I've started using My Plate at Live Strong to track my eating and I LOVE it. It makes it so easy to keep track of everything, especially since there's an app for it so I can use my iPod to record what I eat when I'm not at my computer. :)
Busy Bees!
Real life has been really full lately and I’ve been severely neglecting the digi side of life. I’m sure I mentioned sometime in the last year or two that things had been kind of rough with my husband out of work. At the start of the year he decided that he was never going to be able to find a job his area of expertise and went in a different direction entirely! He went to driving school, got his CDL, immediately found a job and is now a long haul trucker.
And I almost never see him, but at least our bills are getting paid! That is SUCH an enormous relief I really can’t express it enough. But I miss him and now everything here at home is my sole responsibility. (I don’t know how military wives do it, I really give them a lot of credit!) But we’re okay, we’re doing great, but we’ve been so busy!
School is going to be ending soon for summer and we are getting into gear for swimming lessons and trips to museums and all of those other fun summer things. I have no idea how in the world I’m going to keep these two guys busy during the summer! It gets so hot here in AZ that we really do need to stay indoors most of the time, but at least they also have speech therapy, feeding therapy, occupational therapy, and habilitation to take up some of their time and keep them going. They have been growing by leaps and bounds lately and Adam has recently lost two of his teeth and gotten glasses. I think he looks adorable! (My husband says that with his teeth missing he looks just like the monster on his shirt. lol)
So it will probably be another couple of months before I post again, but the boys start going to kindergarten full time in the fall and I will have tons of time to work and blog then. Until then, enjoy your summer!
Birthday & Freebie Friday
April is a birthday filled month in my family, so I’ve had birthdays on the brain these last few weeks. I made a kit and some alphas and little number candles that I thought turned out kind of cute, and they’re all in my shop and 30% off through the end of the month. Plus, I have a freebie for you if you scroll to the bottom of my post! 
Just click the image below to download the freebie!
Thanks for stopping by! Hope you’re having a great week!
Who Me? Superstitious?
This past week has been a rough one here in the Lash house. Last week I had taken Luke to the doctor for a check up and after looking at his ears she asked me, “Does he ever stick things in his ears?” I was like, “No, he never has.” Then of course we discovered that he actually had stuck a little plastic pellet in his ear! What the heck? lol So after much trauma and drama we got that removed and she asked me, “Does he ever get ear infections?” Apparently I hadn’t learned my lesson because I told her, “No, he’s never had an ear infection before.” So yesterday morning I woke up to Luke crying and holding his ear! After a trip back to the doctor she confirmed that yep, he has a raging ear infection.
On a similar note, I had taken Adam in to the doctor and she asked how his breathing was. He has asthma and sometimes it gets pretty bad. I said, “Oh, we haven’t had any terrible episodes in a while.” So of course now he has croup and we had to take him in for steroid shots and are giving him breathing treatments every four hours just so he can breathe! I’m not very superstitious, but it seems very coincidental, doesn’t it? Anyway, I’m just going to keep my mouth shut from now on, just in case! LOL
Aside from taking care of sick kids and trying to sneak a nap or a book every chance I get, I’ve been working on rebuilding my personal store. Somehow it got deleted. One day I went to check on it, just on a whim, and it was gone, just total whitespace! I have no idea what happened, but I suspect that it’s all my fault. I probably forgot to move certain files over when I changed hosts. Anyway, it’s re-done now and I really like how it turned out.
If you visit my shop you’ll notice that there are other people selling there as well, sort of. I’m not actually bringing on new designers, just collaborating with a couple of people. My friend Barbara is helping me with converting some of my designs over to Studio cutting files and mixing them with some of her own original stuff. That’s Momo & Ellie, and right now we only have one thing in the shop, but we have lots more almost ready, I just need to find the time to preview it and upload it! Wild Lime Design is a collaboration with my friend Iolanthe. She finds me interesting color palettes and ideas, names the kits, does a little designing, and previews the kits. I do most of the designing. Even though I “retired” from designing personal use kits last year, I’ve still been making them for my own personal use. Iolanthe (and my mom) convinced me that other people might want to use them, too. I didn’t want to bother with all of the boring stuff (previews, uploading, pretty much anything beyond designing and scrapping, lol), but Iolanthe doesn’t mind that sort of thing, so here we are! I also have a couple of kits that are completely my own that I’m working on getting into the shop.
Here are some previews of what’s in the shop. Oh, and everything in the shop is 30% off through the end of the month.
Okay, I think I’ve officially run out of steam. Thanks for stopping by! Have a great weekend!
Autism Awareness Day
As most of you may know, I have twin boys. This is Luke.
He is loud and crazy and roll-around-in-the-dirt fun. He has more energy than 10 puppies and the strength of a gorilla. He LOVES anything by Disney/Pixar and is attached by the fingertips to my iPod Touch. His favorite food is white cheddar rice cakes (I know he didn’t get that from me! lol) and he has a frighteningly deep obsession with 20th Century Fox (the logo! the fanfare! the searchlights! oh my!).
This is my other son, Adam.
