Random acts of kindness

Have I mentioned how incredibly nice and wonderful all the crafty scrap people are that I’ve met {both online and in person}?

I have to send a BIG thank you to Lisa. What a generous and giving person she is. She had a post on her blog about unloading a bunch of her scrapbooking supplies. I’ve seen these type of giveaways on many scrapbooking blogs and they are often referred to as “Random Acts of Kindness” or {RAK}. I left a comment to the post and got a reply that some goodies would be coming my way. Who doesn’t love getting goodies in the mail?

Got my package today and look what she sent! I know there was a ton of people who posted comments and Lisa was so gracious and tried to send packages to as many people as she could. I just love how great the scraping community is, everyone I have come in contact with has been so helpful, kind, supportive and just super friendly!

** Thank You Lisa **

** Important child vaccine recall **

Merck announced that it is voluntarily recalling 1 million doses of two common childhood vaccines, routinely given to children under 5. Here’s everything you need to know about the recall.

Here’s a link to the CDC site with more details.

Friday Freebie - unique collage templates

Hello and happy Friday Freebie day! I was at my local craft store yesterday and picked up a magazine called {The Stampers’ Sampler}. I’m not a huge stamper, though I do have a small collection of stamps and inks to play around with. What struck me about the cover of this magazine was the sampling of collages on the cover. I haven’t dabbled in collage yet, but have been making a bunch of mini journals that incorporate different materials. I wound up buying the mag as it had a lot of inspiring ideas for my mini journals. What’s this have to do with the Friday Freebie? Once I got home and really dug into the mag I see there is a monthly feature called {Tempting Template}. I checked out their site and YES, they are tempting and very unique. Lots of cool ideas a collage artist or scraper would love. There are many templates for the traditional card maker or paper crafter too. Check out what these tempting templates are all about. Shown in the images are the circle card, dress maker, and pocket card templates.

Get the Friday Freebie

Mini albums made with Starbuck’s stuff

Check out these creative mini albums made from Starbuck’s coffee sleeves, gift cards, and even a Tazo Tea Tag.

BrendaW in the Two Peas member gallery has an adorable Starbuck’s sleeve album. She even got Starbuck’s stickers to use as embellishments!

Over on the Fishbowl blog there is a cool altered Starbuck’s gift card album. This one is great! I really like all the fabulous designs that Starbuck’s comes out with for their seasonal gift cards. This is a really fun idea for those used up gift cards.

Lain Eihmann is so clever, check out the Starbuck’s mini tag album she made from a Tazo Tea Tag. She has great instructions and photos detailing how to make one.

Fiskars TV posted a tutorial on how to make the oh so popular Starbuck’s sleeve album. Check out how easy it is.

My sweet obsession

Here’s my current sweet obsession. It’s probably a good thing this is a seasonal candy. Not that I really need a special holiday or event to indulge in treats, Ha! It’s a tad pricey, but worth every bite…I mean it’s worth the price. You get a lot of it too. I’m lovin all these food and confections that Williams Sonoma has during the holidays.

Christmas fun - virtual gingerbread house

Check out what children’s illustrator Jenny B Harris has created. She has some really cute and fun activities on her website. Her designs are delightful and the virtual activities work great. Build your own {online} gingerbread house.

There’s also a cute holiday paper doll. Here’s my paper doll creation shown in the image. What a great little drag and drop activity. So easy, let your little one give it a try!

Friday Freebie - tons of Christmas digital downloads

For today’s freebie I’ve got 5 different places for you to check out and get a ton of free Christmas downloads for your scrapbooking projects. A variety of choices and styles for you to choose from or download them all!

Sugarplum Paperie offers many fabulous digital downloads. Get their free Christmas Joy Stamp and be sure to download the Whimsical Wonderland, plus the bonus Whimsical Sparkles. Sugarplum Paperie has some of the nicest freebies. The designs are awesome. Love this place!

2 Peas has 24 free fonts for you! The “gift” and “winter” fonts are perfect for your holiday projects.

Canon’s Creative Park site has a huge amount of free Christmas kits. Or if you need just a few embellishments or extras they have you covered. Many holiday backgrounds, pattered papers, tags, borders, and fonts too!

I really like Shabby Miss Jenn’s style, download her cool winter word art. {download expired}

Looking for something besides the traditional red and green? Get this kit from Scrap Digi Style. The colors are surprisingly fantastic! {download expired}

Nika update

How about a Nika update? I haven’t done one recently. She just turned 8 months and already wearing size 12-18 month clothes! She is getting so big, so fast.

Nika is sitting really well on her own. She’s been very active this last week. She is still working on figuring out how to crawl. She does well inching backwards. She can inch herself forward, but only does that in her crib. I guess the motivation to not take a nap and get out of the crib is good enough that she doesn’t even realize she’s crawling forward. Ha!

She’s doing a lot of push ups and holding herself up on all fours. You’d think she was preparing for some type of sporting event she goes up and down, push up, after push up. It’s very funny.

Teeth update: her pearly whites look so cute. They are very prominent now when she smiles. She has moved on to eating biscuits and biting pieces of them and chewing.

Oh, her latest achievement is so cute. She waves now. Her favorite place to show off her new skill is while sitting in the car seat.

Nika’s Current Favorite Things

• Jesse - Our family dog. Nika squeals and giggles for him and calls him “J”. He is hands down her favorite!
• Biscuits - When we ask Nika if she wants a cookie (biscuit) she gets so excited. Her eyes light up and she’ll do this excited grunt noise while reaching out for her treat.
• Silly Buddy Bunny - A friend gave this to us at the baby shower. Nika cannot sleep without it. We now have 3 silly buddy bunnies to ensure there is always one close by.
• Little Superstar Sing Along Stage - Grandma just got this for Nika and she loves it. She’s a popstar in the making!
• Daddy - Nika loves Mama but is definitely a Daddy’s Girl.

Nika Chat: Nika can say “mama,” “dee dee,” and she’s just starting to say “cookie”.

MamaSheg snowboarding

How about some random holiday fun? Check me out below. Make your own SnowJoke or Go Elf Yourself. The Elf one looks best with multiple elves, but Vlad would not let me post that one. He made a GREAT elf!

Check out Tim Holtz’s Blog…amazing artist

Hello everyone, it’s Wednesday and the rain has finally {FINALLY} stopped here in Seattle. The weather has been crazy. Last Saturday there was a dusting of snow, Sunday we had about 6 inches of snow in the morning. As the day warmed up it began raining and melted all the snow away. The rain hasn’t stopped since. We’ve had near record breaking rainfalls, floods, wind storms, and just plain ole yucky weather. The Sheg family has been fortunate to keep dry and our little neighborhood didn’t flood. Many of the surrounding areas were not so lucky. So I’ve been couped up in my house with Miss Nika. I’ve been able to catch up on some of my favorite blogs. While visiting Ali Edward’s blog, I made my way over to Tim Holtz’s blog and so glad I stopped by.

Tim Holtz is an amazingly talented artist, crafter, and designer. He currently is doing a daily post called the “12 Tags of Christmas”. He highlights a new project each day with great instructions and tips. He has some very cool stuff that I have not seen before. Check out Tim’s blog and be sure to post a comment as he’s giving away fabulous prize packages every day!