It is the dawning of .....

...the age of Aquarius?
nah, I was singing that when I was 14.
Now, something it's dowaning in my life.
Most great things, still with some fight (but of course!!!!!) but developments are in place.
I haven't been all that well to write, but will most definitely try to make an effort soon.

There are so many people I would love to write about but at this very moment I'm finishing a few projects.

I'm also making a resolution to keep up with a few people's blogs (yes, YOU! lol)
so, surely *see* you soon.

Now, last but not least, there is my review of the Serif Digital Scrapbooking Artist & DaisyTrail (their website) coming up, probably tomorrow because today...yes, you guessed right. I haven't slept.

What I can do right now is post some layouts so you can see what this *little* program can do...
(no child's play, I have to add...)

so here it goes:

The web is full of Happy Scrappers....

..maybe the proximity of Xmas, maybe the wonderful feeling of sharing is still there, always, one just need to go in the right direction.

Well, though I haven't been all that well to write too much (and time is short with my humongous Brazil album in the making!), I felt I needed to share these with you, maybe one troubled soul (as much as mine was) will get the same energy, faith and general mood cheer with the amazing stuff I have been (all night) downloading.

First of all, I would like to introduce you (if you have not come across her before, which, if you are an avid scrapper, you may have) to a wonderful, caring,giving, extremely beautiful inside and out and full of talent mum, hard worker, scrapper, designer....

Her name is Michelle and she is the driving force of CraftyScraps

This girl has a gift and she shares it... in her forums you will find at this very moment over 120 Quick Pages for free and, if you, like me, are not big fan of having it done for you, still she has many, many amazing kits, all free, apart from a few kits she sells atthe ScrapbookMax Store .

She even explains us why she gives all these wonderful stuff for free...so you can get to know her a bit more.

So, go pop into the forum, have a chat, no even registration is needed, you will come out feeling invigorated and with a *box* full of scrapping goods...some amazing felt stickers on the Xmas theme are particularly beautiful, there is a full Piano Keys Alpha (so clever, I had though about making something like that but did not occur to me how to) One of the kits that fit the most my scrapping style is the Misty Wire, with which I made the last layout in this page.

There is so much in her site, I'm thinking maybe I should give you time to enjoy it all to the fullest before I go on to the rest of my finds.....but, as I'm here and not sure when the writing fairy will come back with some energy dust....

We all know Digifree, right?

One would have thought it a matter of go and grab, but it isn't always so.

I am not very keen on the blog trains, though I know the kits, alphas, general collaboration stuff is awesome...I hardly have time lately to finish my albums (or I am not in good health, which would mean not in good mood, which will mean no scrapping...oh well, you know me LOL) so I tend to ignore the complicated process and go for the straight forward downloads.

I always, always comment, thank them, and mention Digifree.

If you have a minute or 10, GrowingPainsScrapped has a full kit, papers, elements and 2 (two!) complete (and beautiful!) alphas. 

You only need to get to their site by clicking here and make sure you scroll to the very beginning of her giving out the kit...which is called My GirlFriends.

Beautiful. You wont regret having spent the time.

With Xmas & New Year (and Thanks Giving for the other side of the pond, I almost forgot!) I was a bit worried about getting carried away with the sales and no money...

No need to worry.

There is so much stuff for free around, I doubt I would have the time to download it all!

For those of you with less time to sort through and specific needs or just fancying giving yourselves a present... my favorite site for buying has unbelievable sales:

Full kits for 1 Euro each, 30% and 40% discount on Commercial Use stuff and some freebies too.

I got to Digital Creations France through Digifree at first, but as I registered to download a freebie kit (or 10!!!) they started sending me emails with sales, I discovered designer paradise, only in an affordable level.

Every month they have at least 30 kits for a Euro (this would translate onto something like U$1.49) and they also have created another sister site, The French Frog, with most designers in both, but some variations... great stuff, affordable and lots of freebies too.

I have also made my cards @ Scrapblog, but to talk about this we need a lot more time (and energy which is almost running out here...) , so I will leave it for the next time.

Here are some layouts I made with my friend/neighbor's daughters photos last night, all kits come from the sites mentioned above, just ask me if you would like to know which one is which in the main (as I mix a bit sometimes)

Promise to come in the near future and make justice to each designer with a post each, layouts and all explained...today is just not the day...

Film Strips by SBMax (I made the circular one) top film strip (pinkyish)and stars from Petitsouris FunkyWinter, elements & word art by SummerDriggs (and SBM text editor)
Chriscraps Amazing Birthday + an old background
very old elements from some kits gotten over a year ago, various designers

GrowingPainsScrapped MyGirlFriends Kit, alpha from S Robinsons Halloween and, bellow, Misty Wire kit from Crafty Scraps, word art by Summer Driggs....the kit has a LOT more...

