People are talking.
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My friend Dona said nice things about me on her blog, and I was so touched I wanted to share it with you. http://donascrap.blogspot.com/2008/09/pay-it-forward.html
Filed under Summer Rose Scrapbooks, Scrapbooking, Projects | Comments (3)Handmade cards.
This time they’re not made by me! I was in a card swap and there were some talented ladies involved. I included my “happy bird-day” card with a glittery bird that my daughter made. Anyway, aren’t these the cutest?
Handmade owl card.
Got into a card swap recently and the theme was “bling” so I traced a chipboard owl onto cardstock and then smothered it with Stickles to make her sparkly, used Stickles again to make her a “necklace”, gave her jewels for eyes, and thought I was done. Then Summer came in and said, “Mom, she has no beak!” so I added the beak. Oops. Ya think she’s cute?
What every mom wants to hear.
Last night I was lying in bed next to my daughter so she would go to sleep faster. Totally did not work. She was too busy talking to me! And by now it’s 10 p.m. and I’m totally losing my patience and I’m frustrated and I say, “Summer, I’m really losing my patience here. You’re not even trying to fall asleep. I’m gonna have to ground you soon.” And I don’t even think she was listening because right about that time she wraps her arm around my stomach and hugs me and says, “Momma, you’re a great mom.” Then she was right back to talking about whatever. I was floored. I don’t know about the rest of the mothers out there, but for me, as a mother, it was a BIG DEAL. I tried to interrupt her and tell her how meaningful it was to me that she would say that and how happy that made me that she would tell me that and feel that way and she just said, “Yeah, I know.” And then went right back to whatever she was talking about. Funny, because she couldn’t possibly know at 8 years old. Me? I just wanted to say, “Oh, go to bed whatever time you want from now on!” ha ha !
Filed under Life, Scrapbooking, Projects | Comments (2)Just another day. And another quote from Summer.
My daughter Summer and I were talking last night about how I have to work today, even though it’s Labor Day. I’m a medical transcriptionist, and hospitals don’t close today so here I am. Anyway, Summer was appalled that I didn’t have the day off.
“But mom, it’s Labor Day.”
“My company doesn’t care.”
“But it’s a holiday!”
“My company doesn’t care.”
“Okay, that’s it. I am going to have a talk with somebody there………as soon as I grow a couple of inches……..”
Filed under Scrapbooking, Projects | Comment (1)Her name is Anita.
You ever go along your merry way in life, doing what you always do, working, taking care of the kids, just slogging along in your boring existence, blah, blah, blah… and then something happens and you realize how LUCKY you are? Ever have a time when you see something or you read something or you meet someone with a story that touches you deep inside your heart? Someone that makes you want to DO SOMETHING. That happened to me.
Her name is Anita. She lives in Canada. I don’t know her, I’ve never met her, but I want to. She is young and beautiful. She is brave and she inspires me. She is a mother with 3 beautiful children. She makes me appreciate my life a little more. Her story makes me want to take my daughter into my arms and never let her go. Never. She has cancer. She is fighting for her life.
I read a very brief story about her winning a contest where the prize was scrapbooking supplies. Her friend Becky had entered her in the contest at Scrapbook & Cards Today magazine, a Canadian magazine I read online and love. Becky said in her entry that Anita was fighting breast cancer that had spread and with chemotherapy treatments and 3 kids she had no time to scrapbook, but her 3 year old daughter had no scrapbooks done about her and Becky thought if Anita won the prize it might motivate her to get busy making her little girl a scrapbook. When I read that, it spoke to me. It touched me.
I couldn’t stop thinking about this woman somewhere in Canada who is younger than me with 3 kids and breast cancer. I couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like to live with this THING inside me every day and wonder if it was going to take me away from my daughter. I literally couldn’t sleep because of it. Part of it I think is because 17 years ago a close friend of mine died unexpectedly and suddenly and she left behind a 3-year-old daughter. For a while she used to carry around this photo of her mommy around the house with her and talk about her. And then………she stopped remembering. Her daddy got a new girlfriend and moved in with her and her kids, and my friend’s little girl just simply didn’t remember her mother anymore. It broke my heart. It became awkward after a while and eventually I lost touch with the little girl. I wasn’t a scrapbooker then, or you better believe I would have made her a scrapbook all about her momma and how much she loved her. But I wasn’t and I didn’t and life goes on and that’s just the way it is.
And then I read about Anita. And I couldn’t stop thinking about how she was fighting for her life and she had this 3-year-old little girl who would have no scrapbooks of her mother if she loses this fight with cancer. And it just bothered me. I felt like I had to do something. So I emailed the editor of the magazine and I asked her to get me in touch with the woman, to supply my email to her to protect her confidentiality or whatever, to tell her that I was touched by her story and I wanted to help her by making a scrapbook for her youngest daughter.
