Make a wish!

We thought it might be fun at Plain Digital Wrapper to indulge in a little late summer celebration we like to call "I Wish." It's going to be fun for everyone (hello, SHOPPING!) and wish fulfillment will be happening all over the place!

Here's the scoop from Fairy Godmother Annette:

Wow! There's some gorgeous stuff in the PDW shop I wish I knew a magic genie who could grant my wish for a PDW kit!

Just my luck....no magic genies. In that case I'm going to play Fairy Godmother watch this thread for details! Bippity Boppity Boo......

((Hint: you will want to make sure you're here all week. The fun starts Monday.))


Here are the rules:
1. Check out the forum each day to find out who the sponsoring designers are.
2. Run over to the shoppe and check out all their goodies.
3. Head back to the forum and show me what you just can't live without.
4. Keep your fingers crossed and hope that this fairy godmother grants your wish.

And today I'm one of the Sponsoring Designers, so here are some of my latest items you can choose:

Make Lemonade. After all, you have plenty of ice!

Well, if you read any of my rantings and whinings whatsoever, you know we've had a lot of storms this summer. It doesn't take anything too out of the ordinary to inspire me sometimes, and when you throw in a lot of photos to scrap, well, I'm gonna need a kit to do it :) And the colors that go with storms are really quite spectacular anyway, so I had quite a lot of fun working with them :)








Stormy Weather will be on sale in my PDW store through Wednesday. And for a limited time, you can download this coordinating alpha!(Sorry, this download has expired - item is available in my PDW Store!)

In the Mood.

Heh. Finally, some mojo this week (sorry to disappoint if you thought this was headed another direction...tsk tsk). I've been wanting to make this kit since we were in New Orleans last October, but somehow could never wrap my head around it. Then something just clicked, and hey! presto, here it is! It will be in my shop in the morning (Wednesday):


There's also a nice "extra" kit (which google tells me is acceptable to entitle "en plus," so I did - if it's incorrect, I am perfectly willing to assign blame to the google gnomes) which will be free for a few days before it goes in my shop. Enjoy!
(sorry, this download has expired, but you can still get the kit in my store)

Summer Doldrums

I've been curiously uninspired as of late. Between the staining and powerwashing and replacement door and window purchasing and painting that has been going on (none of which exactly define me as a fan) I find myself yearning to just sit on the couch with the laptop and play Facebook games. And I've actually worked a fair amount of that into the schedule (forgoing more useful tasks such as scrapbooking and designing and showering). And despite the sluggishness that seems to have invaded my psyche, I have a few observations for you. If you've found yourself in a similar malaise, you may recognize a few of these...

1) Farkle is evil. It lures you in with it's cute little innocent-looking dice and fun trophies at the end. It posts your friends' scores with leering yet alluring abandon, and when you fall for the trick and decide to figure out how to play, it tries to fool you into thinking it's Yahtzee on a stick. Well, it's not. It's Yahtzee WITH a stick, and it's gonna beat you senseless with it just as soon as you're hooked.

2) Farkle giveth, and Farkle taketh away. See Number 1. The part that says "beat you senseless with a stick." Ironically, Farkle takes away all your good scores and leaves you with a string of Farkles broken only by the glaring -500 that punctuates every third Farkle in the list.

3) Farkle doesn't care if you are the laughing stock of your friends. It posts the stupid score it gives you anyway. Which totally figures, cos it loves them wayyyyyyyy more than it loves you, obviously. Otherwise you wouldn't be stuck with a one as your first number while everyone else has eights and nines.

4) Farkle is pretty smart. It knows just at what point in the game you decide, "Oh yeah, now we're getting somewhere! This game is pretty fun after all!" That's the point that it goes into spontaneous Farklemania and every Java-toss of the dice brings heartache and loss. Conversely, it also knows when you are THISCLOSE to never playing again, and you get fabulous hand after fabulous hand. Until the last turn, of course, when you accidentally let loose and think to yourself, "Oh yeah, now we're getting somewhere! This game is pretty fun after all!..."

Snipe Hunt!

Yay! New kit in my store at Plain Digital Wrapper today! I guess I've been in the mood for bright and fun lately, and this one fits the bill:


Lots of great inspiration and scrapping ideas courtesy of my creative layout artists!

(Layout by Interstitchal)

(Layout by Dracowin)
(Layout by Shanners)And a couple from me (finally scrapping some of my daughter's fantastic travel pix!)

And what's a brand new kit without a little freebie to go along with it? Today's sample is a quick page and word art (the word art is included separately, in case you'd like to use it on a different layout).

You can download the quickpage and the wordart HERE.