..maybe the proximity of Xmas, maybe the wonderful feeling of sharing is still there, always, one just need to go in the right direction.

Well, though I haven't been all that well to write too much (and time is short with my humongous Brazil album in the making!), I felt I needed to share these with you, maybe one troubled soul (as much as mine was) will get the same energy, faith and general mood cheer with the amazing stuff I have been (all night) downloading.

First of all, I would like to introduce you (if you have not come across her before, which, if you are an avid scrapper, you may have) to a wonderful, caring,giving, extremely beautiful inside and out and full of talent mum, hard worker, scrapper, designer....

Her name is Michelle and she is the driving force of CraftyScraps

This girl has a gift and she shares it... in her forums you will find at this very moment over 120 Quick Pages for free and, if you, like me, are not big fan of having it done for you, still she has many, many amazing kits, all free, apart from a few kits she sells at the ScrapbookMax Store .

She even explains us why she gives all these wonderful stuff for free...so you can get to know her a bit more.

So, go pop into the forum, have a chat, no even registration is needed, you will come out feeling envigorated and with a *box* full of scrapping goods...some amaizng felt stickers on the Xmas theme are particularly beautiful, there is a full Piano Keys Alpha (so clever, I had though about making something like that but did not occurr to me how to) One of the kits that fit the most my scrapping style is the Misty Wire, with which I made the layout above.

There is so much in her site, I'm thinking maybe I should give you time to enjoy it all to the fullest before I go on to the rest of my finds.....but, as I'm here and not sure when the writing fairy will come back with some energy dust....

We all know Digifree, right?

One would have thought it a matter of go and grab, but it isn't always so.

I am not very keen on the blog trains, though I know the kits, alphas, general colaboration stuff is awesome...I hardly have time lately to finish my albums (or I am not in good health, which would mean not in good mood, which will mean no scrapping...oh well, you know me LOL) so I tend to ignore the compliacted process and go for the straight forward downloads.

I always, always comment, thank them, and mention Digifree.

If you have a minute or 10, GrowingPainsScrapped has a full kit, papers, elements and 2 (two!) complete (and beautiful!) alphas. 

You only need to get to their site by clicking here and make sure you scroll to the very beginning of her giving out the kit...which is called My GirlFriends.

Beautiful. You wont regret having spent the time.

With Xmas & New Year (and Thanks Giving for the other side of the pond, I almost forgot!) I was a biot worried about getting carried away with the aales and no money...

No need to worry.

There is so much stuff for free around, I doubt I would have the time to download it all!

For those of you with less time to sort through and especific needs or just fancying giving yourselves a present... my favorite site for buying has unbelievable sales:

Full kits for 1 Euro each, 30% and 40% discount on Comercial Use stuff and some freebies too.

I got to Digital Creations France through Digifree at first, but as I registered to download a freebie kit (or 10!!!) they started sending me emails with sales, I discovered designer paradise, only in an affordable level.

Every month they have at least 30 kits for a Euro (this would translate onto something like U$1.49) and they also have created another sister site, The French Frog, with most designers in both, but some variations... great stuff, affordable and lots of freebies too.

I have also made my cards @ Scrapblog, but to talk about this we need a lot more time (and energy which is almost running out here...) , so I will leave it for the next time.

Here are some layouts I made with my friend/neighbor's daughters photos last night, all kits come from the sites mentioned above, just ask me if you would like to know which one is which in the main (as I mix a bit sometimes)

Promise to come in the near future and make justice to each designer with a post each, layouts and all explained...today is just not the day...

                                              

Glad to have found....

..so many creative, nice,helpful people around lately, but there is one lady I reckon deserves a special mention...

Not only does she answer every question I have and has opened my eyes and called my attention to, for example, the world of fonts amongst many others, but she also shares her creative talent with us all:

so, if you click  here you will be able to download her wonderful kits

Her name is Mary and she goes as mh51 in ScrapbookMax, she is also (rare to find, in this across the pond dominated world) in the UK, which makes me feel a special bond...

Her kits are absolutely wonderful, as are her layouts.

Go have a look and you will be as pleased as I am...I promise!

Here is a card I made with one of her wonderful kits:

A time to be Grateful...

This isn't a new thing for me, or even something to feel sympathetic with my North American friends in this time a year...

I have been doing the Simple Abundance for a while now, but today I thought (as I was just browsing DigiFree) I should thank all the designers who kindly share their art with us, which is allowing me to make the wonderful albums and books I'm making.

I'm not feeling all that well physically today, and Sarita has a friend sleeping over, so I will post names and links tomorrow...just didn't want to let my thought get lost...

Creating Paradise

So... after another sleepless night (if you know me you will know this is not as bad as it sounds) I decided to share my delight with my new toy.

Everyone knows how much I love Scrapblog.com, and how much happiness and benefits I got from the site, not only the program but also the community, one couldn't hope for a better site...but lately it has been changing towards the financial side and, after much thought and seeking advice, I decided to buy a program.

