Friday Freebie - cool card templates

Hello and Happy Friday!

Today’s freebie is a card makers delight. Mirkwood Designs has nearly 60 cool templates with instructions for free! Lots of amazing cards, fun boxes, ATCs, pockets, and more. I’m amazed at the vast selection of templates. The Kimono and Center-Tie (shown in image) are fantastic. Lots of potential gift ideas here…happy crafting!

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Do you have or know of a great freebie? Leave a comment below or email me. Thanks

Hey Ya….something to make you smile

I had to share this. I love Peanuts (well anything with Snoopy) and I love Outkast. Be sure your volume is turned up for the full effect.

{Warning} You might want to dance.

Holiday activities around western Washington

I found this great article in the Seattle Times listing holiday activities around the area. The list is very complete with a ton of great places to check out. Nika and I have already been to Redmond Town Center’s Santa House! It’s a super cute little house and the Santa was very authentic looking. It gets really busy so go early on a weekday if you can. The Festival of Poinsettias at Molbak’s in Woodinville is also a great place to check out. I love all the festive displays there, great place to get inspired for the holidays.

Holiday activities around western Washington

Friday Freebie - awesome digital kit

Happy Black Friday! Here’s a treat for you digital and hybrid scrapers. I have an awesome Freebie for you to play with. This weeks download is one of the best looking FREE digital kits I’ve seen. The kit is designed by Saskia Bokkers one of the original designers at Polka Dot Potato.

If you haven’t tried digital scraping yet, here’s a great opportunity to try it out. Be patient with the download as it’s a big file.

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** Want more digital goodies…Polka Dot Potato is having a Black Friday sale. Buy a gift card for someone and get the same amount for yourself (for FREE!), all Creative Imaginations kits are 25% off, all holiday items 30% off, and Saskia’s stuff will be 30% off all day.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It’s getting really chilly here in Seattle. Everything was frozen over this morning. It’s one of those gorgeous cold, yet sunny days. Clear skies in the low 30s!

The holidays are officially here. This will be Nika’s first Thanksgiving and Christmas and we’re all so excited. Vlad already went out and got Nika a mini tree for her room. Yesterday I took Nika out and bought Christmas stockings. We’re going to setup the tree and decorate this weekend, yea!

Here’s a new pic of our little babe. She is finally sitting up on her own, but only when she wants to (of course). She’s also working on crawling, but she’s starting out in reverse. My mommy friends tell me some babies crawl backwards before forwards, too funny. Oh, and a teeth update. Her two front teeth are very prominent and almost all the way in.

Black Friday: I’m not planning on venturing out tomorrow for all the crazy shopping. I do plan on hitting a couple online sales. I’ve found a bunch of great online specials. I’ve been compiling a list and will post it later tonight. I also have another awesome Friday Freebie for tomorrow. Check back later.

Gotta get ready for the big turkey dinner. I hope all of you are enjoying the holiday too. Happy Thanksgiving ~ Cathy

hallelujah!

Yes, angels are signing…Nika is finally sleeping through the night without late night feedings! Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice. It’s been several nights now that she has successfully slept like a big girl. Yea Nika!

Other Nika updates: Nika’s teeth keep sprouting. She has her 2 bottom teeth, 1 front tooth working its way in, and a incisor just made itself known today too. It’s crazy how fast this all happens.

Wow, I can’t believe it’s already Friday. Where did the week go?
I’ve been busy with Christmas shopping. The new house is keeping Vlad very busy. We are going through a bunch of inspections right now. Garage floor was just poured, insulation and drywall are supposed to be starting next week. The most exciting new development is the excavating. Our excavator has been out there this week leveling out the backyard for our barn and pasture. Speaking of which, Parker (our horse) got her fall shots and health checkup today. All is looking good for her.

That’s all for now, I need to finish some chores before Nika wakes-up. Have a great weekend ~ Cathy

Friday Freebie - the BEST free fonts ever!

Today’s freebie comes highly recommended. Here’s where all the in-the-know graphic designers get awesome FREE fonts. shhh…it’s supposed to be a secret place?? Anyway, I have already downloaded at least a dozen from the top 100 list. I absolutely {love} the font “Olho de boi” it’s a vintage looking calligraphy font inspired by the 1st Brazilian postage stamp released in 1843. Talk about some serious inspiration!

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Happy font downloading and Happy Friday!

Scrap-a-Faire Review

I was very intrigued by the idea of an online scrapbooking convention. Scrap-a-Faire offers the same elements as a traditional show but with 24-hour access to shopping, classes, and forums all from the convenience of your home. Over a period of 10 days, you can take classes, visit vendors, win prizes and chat with other scrapbookers. To register for the show it cost $5 and classes range from $10 to $35.

