New kits, updates and more...

Well, long time no blogging, shocking, I know! LOL Well, this summer has been flying by so far! First a little personal update:

My foot took a while for the swelling to go down and the pain to recede. I'm able to walk relatively pain free, at least for short distances, and that is a HUGE improvement. The surgeon says it takes 6 months to a year for you to fully heal, so I'm crossing my fingers there!! I'm still hoping to be able to dance at our son's wedding in October! Following my recovery from the foot surgery, my temp job ended, they couldn't wait for me to return. The work was relatively easy and the people were almost 100% friendly, the pay was OK, but I can't feel too bad about it, the commute took 55 minutes each way on a good day, an hour and 20 minutes or more if it rained. I can't imagine how long it would take to drive in snow! Now I'm back to job hunting.

We had a small flood in our basement on the 22nd of June, less than a quarter-inch of water, but that was enough. It was seepage back from the sewage system, it had rained so hard for days, there was no place for the water to go, it was mostly clear water, but since it came up from a drain, the water had bacteria. I didn't have computer use for several days. I was worried if my computer was OK, it was above the water, but it was so humid in the basement. I let it dry for a couple days upstairs, just to be on the safe side. It forced me to finally move the set-up upstairs to the new kitchen desk we built and hook it up the wireless router I bought almost a year ago! Of course I then discovered I needed a wireless adapter too, so that took another day before I could go shopping and set that get set up. John did all the scrubbing and disinfecting of the basement. With my foot sore and the not- completely healed incision, I couldn't be doing it. Our family room carpet and the stairs carpet was the biggest expense. He pulled all the wet boxes and stuff out of our crawl space (which oddly, had wet and dry sections, it appears the water went in rivulets, there), but we haven't had the time to sort though all the boxes that got wet. Luckily, a couple years back, my husband got the idea to put stuff into storage tubs and little by little, we had put all the holiday decorations, our wedding souvenirs and more recent mementos into the tubs. The stuff in boxes is things from when Melanie was a baby and toddler, my high school and college mementos, different clothes, and a bunch of my step- daughter's stuff from when she left for college. About 30 of my husband's favorite blues albums are warped and ruined. (Yes, actual albums! LOL ~Between the 2 of us, we had about 1000! For Christmas, 2 years ago now, he received one of those album-to-CD converters, and it is still in the box. I know he is kicking himself about not using that now.) Those were just ones sitting on the carpet. In the crawl space, he had stored most of my albums from the 70's and 80's. Those all went, over 250. They were wet and molding. I suppose I could have saved some of the albums themselves, but without anything to protect them, they would have gotten ruined shortly. Besides, I hadn't listened to them in decades, so I couldn't get too upset. It's sad to see some of what was ruined, but I'm rather proud of myself for not getting too emotional over what was lost.

We are planning to use this opportunity to do a lot of purging. We may end up selling this house and moving to a townhouse (less time and work in keeping up a townhouse and hopefully less expensive) in the next year, so it needs to be done. It's something we are thinking about, it may not happen. I would like to move somewhere a little more southern. I'm not a fan of winter or the cold. I've been trying to convince my husband for years, whenever I see the opportunity. I'm currently trying again! LOL Trying to find the silver-lining in all this, I'm just happy none of our photo albums and such was destroyed.

As some of you may know, my husband is a sheet metal worker. The construction industry is slow and he already was laid off twice this year. He thinks he has work through maybe next week, but he is off today and tomorrow and then they may lay him off again (3rd time this year). I sure hope this recession ends soon!!

I was talking to a neighbor about her daughter's graduation. It got me thinking about next year. Our daughter Katie, 22, (my step-daughter since she was 3) will graduate college next year, she's on the 5 year plan. We paid for the first 4 years, but she is now on her own. She set it all up, she'll be an RA in a dorm, plus she works at the university book store and Best Buy; plus student loans and she'll get through the last year independently. She also set up an internship (she’s an architecture major at Southern Illinois University) and will be on the student government. We're pretty proud of how she is stepping up to take care of herself. Earlier this month we sent her the last check for her rent. It is a big relief not to have those bills any longer (the last tuition was about 2 months ago)!

Andrew, now 26 (my step-son since he was 7), will be getting married Oct 2nd and then next May he'll graduate law school. He already has a degree in Environmental Engineering from Northwestern University. Luckily, he is paying for law school.

Melanie, will graduate to middle school next year too (next month she'll be in 5th grade)! (The grade school here goes K-5, and then Middle School is 6-8.) She is looking forward to us having a HUGE graduation party for the 3 of them next year about this time! LOL She loves to plan parties!!

Well, for my family and friends, this is the end of the personal updates. It was a little lengthy, but I hope it fills in some blanks.

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Now, for my scrapbooking friends and customers, some updates on my designs! I made a new kit for the 4th of July. Here are the previews:

And an add-on kit here (I love the new flair button fad that began on Facebook, ~ you can use them as elements or reduce them in size and make the brads! I made 2 flair buttons for the main kit and 3 buttons for the add-on):


Tomorrow another new kit will be in the store called Heritage Builder. August is Heritage Scrap's 1st anniversary and we have all worked to make a great collaborative kit. The are some awesome sales too! Saturday, August 1st the whole store is 50% OFF!!!

Here are the previews of my portion of the collaboration (each designer's portion is sold separately):


Each designer made a family chart as a bonus, here is my chart (it is a PNG you can add your own photos to) with some of my family members as examples:

Lastly, I have to tell you about my friend Carmela's awesome Photoshop styles I used to make the Heritage Builder kit. They are just gorgeous and a great value! You can see them HERE and below is the preview of the styles.

Oh my goodness, you made it through this marathon post! You deserve a treat! Here is a coordinating cluster frame that matches my 4th of July kits:

Click on the image to download your freebie or click HERE