The editor contacted the friend who had entered her in the contest and about a month later I got an email from her. She provided me with Anita’s email address, and I began corresponding with her. She was so excited that someone she doesn’t know would want to help her. And it’s not just me. I can’t take all the credit really. I asked several friends who belong to a yahoo scrapbooking group with me for their help. And they came through for me. Jill and Edie in California, Klo and Erm in Nebraska, Thea in Illinois, Katie in New York, Dona in Texas. Anita sent me several hundred photos and I divided them up and sent them across the country to 5 different states to my friends, who are busily making scrapbook pages with them right now. I can’t even tell you how good this makes me feel. The suspense is driving me crazy. I can’t wait to get them all finished and put them in an album and mail that sucker off to Canada. I wish I could deliver it in person so I could meet Anita and her family and see the look on her face personally when she receives her book.
Life is good, and it’s nice to be reminded of that once in a while, and I hope that my actions will help to make her life just a little bit better. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go hug my daughter.
**edited to add** My scrapping buddies have been working hard on their pages for Anita and Amber. Here are links to other blog posts I have written where I have shown off their handiwork. Go check them out and let me know what you think!
http://my-so-called-scrappy-life.blogspot.com/2008/08/layouts-for-cause.html
http://www.myscrapbooklife.com/pages-for-anita/
http://my-so-called-scrappy-life.blogspot.com/2008/10/more-layouts-for-anita.html
Filed under Summer Rose Scrapbooks, Life, Scrapbooking | Comments (3)Pazzles Inspiration Creative Cutter
I have a resale license to sell scrapbooking supplies, and this is my newest inventory item. This machine is my new happy thing in my scrapbook world. Last weekend I traveled to St. Charles, Illinois near Chicago to the Scrapbook Expo at the Pheasant Run Resort and spent 2 days with my buddies Thea and Klo (Pazzles guru) learning how to use the Pazzles Inspiration machine and demoing and selling it to scrapbookers.
Frankly, it’s freaking awesome. People kept coming up and saying, “Okay, what does this thing do?” And we’d have to say, “Everything!” You can cut out your own titles, design and cut out your own die cuts, window clings, vinyl quotes for the wall or other items, make your own rubber stamps, make iron ons for shirts. This machine will cut through chipboard and acrylic and fabric. I don’t even know how to use it well enough to know how to do everything, and I can already say it rocks. We made me a window cling for the back of my car to advertise my website. I think I showed the cool T-shirt that Klo made me a while back here on my blog. Here are some things I made while learning how to use it at the expo.
Here’s a cool title guru Klo made for my daughter (Klo hurt her feelings once and made her cry so she was trying to make it up to her). Their newest CD just out has a lot of Disney-ish princess images and fairies and dragons and castles and cool stuff. I love it. Tinkerbell is from that. (By the way Klo, Summer says thank you and she loves it, but she’s still mad at you!) hehe
If you’re a good drawing artist (not me!), then you can freehand draw pictures on the software and cut them out. You can download clip art from the internet or scan pictures from books or coloring books or your kids drawings or whatever and it will cut them out. You can even scan photographs and cut them out. I’m a font person and I have a lot of them, and this software will use any true type font you have on your computer (or download free off the internet) so you don’t have to go out and buy cartridges or disks or whatever like some of the other cutters on the market. You CAN buy CDs if you want. Pazzles has some pretty cool ones, like the one with Tinkerbell, but with a little more time you could just make your own. Personally I like the convenience of not having to make my own!
I also love it because you can “weld” your letters together for a title and cut it all out in 1 single piece all hooked together instead of each letter individually and then trying to line them up straight (can’t do it). You CAN cut them out individually if you want, but you’d have to be crazy! haha
My friend Klo (Pazzles design team and demo person) has a blog here where she shows free video tutorials teaching people how to use it, and she has a great way of explaining things. The videos are great for people who tend to be visual learners and want to SEE how to do it.
So the machine sells for $599.00 plus $35.00 shipping. What saves you money in the long run is that you don’t have to buy the cartridges or disks or anything else to go with it. You also don’t have to buy diecuts anymore! Make your own! It comes with a cutting mat and a cutting blade, so you will need to replace those eventually and they inexpensive. The blade goes through 1,000 cuts and the mat lasts for 70-100 cuts. Included is also 60 fonts already on there and 300 images already on it to get you started. They also offer a 90-day phone support and a 1-year limited warranty. It is shipped directly to you from the Pazzles company. If you’re interested, contact me. You can purchase one from me through my Paypal widget just to the right up there at the top of my blog securely. I also have it available on my website at www.summerrosescrapbooks.com but to purchase it you would have to fill out the contact form and let me send you a Paypal invoice (don’t have a shopping cart yet). I do accept credit cards and you don’t have to have an account with Paypal to use it. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. I can also provide you with a brochure by mail if you’d like.
