The end of a great beginning

Hello to all!

Today ends One World One Heart, the blog tour for artisans. I had 227 comments, and I do intend to visit all 227 blogs, despite the fact that I couldn't visit all of them before today. January/February is a crazy time for teachers, alas. I got involved in the event to give my blog a bit more visibility, and also to get to know some other bloggers out there. I look forward to continuing my worldwide tour.

Now, for the moment you have been waiting for: according to Random.org's random number generator (shown), the winner of my blog candy is comment #64:

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Click on her comment to get to her colorful blog! Congrats and thanks to all who commented! Good to "meet" you!

A few more days before we wrap it up

How cool has it been to have "guests" from all over the world during One World One Heart! Click on this link and make a comment if you are a blogger wanting a chance at some seriously cool blog candy...

I will draw my winner at 12 PM Central on Monday, February 15, 2010.

My first video tutorial suggestion

pattystamps on YouTube has a lot of good My Digital Studio tutorials. I like her tutorials so far because they are not heavily pixelated... you can pretty much see everything she is doing. If you are considering purchasing what I shall lovingly call MDS, watching a few of her tutorials will give you an idea of whether or not you want to take the financial plunge.

Stampin' Up!'s My Digital Studio

Taking advantage of Sale-A-Bration and a delightful Christmas coupon from my "dealer," I purchased Stampin' Up!'s My Digital Studio. I'll try to document here my journey with this software.

Karen, the "dealer" in question, purchased it first, and created a scrapbook for Zumba creator, Beto Perez. I liked the look of what she accomplished. I also liked the fonts and images that were available through the software.

So far, I have installed it. That didn't go so smoothly, but I do not know what to blame it on. It could be a lack of compatibility between the software and Windows 7. It could be my laptop, which is known to be possessed from time to time. However, the install disk worked right up until the very end and then locked up. I rebooted (as I couldn't even get Task Manager to come up), and re-ran the install, and it worked fine. Then the same thing happened when I tried to install the content CD. I rebooted, and the second time was the charm. Very weird.

So today, I will start to play with it a bit, maybe look for a tutorial or two. I'll keep you posted as to how it goes.

At Last!

Time to work on some scrapbooking! I decided to wrap up some January pages in Project Life before moving in to February. I really completed a lot in this album in January. Let's see if my fervor carries in to the following months!

Double-page spread: Ignatius' 13th Birthday Party


Page 1:

Page 2:

For the last double-page spread, I used one side for Ignatius' first Scholastic Bowl match:


I used the other side for images from Haiti. I really felt it was important for me to journal to my boys some things I felt they should know about Haiti, both before and after the earthquake. Mainly, I wanted the messages of hope, determination, and generosity to come through. I want them to remember that there are people...children...in Haiti who will continue to need our support long after the photographs have faded from our memories.

Argh!

This has been a crazy two weeks, during which I have had NO time to craft at all. I hope that will change this weekend, as I have a TON of scrapbooking ideas that I want to create. I also want to check out some of the great blogs for OWOH!