to keep it reasonably updated. But I admit I really do want to do that. I would love to have an entry out everyday but I realize that is just not that doable for me lol. And I often come to the realization that my life isn't full of goings on as some other bloggers are. It's hard for me to imagine going out everyday, buying things everyday, thinking about new clothes all the time. That life is so foreign to me. So I let myself fall into this "my life is too dull to blog about" routine. But yunno I am trying to lift my head up these days and push forward with confidence and realize that yunno? my life IS interesting because of the way I live my life. Even if interesting to no one but me, it is interesting. I don't go out and run errands, etc. a lot because I like being home with my children, creating a slower paced life for them. I don't want my children to have a "go go go" mentality about life. Stay home, love your family, play board games and live. And how do people get everything done in a day when they go out so much? I think they are super women. Really I am amazed by how much some people get done. It is beyond admirable in my eyes. I mean I just wrote out a new schedule and there's hardly enough time in there to take a shower and that's with the whole day spent at HOME.
That reminds me. I have talked a lot about my lack of organizational skills. I have read every website known to man. I really need some of you out in cyberland to help walk me through how you keep track of everything. When I think of some of the super women out there (Giiinna... that's you) I just don't know how they keep track of everything. I honestly need someone to walk me through STEP BY STEP how to do it. It really is something that causes me an insane amount of stress and no system I have tried I can keep up with it. And in this new stage in my life I want to get control over this part of me. I hate being unreliable. It grieves my heart. I don't get my thank you notes out in time. I forget birthdays. I forget my deadlines til the last minute and stay up all night working on them. I get phone calls from my mom saying make sure to get here in half an hour for that meeting when I am just sitting around oblivious. I hate this. I actually sit there now pretty uncomfortable to be saying these things out loud about myself. I need help. :) So offer away. I need an organizational mentor.
Oh I forgot. In my attempt to gain control of my life I have started again doing weekly menus. We are in the process of getting a new fridge so when we do it will return to biweekly or even once every 3 weeks menus. But for now a week. So everyday I blog I plan to put my menu for the day to help keep me accountable to myself.
Today: - Oops I wrote this earlier today and this is what I ate today (Monday).
Breakfast - Bagels and cream cheese for them, *blush* I didn't get around to it and ate half a peach only.
One thing about breakfast. I need to start eating breakfast earlier and regularly. And so do you! :)
Lunch - Turkey wraps - in tortillas with cheese for family, wrapped in lettuce leaves with cilantro mayo for me.
Snack - half a pear with a spoonful of peanut butter.
Dinner - Corned Beef and Cabbage
Dessert - South Beach lemon zest ricotta cream with half a peach chopped in.
Tuesday:
Breakfast - Oatmeal for fam, steel cut oats with dried apricots and sliced almonds for me
Lunch - Either leftovers or quesadillas with beans in for them, spiralized zuchinni sauteed with a little cheese for me.
Dinner - Frito Pie for them, taco salad for me (lettuce, a little ground turkey taco meat, black beans, salsa, etc.)
Now that we're on to the food thing... My weight adventures: Well I am loving this Biggest Loser thing on my Women's board. What a blessing it has been. Had an off week or two during my absence due to some emotional weeks but am now officially 22.5 lbs down. Yes I just got under 200 lbs. Holy moly that is fantastic. And I don't plan on ever going above again. Unless of course I end up pregnant sometime soon then it is inevitable I suppose. But I did come to a realization recently. Have you been watching this season's The Biggets Loser on tv? Man I love that show. Anyways these brave people who are all heavier than I am are working their tails off. It is insane. Sure it isn't reasonable for us all to work out 4 hours a day, etc. But I realized. What I am lacking in my exercise is heart. Heart. I think honestly I struggle in having heart with things my whole life. It's why I start things and they fizzle out. It is amazing that I am still digiscrapping after all this time. Amazing. Anyways... watching these people on the BL made all my excuses fly out the window. I have back problems, I'm out of shape, I'm big, etc. All the reasons I have that my exercise is not 150%. And you look at people over 300 lbs going 100 miles and hour on the elliptical. So today (eek!) I am starting to step up my exercise. Not sure if I will go to the gym tonight or run on the treadmill but will do something strenuous and out of my box for me. Push it. Maybe in finding my heart in this task I will learn to have heart in my life and find the strength to really CHANGE the things I want to change in my life.
Change. Well things with Clay are touch and go. But we're trying and trying hard, We did go to a marriage counselor and it was interesting but he said he wanted us to go to seperate counseling for a while first and come back to marriage counselfing again after doing that for a while. Argh. That kind of annoyed me since Clay was willing to go to marriage counseling with me finally. Harder to convince him to go to normal counseling eh? But we love each other, love our family and children and marriage and will just keep pushing forward trying to let God heal each of us and find our happiness again.So keep it all in your prayers. The more the better :)
Before I move into business related stuff I want to mention someone else to keep in your prayers. Gine, aka CraftTeaLady on the boards lost her oldest son in a freak skateboard accident. He was a phenomenal young man who loved the Lord with every aspect of his life. My heart shatters to think of what they are going through. To help support them, pay for funeral expenses, etc. all us designers under the amazing leadership of Sonya and Arti who are amazing friends to everyone, put together some kits on sale at SBB. This thread here has all the links and previews: http://www.digishoptalk.com/boards/showthread.php?t=12929 So go support Gina and make sure and stop now and say a prayer for their comfort and strength.
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Well... no good segway to put here to move onto business type stuff. Kind of uncomfortable silence
Okay silence over. Not tons to talk about but some! First things first. In my attempt to get organized, etc. LOL I am going to be releasing my products on Fridays. Another "It's Friday for Kim Christensen Designs" type announcements now. It will help me hopefully to keep my ideas focused, and help me stay on track. Plus it will hopefully help my fabulous customers keep track of my new stuff better. I tend to be so sporatic with my releases. I hope to change that. Plus, this month I will be starting to work on putting together a newsletter. Now don't expect one of these big fabulous tutorials, etc. type newsletters lol one step at a time for me, but a little something for you guys each month then hopefully something each week. We'll see how it all goes. I just need to get Meredith to tell me what to do :)
Now I professed having some treats for those who check my blog regularly. I do have a little (or big) something. I admit I got a little grunge carried away on this one (I was in a mood) but this is for you. It will only be up for ONE DAY then gets slated to go out with my Friday release this week at scrapartist. The links will be removed on Tuesday night at midnight (well that is technically Wednesday but the end of Tuesday) Pacific Time. It was my homage to all these Fall type kits that are out. This is my version of a fall type kit. I don't expect everyone to comment who takes it, but you can if you'd like :) Might make me feel like you read this blog HA! Also... don't put links to the kit on blogs, etc. if I find any hits, etc. from other than this blog I will immediately take it down and that would be sad. 
Sorry but the links have expired and are gone. There will be another freebie here before you know it so keep reading everyday.
Hey have you seen the incredible layouts my CT ladies have done with all my new stuff lately? They are amazing. And despite the madness that is my life, and my increased absence in talking to them, they continue to crank out these stunning layouts. I really don't feel worthy to have them. I am truly blessed.
Click to see larger!!
Well off to go finish up some things for this Friday release. Will try and make this a big fun release with lots of goodies.
If you got this far, thanks. I am so thankful for all of you out there that have emailed me saying they missed reading these rambles. So thankful for all those who emailed me with words of prayer and encouragement as Clay and I started to try and rebuild some of what was lost. So thankful for all those who told me I made the right choice by stepping back for a bit. Just thankful.
