This morning I went outside and looked around and there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky at all. The sky was a beautiful blue with just this airplane trail for contrast. I was amazed, almost everyday you can find at least one little cloud. The below photo is 100% photoshop free.
The bluest skies...
Looking at the sky the song, “Seattle” popped into my head. What a blast from the past. When I was like eight I remember having the biggest crush on Bobby Sherman and I had to watch Here Come the Brides every week just to see him. What you have no idea what the heck I’m talking about? Well here let me refresh your memory (or let me give you a new memory)!
I got a little distracted while I was over at youtube grabbing the previous wonderful clip and came across this video of my 3rd grade heart throb singing the song, Easy Come, Easy Go that made me fall in love with him. I mean who can resist that white satin shirt, black leather pants and those fancy dance moves?!!!
I’m sure you all enjoyed that as much as I did!
I still haven’t posted any photos from Hawaii. Hopefully I’ll get my act together and get them posted. But it is just so darn hot, I’m moving slower than molasses it seems.
Usually I love Seattle’s weather in the summer, because it’s usually not too hot, usually not too humid. I really love the temperature in the 70’s. But today is extremely warm at least for Seattle–it was in the 90’s earlier and I am melting. We haven’t had rain for more than a week and before that one day of rain, we hadn’t had rain for 29 days. The grass is starting to turn brown already. The meterologist said that there is a high fire danger so to be really careful with fireworks in the few neighborhoods where they are still legal. The grasses and trees are as drier than normal, usually they wouldn’t be this brown and dry until the end of August.
Well don’t forget to head over to Costco and go get your copy of PSE7 before the coupon expires Sunday night. I’m not sure if they are open tomorrow or not.
Hi everyone–it’s Andrea here and I am so excited for today! It’s my birthday today and I’m going to celebrate by having a sale at SM and giving away all kinds of fun goodies. All of our digital personal use products are on sale, with a few exceptions, for 30% off and all of our commercial/professional use products are on sale, with a few exceptions, for 25% off. We also have a MEGA template kit available FREE with a $20 purchase in the shop.
MEGA Template Pack
Can you say–timesaving, fabulous scrapping! These templates will help you scrap your summer (or winter) painlessly. Mega Template Kit FREE with $20 purchase! Mega Template Kit FREE with $20 purchase! There will also be a Hybrid Grab bag free with a $10 purchase of various hybrid products. Our hybrid designers will also have hybrid grab bag or two for sale.
Hybrid greatness is coming to SM today or tomorrow and while we’ve always had such a great hybrid team at SM, they haven’t always had much to work with, their very resourcefulness has been amazing. Anyway to remedy the situation SM is going to start selling Kaiser Craft’s amazing pressboard albums. These are perfect for mini-albums, they are sturdier than chipboard, yet light weight. We also have new hybrid designers as well as a new hybrid CT just waiting to show off their skills. Since this is SM’s first time selling tangible, IRL (in real life) products it should be quite an adventure. The hybrid celebration will continue all month long during July, so keep checking the shop, forum and gallery to see what fun ideas the hybrid team is creating.
I just wanted to give you a little sneak peak about some of the fun changes coming to SM. I have been so busy getting this ready, I haven’t even had a chance to post any pictures of my trip to Hawaii. I’ll have an ad with more specifics and some pictures of my trip shortly.
If you love to create hybrid goodness this call is for you! All SM CT members have full access to the shop. You get to pick and choose which goodies you want to use to create with. Some recent standouts from the hybrid gallery include these beauties:
Pamper yourself or your friends with this fabulous gift pack by Kari.
This birthday can from Jaime is super cute! What a fun way to present a gift.
Found this cute teacher gift in the gallery. What teacher wouldn't want this?
Well hopefully I’ve whet your appetite on all of the fun stuff you can do with hybrid. If you are a paper and glue girl you will love creating for the hybrid team.
CT Requirements:
Each month create 3 hybrid projects OR 2 hybrid projects and 2 digital layouts
Participate in site challenges, the team blog, the forum, and the gallery
Post in 4 galleries (SM, DST, and 2 of your choice)
Be a team member for 6 months
Please e-mail the following to ward [at] afconnect [dot] com:
Link to your most active forum
Gallery link
A short bio
Link to your blog (if you have one)
This call closes at 11:59 p.m. PST on Monday, June 8.
My friends Kristie & Adrienne started this totally fun, online boutique, called Wild Coriander.
Kristie & Adrienne--a couple of my creative friends.
Kristie (krisser12) is so talented, you may remember her from when she sold at ScrapMatters as Suzie Belle Designs. I love her design sense and was so sad when she quit designing digital scrapbook kits. However, knowing Kristie something spectacular is always going on in that creative mind of hers. I was so excited to see this next venture. These bags make terrific diaper bags, but I really want one for the beach in Hawaii next month. My mind is churning with the possibilities. Is yours?
Wild Coriander
So go on and check out all of their urban vintage bags (picture is clickable)…and tell them Andrea sent you ;D
They jokingly call themselves the Design Star Cast Offs and I think it says a lot about how much talent there was in our DS contest when this caliber of work didn’t move on. Enjoy and leave them lots of love, they sure deserve it.