Filed under For Sale, Summer Rose Scrapbooks, Scrapbooking | Comment (1)Mom sick.
So my kid’s sleep schedule does not want to adjust to school nights. I made the mistake of letting her stay up until 11 p.m. during the summer, and now I’m paying for it. Her bedtime is supposed to be 8:30. I figure if I get her there by 9:00 it’s good. Well, I can lead the kid to bed but I can’t make her go to SLEEP!
“But mom, I’m not tired.” Well, what am I supposed to say to that? If she’s not tired, she’s not tired! You can’t force her to fall asleep! Believe me, I would if I could. So we do this back and forth thing for a couple hours, her getting out of bed and me telling her to go back to bed, she’s got to get up early and I don’t want her to be grouchy in the morning, her saying she’s not tired, she can’t fall asleep, she can’t help it. But then she’s not even TRYING to sleep. She’s reading a book or playing a game or petting the cat. Until finally I’ve lost all patience, and frankly I don’t have much to begin with.
But I’m trying to handle things well because I don’t want the last thing my kid remembers as she falls asleep is that her momma yelled at her. That’s not a good way to fall asleep for either one of us. So last night I got silly. Usually that’s her daddy’s job but I figured I’d give it a try before I resorted to pulling my hair out and duct taping her to the bed. I sat on her bed and took her in my arms (she’s 8; not an easy feat people) and then was rocking her like a baby with very big exaggerated movements and singing Rock a Bye Baby all silly and acting all stupid and the more she laughed the harder and more exaggerated I rocked her until we were both about to fall off the bed when suddenly she says,
“Oh, please stop that now. I’m getting Mom Sick.”
The kid seriously makes me happy.
Summer Says…
Today Summer went into a gas station for me and got me a bottle of pop to drink and herself a donut and a bag of chips. What a combo, huh? Anyway, her hands were pretty full with her purchases and my change and she came back out to the car and said…
“Man, it’s a good thing I didn’t have to carry a massager or I would have DIED….from HEAVINESS.”
WHAT?!? Well, what do you mean a “massager” I asked her. She replied, “You know, like the massager chairs.”
Well, of course that makes perfect sense that she would have picked up one of those at the gas station.
Have I mentioned before how much this kid cracks me up?
Filed under Summer Rose Scrapbooks, Life, Scrapbooking | Comment (1)Heartbroken.
Do you ever take photos on your digital camera and then forget about them? And then days or weeks later you take your memory card and upload the pictures to your computer and you’re like “Wow, I forgot I took those photos.”? Well, that happened to me today. See, a week ago I had to take one of our 2-year-old cats to be put down. I agonized over the decision for months.
I’ve spent the last year taking this cat back and forth to 2 different vets to try to figure out why she’d been urinating in places that are NOT the litter boxes. Weird places, like she jump up on our bed and pee on the quilt WITH ME UNDER IT. Or if I went to Walmart and came home and left the plastic bag on the floor with groceries in it that needed put away, she would come in and pee on the bag. Or bubble wrap that got dropped on the floor. Or a piece of paper that had been knocked off my desk. Or the poor dog’s bed.
I talked to friends about it and researched the internet about it and I prayed to God about it, looking for some sort of sign that I was making the right decision. It was hard for me. And it was one of the hardest things that I’ve had to do so far in my 8 years of being a mother. I wanted to be honest with my daughter so she could say goodbye to her kitty. But it was hard because she wasn’t outwardly suffering in an obvious way, except that she never gained any weight and people were constantly asking “Don’t you guys feed that cat?” and even though she was born in our house and has lived here since she was born she never wanted us to pet her or pick her up or anything like that. It was strange.
Anyway, the day before I told my daughter and she asked me to take a picture (she’s the kid of a scrapbooker, you know), so I did. It was heartwrenching. And then when I saw it again after I downloaded it to my computer, it broke my heart all over again.
Sometimes being a mother sucks, and this has been one of those times. When your kid is sobbing and says to you, “Please don’t do this to me Momma,” it’s like the worst thing ever. I’m having a really hard time with it, with letting go and knowing that I made the right decision. There HAD to be something wrong with the cat even though the vets couldn’t find anything. I’m having a hard time dealing with the guilt and getting the actual event out of my head (the actual experience at the vet was HORRIBLE). I literally haven’t had a good night’s sleep since. So right now I struggle and I hope that with time the guilt goes away and our hearts mend a little. I don’t think I’ll print this photo, though. It’s not a good reminder and there are plenty of other happy photos taken with the cat.
What a week………….
Filed under Life, Scrapbooking | Comment (1)
