Announcement regarding SOTB

more animals

This above kitty and I have a bit in common:

It is with a great deal of sadness, I have to announce my resignation from SOTB. (The next is rather personal, you can skip to the next paragraph if you want.) My husband and I have been having financial discussions. I hadn't been looking too hard for a full-time job, I will admit. I have agreed to devote my full attention to it. (I had originally hoped to just get a part-time job and keep designing, but that isn't paying the bills and I need to be an adult and accept my responsibilities.) We have accumulated nearly $19,000 in debt this year (my husband's hours have been cut and our oldest daughter is in college.) and we are about $1900 short each month now to cover our bills. With the recession hitting us hard, I have no other option but to get a full-time job. In fact, my husband has been off work for the last 2 weeks, there is no work available; construction jobs are falling though everywhere. (~Oh, he is a sheet metal worker, they get paid only if they work, there is no vacation pay, no sick pay, and no holiday pay.) If I don't find a minimally decent paying job in the next couple months, my husband thinks we may need to sell our house! As it is, we are trying to refinance our house to be able to pay all our bills.

Sadly, this leaves me with no real time for designing coming up. I had to explain it to my daughter (10) and I guess it is an example of how we don't always get to do in life what we want and we can't always follow our dreams. I'm very sorry to be doing this, you can't imagine how upset I am. SOTB has been my home since I found scrapbooking over 3 years ago. Dani, the current owner of SOTB was kind enough to allow me to stay in the store through NDSD. That store is now closed and my designs can now be found only at Heritage Scrap.

Now, for the time being, you will still see my designs at Heritage Scrap, but I don't know how long that will last. It being a specialty store (vintage only), it has low participation requirements and low contribution requirements and the owner, Kate, is letting me stay with the knowledge I won't be making anything for the time being. I mention this only because I don't want anyone to wonder what is going on there.

SOTB was a fabulous place to call home! I won't be completely gone! I will still visit occasionally and will post any layouts I make in the gallery. Thank you all for your friendship and I hope everyone there has enjoyed my designs and freebies! I'll try to sneak a little design in from time to time and maybe a freebie too!