Adam is sweet and gentle and loves anything with wheels. He is very concerned with everyone’s feelings and is so empathic that he cries whenever anyone else is sad or upset. He LOVES the Wonder Pets and his favorite “character” is the Fly Boat. LOL
I just wanted to take a minute and show off my boys – both of whom are dealing with the challenges of autism, but are otherwise normal, healthy, lovely children. Autism is quite prevalent these days and most people know someone who is autistic or has an autistic child. Jodi and I made this kit to celebrate those people/kids/families. We’re giving it away FREE and we made the colors slightly more useable than the usual primary-colored autism kits so that you’ll be able to use it to scrap all kinds of things!
Just click the links below to download my part of the kit, then head over to Jodi’s blog to get her part.
Thank you super-duper-extra-much to Jodi’s creative team for the beautiful layouts!
Now head on over to Jodi’s blog for her part!
Freebie Friday: Sentiment
Just a quick post today for Freebie Friday. I decided to do a card sentiment! I need to make a few cards with this and send them out to some people I’m really thankful for. 
As always, just click to download…
Have a happy weekend!
Freebie Friday: Somewhere Over the Rainbow
I don’t know why, but I’ve had rainbows on the brain lately. Then this morning I came across this video and just completely fell in love with it!
That really, really made me homesick for Hawaii! 
Anyway, it also made me think about doing a rainbow for St Patrick’s Day, so that’s what today’s freebie is. Hope you enjoy, just click to download.
Have a great weekend!
Freebie Friday: The Sun Will Come Out
I know… it’s Sunday. lol I’m a little behind this week!
I’m really looking forward to tomorrow; I think Mondays are my most favorite day of the week. Am I the only one? 
Mondays are nice because I’m able to get back on schedule, send the kids and husband off to school, clean up the weekend clutter, and spend some time with myself. Mostly I just work (have I mentioned how much I love my job?), but sometimes if I have time I read and those are the best days of all!
This last week my whole family was sick and I was still healing my sprained wrist, so it was kind of a hard week around here, but everyone is well now and my wrist is good as new so I am a very happy camper! I think this week’s freebie is an appropriate one.
Freebie Friday: Banner Fun!
I sprained my wrist earlier today and now doing anything on the computer is ridiculous (it was my right wrist, so I’m having to use my left hand for everything). 
I had to post today’s freebie, though! See how dedicated I am to you guys? lol
Just click the image to download…
Have a great weekend!
Tutorial: Giving Layered Images a Doodled Look
This is another really simple tutorial for beginners, but it’s so useful (and fast and easy!) when you really want a doodled look.
Most of you know that I create commercial use products under the name That Girl. The vast majority of my products are layered images that come as PSD and TIF files and are used by other designers, but you don’t have to be a designer to use CU stuff!
I made a little cake specifically for us to use in this tutorial. You can download it here:
Step 1. Open up your cake image and either duplicate it or select all of the layers and drag them onto a new canvas, then close the original.
Here’s what we’re starting with (click the images to enlarge them):
It’s kind of cute and you could easily merge it just like that and use it as clipart, or you could recolor and add styles to each of the layers to make them look exactly how you want them to. But we’re going to give it a doodled look!
Step 2. Select the top layer and double click it. When the Layer Style window pops up, click on Stroke. I’m going to make my stroke about 6 pixels in size and change the color to #606060 because straight black is a little too harsh for me. Choose whatever color you think looks good! Then click ok and apply your stroke.
Here’s where we’re at:
Step 3. In your layers palette, right click on the layer you just added the stroke to and select Copy Layer Style.
Step 4. Still in your layers palette, select all of the other layers. You can either hold down the Ctrl key and click each of the layers individually or else select the top layer, hold down the Shift key, and click on the bottom layer.
Step 5. Right click and select Paste Layer Style to apply the stroke to all of the layers.
And here’s what we have:
Step 6. Merge all of your layers and save!
I added a drop shadow, plus a grungy overlay to mine to rough it up a little and added some texture with the Texturizer filter:
So what do you think? I personally like the doodle look a lot, but mostly for things I want to look like stickers or cut out paper. If I want them to have some dimension then I prefer them without the stroke and just work with styles instead.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed this tutorial! I’d love to know what you think.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
I hope you all are having a wonderfully sweet day with the ones you love most! Our day got off to a so-so kind of start. Adam had an appointment at the doctor for a well visit bright and early this morning and ended up getting a shot, poor kid. He did great, though, and I was so proud of him. I told him he could have whatever he wanted for breakfast after that and he chose a cherry Pop Tart. The pink frosting was very appropriate for the day, even if I shudder at the thought of Pop Tarts for breakfast. I did say he could have whatever he wanted after all!
I’m sending the boys to school this morning with treats for classmates, teachers, and therapists. They turned out SUPER cute, too, although I can’t take any credit at all for that. I used Shabby Princess’ XOXO and Yours Truly Confection Collections. I love those things! She has so many cute little wrappers and packages for treats. The mini takeout boxes are my favorite! Here’s how mine turned out:
Sorry about the photos being a little blurry; I’m not exactly a photographer! hehe
My husband and I don’t have any plans for the evening since he doesn’t get home from school until almost 8pm, but he did bring me flowers earlier in the week, and today he brought me some chocolate and a DVD (Breaking Dawn, he knows me well!) so we can chill out together after the boys go to bed. All in all, it looks like a nice relaxed day ahead! I hope your day is filled with love and fun stuff, too!