Registration: During the payment process my browser alerted me that part of the page was not secure. The 1st thought that entered my mind is…OMG, I’m about to send my credit card information over an unsecured Internet connection! I emailed Scrap-a-Faire with a screen shot of the issue and they informed that the only unsecured portion of the page is an image. I was happy to get a fast reply, however there was no way for me to confirm this was the issue. I asked if they had a Paypal option. No luck, but was given a pass to enter the show. I later tried to sign-up for classes and again the registration appeared not secure so I was unable to participate in that part of the faire. I was disappointed as I was really looking forward to taking some of the classes since I didn’t take any classes at CKC Seattle. I found this lack of security for payment to be a HUGE problem. For customer peace of mind, no part of a payment processing page should ever be left unsecured or unencrypted.

Vendor Booths: Once I logged in, I perused all the vendors’ sites and was not overly impressed. All of the vendor booths had the same look and feel. Part of the enjoyment of conventions for me is the uniqueness and branding of booths. There were a good amount of vendors to choose from. However, there was a lot of clicking around to navigate to places and the loading of pages was slow. Once inside the booths many just took you to the company’s website. I didn’t find any of the “fair specials” to be overly exciting. Many were free shipping with a certain amount purchased. Some had discount offers. I was hoping for some GREAT deals given the “virtualness” of this event (overhead is low compared to a traditional convention). Some vendors “show specials” were merely a list of files that had to be downloaded to find out what they were. This took even more time to download. It just felt like a lot of digging and clicking around.

Gallery: I thought the best part of the faire was the gallery of page ideas. This part of the site was done well and the pages loaded fast in this section. There were both exhibitor and a few vendor galleries with scrapbook pages and ideas.

Forum: I stopped by the forum several times, nothing of interest there. It would have been nice to see actual topics or categories here and more than just one forum. Each time I was there it was just random banter. There was a schedule of “celebrity” chats offered.

Prizes: Everyone loves to win prizes and enter drawings at these types of events. At Scrap-a-Faire you just click on a part of the vendor booth that is offering a drawing and get a pop-up alert that says “you’ve been entered”. This is very convenient yet somewhat impersonal. I think they could have at least made an actual webpage that says thank you for entering. It made the look of the faire experience seem not fully put together.

There were also other random technical errors. I received an email from Scrap-a-Faire that was not legible as it only displayed the code that is used to generate an email. All in all I was disappointed with the unencrypted/unsecured payment option, slowness of page loading within the booths, and the constant digging around for information. In case anyone is curious I did run the diagnostic check and my computer was capable of viewing the site properly. I viewed the site on Apple OS X Leopard. I have a background in web development and usability.

I still love the concept of participating in an online convention. I hope upcoming shows will address some of these issues. For $5 and the convenience of being at home it’s worth trying out. They have to fix the secure payment option though.

Summed up…

* I don’t want to spend a ton of time waiting for page loading or downloads.
* Digging around for information is not a good use of time.
* Secure and encrypted online payment is always a MUST for me.

{update 12/21/07} - As a registered user/attendee of Scrap-a-Faire my email address was opted-in to every vendor that participated in the faire (and possibly more). I have received many, many emails that I did not sign-up for and the emails say I’m receiving the newsletter because I attended Scrap-a-Faire….NOT COOL.

Friday Freebie - blk/wht designer wrapping paper

Happy Friday everyone. I have decided to start a regular post called “Friday Freebie”. Every Friday I will post something FREE and fun that I have found. I’m very excited about my 1st Friday Freebie as it comes from one of my favorite crafty people, Martha Stewart (I’m a huge Martha fan).

Ok, back to the freebie download this awesome black and white designer wrapping paper is stylish in so many ways. I know you can think of some great crafty ways to use this. I’d love to see any pics of stuff you are working on. Send me an email.

Have a great weekend!

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6 weeks away…ho ho ho, Oh!

Ok, it’s really 6 weeks and 5 days until Christmas. I’m frantically realizing I need to step up my shopping and present making. Shopping and having time for crafty stuff is not so easy with little teething Nika. Here’s a quick peek at some of my homemade gifts I’m working on.

It’s also that time of year to get flu shots. We all went and got our flu shots this week (Nika’s is a 2-part shot) since she is so young. I had not heard of that before so thought I would pass that along. After we got shots we stopped by the store to get a few things. Guess who had there 1st big girl shopping cart ride?? No, it wasn’t me…LOL. Check out Nika, she was loving it! She thought I was playing a game with her. It was cute. She got tired pretty quick, likely due to her shot. I raced her around the store snapping photos like a goofball. It was great.

Nika is waking up for her evening bottle, gotta run. XOOXO