Warning: Whining

Yeah, like that's a big surprise. However, if you find yourself to be tired/annoyed/disgusted/bored by my recent riffs on Mother Nature and her peccadilloes, you might just want to go ahead and click "Next Blog" in your reader right now and just get it over with. Consider yourself duly warned...

We've had quite a lot of weather all week, and it has been annoying. Monday night I had the bright idea that some of my husband's compatriots, being assembled in town for a training meeting, should come experience the Southern household around the dinner hour. Good sound reasoning - these are folks he doesn't get to be around very often, and it's just smart to get to know each other in a relaxed and personable atmosphere so the next time somebody fires off an email, if it isn't one hundred percent clear (or tactful) you have enough understanding of the person's... well, persona, in order to realize that hiring an assassin probably is not only not necessary, but, well, reaching into overreaction territory. Unfortunately, being the introverted and indolent person that I am, providing the "relaxed and personable atmosphere" can fall a little on the "not-so-much-fun" side of things (although I worked diligently on my outlook to try to circumvent the whining, and was largely successful in the greater scheme of things, despite the moment an hour before arrival time when I discovered I had planned for a total of four guys and that number had been quietly extended to seven... ). Some extra beer, and a few additional steaks, and we were good to go again. After all, they could do their thing on the deck and it wouldn't matter that I only have 4 chairs around my table inside, LOL.

Except for the whole "weather" thing. Of course it rained. And was chilly. And while in the larger picture this didn't matter a whole lot, and that bonding occurred in spite of (and perhaps because of) shivering and standing and borrowing jackets. It was all good.

On Wednesdays, in the summer, when my husband is in town and free, he goes across the city to the drag strip and participates in "Test and Tune," an opportunity to practice his starts and timing and all that other stuff I don't really fully understand about drag racing (I get the first part, the "drag" part). I get an email message entitled "Drag Raining." Yeah. More clouds, more rain, more interruptions.... it's just par for the week's course. Annoying, but meh.

Yesterday, shortly after the dog and I scrounged through the fridge for some of Monday's leftovers for lunch (ok, I scrounged, but the dog was very definitely interested), I became aware of the fact that not only was it cloudy, but, it was CLOUDY. As in, somebody shut off some of the lights cloudy. Yikes. About the same time I noticed, it began to precipitate with a vengeance, and the next thing I knew, Angus was pretty much wrapped around my feet in panic, because, well, hail the size of a quarter beating down upon one's house is REALLY REALLY LOUD. At that time I remembered that supposedly there had been a tornado sighting earlier in the week (I maybe should start paying attention to the weather reports?) and we hoofed it to the basement to hang out til the noise stopped, and/or we ended up in OZ.

Once the deafening roar stopped, we came upstairs to a) check windows, and b) take pictures. Because it's kinda cool when there's a drift up against your back sliding glass window in June. I opened the front door to get a picture of the street being all white, and the smell was amazing... bruised trees smell wonderful, poor things. And after a nice round of photos, I went back to work at my computer, because one just doesn't waste mojo, particularly when it has been scarce and capricious, and I really didn't give much more thought to the event of the afternoon.

So when my husband came in the front door after his meeting, went straight to his office (no kiss, no greeting, no passing Go and collecting $200) and called the insurance company, it was a shove into a teensy bit of reality that I had overlooked. Oh yeah. Just because you don't end up in Oz (or even Kansas) doesn't mean that the roof is happy, or the hot tub cover, or the vinyl cladding on your sliding glass door...

I'm not even going to revisit my previous bloggery about blizzards in June... no more bright ideas for Mrs. Nature, Ma'am. Just respect.

All kinds of conflicted...

I've been on the Interwebs for a long time. Long enough to have seen a lot of things, experienced quite a few, interacted with many different types of folks, and to have signed up for at least a dozen "reward" programs. As the years have progressed, my willingness to participate in semi-mindless clicking activities for a small check, or a small gift certificate has faded. As a result, there aren't many left, and I don't always cooperate with the ones that remain, LOL. But today I got a notice for one of the more interesting ones, and I clicked.

This is the first time I've done so since I turned a rather round-numbered age with a substantially higher first number than I really care to focus upon. So it was with something of a start that I realized that I click a new radio button when it comes to the age demographic. The discomfort I felt upon doing so was intensified by the fact that it was also the LAST category (and while I can tell myself that this particular company skews towards a younger demographic, aforementioned discomfort remains pretty much intact). And while I will tell you that I was actually a little relieved when I got the "thank you, that's all the questions we have for you!" screen, if you look in my eyes you will see that I feel a hint of ageism leering down at me from the lofty heights of Comfortably Young.

So I did the only thing that could possibly make me feel better. I went to an online commercial site, and spent the equivalent of several weeks worth of careful clicking on a whim. I may be old, but I have disposable income. Take That, Interwebs!