I had seen the advert for ScrapbookMax when first investigating DigiFree, the price converted in British Pounds was more than convenient but, why buy at that stage, when @ SCrapblog everything (or most) was free and I was enjoying it so much....

There was also the fact that ScrapbookMax was designed for Windows and we were already working towards our iMac, so I forgot all about it.

I then embarqued in the project of  scrapping Sarita's year books and (at her request) print them.

In this I found the first difficulty with Scrapblog, as they don't ship to the UK.

Not only that but there is no possibility of ordering more than one book and paying one delivery: I had to pay postage and package within the US per book (I printed 3) and then (this I will eternally grateful for) I payed Rebecca, who is part of the team and a marvelous person, the international postage.

Have to admit though: I took the opportunity that they had at the time 25% discount on printing keepsake books, so, all in all, it worked out approximately £50 each book, which, if you shop around, will realize it isn't expensive, especially taking into account that each book had 70 pages or over....

All brilliant up to here.

I was buying credits from time to time but, as it works out cheaper to buy the U$25 at the time, this was a bit of a risky situation...and as the time went, more and more stuff had prices,less and less was free.

Then one day I got an email (presumably I registered at the time of checking out the advert) from ScrapbookMax , announcing their latest version, the 2.0, and the discount, a modicum U$47 something....

I write back (not expecting a reply at all) suggesting they create a version for Macs...

Very soon after I got a reply, explaining how I could work the program on Parallels, the program form Apple designed to allow Windows in the Macs.

Lets cut the story short: I bought it.

There are some reviews of it here:

http://creativespirits.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?user=3k0gnjw4vlyho

but since writing them, I have come a long way.

It wasn't easy at first, I even went through the painful task of recovering my PC from Trojan Horses and Spyware attacks in order to work SBM in it, because the Parallels was crashing my Mac, but once I got the grip of the program (with a huge helpful hand from the SBM members and team) the making of my pages has turned into creative paradise.

There is one plus with ScrapbookMax that makes everything worth wile: the prints at home are excellent, as we retain our high resolution photos.

In a minor scale, the use of all the freebies and stuff bought in stores is usable with no fuss, no going through Photobucket and wasting time downloading. I say in a minor scale because (we need to be fair here) at the moment in Scrapblog the getting files from Photobucket is faster than it was...still: with SBM I get them drag and drop from my computer.

ScrapbookMax isn't Scrapblog.

I said and will keep my word: Scrapblog is the best program on the net.

Is fast, has a number of amazing features that make composing easy and creativity flows...but our wallets get drained as fast, and SBM does not have this problem.

The program is mine.

A few of my Scrapblog sisters have followed me to ScrapbookMax, that makes it even nicer, and plus the SBM ladies (and gents!) are a nice bunch too.

My thing with Scrapbooking is not a superficial pastime, it has a goal,is a task.

I create projects with the photos we take, I am still in the middle of producing Sarita's books and I will do the rest in Scrapblog.

But ScrapbookMax has allowed me to make my own cards, and now I'm making our Brazil album...and will be able to print and put together in those fabulous albums I got for free from Freecycle...huge leather bound albums which fit two A4s per page...

Can't wait to finish !

So, there you go, this is what I have been up to.

Wont post everything here as I have done lots, but if you are interested, there are two albums and a few loose pages here:

http://www.scrapbookmax.com/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/500/ppuser/15060

Now I'm gonna go think out the next step: to sleep or not to sleep?

that is one hell of a question right now! (09.33 am)

:)

Late again....

...and another sleepless night.

I reckon is not that bad as Sarita is on holidays,but nevertheless...

I need to update this, I guess...

My new toy: ScrapbookMax V2.0

I bought the program as I was getting fed up of having to pay U$25 every time I wanted stickers in Scrapblog. The program is great, I ll review a bit more when non sleepless, but I'm runing it on Parallels in my Mac, which causes the Mac to crash.

So I cleaned our old PC, run some scans, and apparently is working well.

The plus of ScrapbookMax is that one doesnt need to be online.

Problem is: the email with the program is not showing in my yahoo web based mail, so I haven't been able to download it yet, wrote to the SBM lady but she hasn't answered (over 24hs since I wrote)... I wonder...is it that they only communicate when you are about to buy?

anyway, I ll find my way.

These are my two first pages of the Brazil trip, done on SBM. I printed the first page in an All in One HP 2575 series, running out of ink, and still it came out beautiful....

So, the program prints quiet nicely too...I'm dying to use it again, but will wait till tomorrow.

Now, I ll try some sleep...

:)

Facing a new phase.....

..isn't easy.

So much that I have been avoiding writing.

Writing about what happens means pretty much acknowledging and therefore solving.