As I’ve been recovering from my back and neck injuries I’ve had more time to read and ponder what I read. I always had my nose in a book growing up, much more exciting to read about others lives than to actually live mine as a teen. I hope you will indulge me as I occassionally share what I am reading, have read or want to read. If you want to see more of what I’ve read click on the Good Reads button. One book I loved as a preteen, teen and still love as an adult is Celia Garth by Gwen Bristow.
Celia Garth--image courtesy goodreads.com
This book was written 50 years ago, in 1959, and it is older than I am. I read this book for the first time in the 6th grade and have loved it ever since. I’ve read this book five times, the last time in my early 40’s and it was still as interesting and educational as the first time. This book made the Revolutionary War come alive for me. After reading it I realized the Revolution was no longer just a bunch of dates and facts from school textbooks, but rather an actual event that happened to actual people. This book instilled a love of history for me that I was able to pass onto my daughters. I’ve searched and found copies on amazon & ebay for my daughters who have enjoyed it as much as I have. This book was reprinted in 2008 and is much easier to find now, than when I searched it out ten years ago.
One thing that is really nice about this book is that it manages to deal with mature subjects like war, politics, hunger, betrayal and still remains ‘G’ rated. Something I find rather refreshing compared to most books that are written today. Proof that fiction doesn’t need overly-graphic descriptions to bring a sense of reality to the work.
The 1959 original, inside dust jacket reads [with a few comments by me]:
Celia Garth is a story about a girl who wanted things to happen to her.
Celia lived in Charleston, South Carolina , during the American Revolution. She had blond hair and brown eyes and a sassy face, and she worked in a fashionable dressmaking shop. [These first two paragraphs for some reason remind me of a description for an American Girl doll. She is not a girl, she is a young woman, aged 20.]
Things did happen to Celia, but not as she planned. The king’s army captured Charleston. The ravisher Tarleton swept through the Carolina countryside in a wave of blood, fire and debauchery [where else but in these old classic books do you find words like 'ravisher' and 'debauchery']. Caught up in the ruin were Celia and her friends–the merry minded Darren; Jimmy, whose love for Celia brought her into his tragedy; the fascinating Vivian, five times married; Godfrey, rich and powerful who met disaster because he could control anything in town but the weather; the gay [not in today's sense of the word] daredevil Luke.
Most people thought the Revolution was lost. Many Americans, like Celia’s handsome cousin Roy, joined the king’s side. Then out of the swamps appeared Francis Marion.
Marion was a little man. Marion was also crippled. But as Luke said of him, “When that man’s leading a charge, he looks nine feet tall.”
In the dressmaking shop, Celia became a spy for Marion. She sewed, she smiled sweetly, and in secret she risked her life sending information to this man that the king’s whole army could not catch, the mighty little man to whom Tarleton angrily gave the name “Swamp Fox.”
If you’re looking for something different than the usual beach fare to read this summer I highly recommend this book.
Brynn, one of our community members at SM is walking in her local March for Babies. She and her family have been asked to be the March of Dimes’ Ambassador Family in their community. In order to raise awareness for their walk and all of the good that the March of Dimes is doing to prevent premature births and help infants who are born prematurely reach their potential we at SM decided to let Brynn post her cause in our forum. I also was so impressed with Brynn and her family that I wanted to post her struggles and insights on my blog.
As a NICU nurse I have seen so many different babies come into this world with less than optimal circumstances. Most of the parents valiantly rise to the occasion and show tremendous courage and strength just like Brynn and her husband. So even though I have not met Brynn personally, I have met many others like her and my hat goes off to them all.
If you get a chance you might want to go look through Brynn’s gallery at SM. She’s participating in the Queen of Scrap competition too!
If you would like to help donate to this cause please click the links and give generously. Here is the link she posted on her layout below: http://www.marchforbabies.org/picklejuice_7
Here is Brynn’s post from the ScrapMatters’ Forum:
(click picture for credits)
My husband and I have been asked to be the Ambassador Family for the March of Dimes in our community and are going to be participating in a walk, March For Babies, in one week. We’ve been having a hard time spreading the word about the fundraising and sponsorship. I don’t know why I didn’t think of SM sooner! Thank you so much Andrea for helping us out! It means a lot.
My husband and I feel very strongly about this opportunity, and great organization because of our experiences we’ve had and still have with our premature twins the past year and a half. (They were born at 23 weeks, 4 months early). If you are interested in a little background history you can go to this website: Team Tuft Twins
At this site you can also donate to the March of Dimes if you are able to (the deadline is this Saturday). And even if you can’t donate, please take a look anyway. We are happy to be able to share our story with everyone and give a little insight into what it’s like to have an extremely premature infant. And to hopefully be able to give hope and support to those that need it. Also, if you could please pass this info on to others you may know as well. We could use all the help and support we can get!!!
The March of Dimes Mission is to ” improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth, and infant mortality. We carry out this mission through research, community services, education and advocacy to save babies’ lives. March of Dimes researchers, volunteers, educators, outreach workers and advocates work together to give all babies a fighting chance against the threats to their health: prematurity, birth defects, low birthweight.”
Our family will also be featured in our local newspaper tomorrow (Sun, April 10th) so I’ll update this post with a link to the article when it comes out too.
We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop..............Mother Teresa
Thank you so much Andrea for helping us out! It means a lot.