I have never been one to run away from things, but when the events are such as the current in our lives, stuff which I cannot change, I wasn't sure I wanted to write about it.

My daughter, you see, my precious little baby whom I nursed on the breast for almost 3 years, that little princess who liked dressing up dollies and learn to sing in the bath tub with Maria Elena Walsh, Sound of Music and Annie.... that same one who still cannot go to sleep unless I'm there to do the *tickles* (this means stroking the side of her back in a particular way), this same girl is entering the grown up world.

This a world not so different of mine when I was 13, but faster and meaner, if those are words to suit. 

(I never know, in English, you ll excuse this foreigner, but at least I try)

I don't buy the crap of the *understand your teenager* books, or the *how teenagers think* (which by the way I couldn't get pass the 15th page, and have intended to write to Jellyellie to give the kid a piece of my mind, but hey...)

There is nothing to be understood about teenagers.

The teens are a time of change, revelry, even if you have nothing to rebel against.

Time to define stuff, to make desicions on your own, to start forming your own world....which may change drastically or not in the future, but, in my honest and humble opinion, the only thing one can do about out teenage children is try to remember how it was for us.

In doing so I have been able to keep my relationship with Sarita a nice one, even though her aspiration at this time is to *fit* with a group of kids who's life consist in going every saturday to the Heath to get drunk and smoke cigarettes.

My coming into knowledge of these all, as in verbally speaking, happened when she brought a friend to spend the weekend with us. They come back not wanting dinner, and when I pass the living room and have one look at this girl, I did not need to ask, but I (ay ay, it hurt) of course, did:

"What's the matter with her? did she drink?"

""mae, everybody drunk!!!!"

"What do you mean everybody? did YOU drink?"

"maaaaaaeee, EVERYBODY drunk!!!"

so I kinda smiled, asked her what did she drink, and went over again the subject of alcoholic fathers and genetics and her father's family and having a life and not wanting to end up, well, you know the drift.

I (again) suggested that, if she HAD to drink, as to not to appear like a wimp with the kids she is trying to fit in, to ALWAYS have her own can or bottle, to just get a sip and drop it on the side..... which (thank God for that!) she confessed to have done. 

I also kept (and keep still) saying (on and on and on and on, poor kid must NOT like the sound of my voice by now) that these boys are not the ones who will be having the life she dreams of, one with sports cars and a carrier and a house with a garden and children who will be loved by both parents and whole families.....

I know she isn't into drinking or smoking as in a daily thing, I know she is driven to these by what they call *peer pressure* but, though I know she does listen to me and takes things in, I cannot avoid being a bit worried.

I try, as I said, to put myself in her shoes, to listen to what she tells me without negative criticism,I know I am lucky that she talks to me, and I remember how every time my mum forbid me to befriend this or that one girl or boy, I would go to the end of the world to make the best of friendship with said this or that girl or boy.... whom, invariably, were at least 5 or 6 years older than me, not forgetting Mariana who was 16 years my senior.....

I may be wrong, but I reckon if I know who she is with, where she is and what she is doing, I have more chances of protecting her than if I just ignore or forbid stuff which then she will be doing regardless....

My solution to all these comes in the form of keeping her busy, if she is studying, doing after school & weekend courses, she has the chance of meeting people who have ambitions in life other than getting drunk every weekend, right? 

well, that's gonna have to wait... why?

because of the one evil instrument which makes the world go round: money.

we are traveling to see the family this summer (which I'm dreading as I'm not well), so stiff will only happen when we come back. It will though.

I'm not happy with the school in general right now though.

No uniform could mean individuality in the best of ways, but when your child wakes up two and a half to 3 hours earlier to get ready,and this getting ready is more alike an American Next Top Model parade than going to school.....

This morning I cringed when I saw what she was wearing....and the make up.... you know what school said to me when I called to ask (to Sarita's insistence that every teacher saw them with make up and even the HeadMistress and none ever complained) :

"well....you see...is not NOT allowed...."

"what do mean by that?"

"it isn't written anywhere that they cannot wear make up...."

so WRITE IT then!

I'm not sure they learn that much these days either, to be honest...

but hey, worse is written now, I had to make a record of this, though I have dread the writing the words in black and white, I know is important for both of us that I do.

There is still the fact that we watch TV together, we do computer stuff together, she shows me every site she goes, tells me about every boy (or girl) she talks to.... and we ve been to see Hannah Montana's movie (yeah, call me childish, but I fricking loved it)

There is the issue of my health which I should be writing too.... suffice to say that I'm in and out of hospital again, and this week some big testing is in store....I may bring up some energy and will power to write about that too.

What I have been doing?

making books of memories for the future,by Sarita's request, we are printing them, and also all these have brought a new skill I didn't know I had, and something I maybe pursuing when we come back....

Here are the books:

I hope this works.... otherwise, you know where to go  to view them :)