Recent Layouts

I thought I'd post some of my latest layouts. I've been having fun with work ones. :) Syndee Nuckles and I have a great partnership, and I love making layouts for her. I'm so lucky to have such a dream job! Anyways, here are some recent ones:

This one uses Photo Talk Brush set, Mischief Maker Collection, Fully Alive Embellishments Biggie, SS Embellishment Template: Fancy Folds 4, SS Tools - Styles: Chipboard Distressed 4103 Mini, SS Embellishment Templates: Aged Frames, and A Man's Life Collection.

This one uses Delightful Collection, SS Paper Templates: Artsy - Watercolor 3, SS Paper Templates: Sew Torn Up, SS Tools - Styles: Stitching and Holes 4102, Hardware Embellishment Super Biggie, and Aged Photo Frame Embellishment Mini.

This one uses Dynamic Brush Set: Doodles 6301, SS Paper Templates: Artsy - Inked, Dynamic Brush Set: Paint Stroke 5401, SS Word Art Templates: Title It - Life, Dynamic Brush Set: Frayed 5401, and Just the Basics Paper Mini.

This one uses SS Embellishment Templates: Photo Collage, Dynamic Brush Set: Doodles 6301, Mischief Maker Collection, Friendship Collection Biggie, Affection Collection, Always and Forever Collection, SS Tools - Styles: Distressed 5101 Super Biggie, SS Tools - Styles: Grunged Metals Super Biggie 4101, A Victorian Christmas Collection, and Fireside Embellishments.

This one uses ScrapSimple Embellishment Templates: Masking Tape Biggie, Atelier Collection, City Park Collection, Bunny Business Collection Mini, Resolutions Collection, Brush Set: Stamped Dates, and ScrapSimple Tools - Styles: Brushed Metal 4901 - Biggie.

This one uses Faded Beauty Collection Biggie, Frame by Frame 2 Embellishments, Illuminate Collection, Flowering Flourishes Collection Biggie, and Endearing You Collection Biggie.

I have so much fun doing these! If anyone wants some layouts of their own, let me know. I'm available. :)

Update

In reference to this post, I have to actually concede that I am no longer going to do this cool thing, so there's nothing to report. I'm sure you haven't been holding your collective breath waiting for the news (and if you have, that's pretty sad), but I just wanted to let you know.

I'm just too busy for my own good! But that's also a good thing, because saying no to this new project has given me more time with Eli, more time to be a wife and mom, and more time to work on making dinners for our family. So that's got to count for something, right? :)

(PS: I'll let you in on the secret -- but you have to come close. Closer. Closer! Okay, a little too close! :) I was in the process of writing and preparing to teach a class on digital photography editing at Scrap Girls. You know, the retouching stuff like whitening teeth, smoothing skin, removing blemishes, etc. I am bummed that I won't be continuing the process, but I'm also glad that I will have more time to create, which is what I love to do. So I'm okay with it.)

Playing Catch up (part deux)

Well, last week was another road trip, this time out to Utah for Nathan's friend Todd, who married a really sweet girl named Mary. It was a ton of fun, and I got to see my sister, meet her new fiance, and also see Tom, Summer, Ian, Steve, Mary, Molly, and Maggie. It was quite the trip, I tell ya!

Now I'm again glad to be back home, in my own bed. (Although Steve and Mary had a really nice new bed in the guest room that both Nathan and I were happy to get to sleep on!) I had a fun time taking some engagement photos for Ali and Jed, and will be in the process of going through and editing/retouching them. It was a gorgeous day, even if a little windy and bright, but it turned out great. They're a fun couple. :)

This weekend I was really glad to have an extended few days to spend exlusively with Nathan, just being together. It's weird how little time I get to spend with him during a normal week, just because he's at work all day and sometimes doesn't get home until late.

But driving to Utah and back makes for some good together time. :) I have to say one of my favorite moments on the trip was playing 20 questions with Nathan, with the answer to the game being Mrs. Nesbit. (If you don't think that's funny, go watch Toy Story and then come back. Right now. Go ahead, I'll wait.....) I love that my hubby knows exactly what will make me die laughing. He's the best. (And hopefully I came up with a few good ones as well, but he'd have to tell you about that.)

Another great moment of the trip was getting to see Nathan in a tuxedo. I wish he had one that he would wear daily. That would be awesome. And not just because without the vest and coat he looks like Colonel Sanders. ::heehee:: He really does clean up nice! Here's a picture to prove it:


Seriously, I'd love it if he could wear that every day. I'm putting in a formal request (no pun intended).

And since no post is complete without an Eli picture, here's a cute one of him and Aunt Angie watching the geese in the pond at the outlet mall.


So I hope everyone is having a great start to the week. Nathan's actually in LA doing some training, so it's me and the little one from now until Wednesday afternoon. I hate sleeping alone! I get myself all freaked out about sounds that I hear and thinking about whether or not I locked the doors. Man, I'm such a weenie.

Playing Catch up

Glad to be back in my own bed after visiting my family in Ohio for ten days. Missed my hubby and of course, missed my own house and schedule.

But now I miss my mom, dad, Jeff, and Ang. And Pepper too, if only just a little bit. :) Glad to catch up with work, layouts, and photos.

Wednesday we're headed to Utah for a friend's wedding, and I'll be glad to see my newly engaged sister, my newly engaged best friend, and our gracious hosts, Aunt Mary and Uncle Steve (and their adorable girls). I know they're up for some Settlers, as are we! I can't wait. :)

I'm working through thank-you cards for all of the great birthday cards I got this year. Since I left home on my birthday, I didn't get to read them until this weekend. But thanks to anyone who reads this blog and sent me one! :) I had the most fun birthday -- even the TSA guy at the airport wished me a Happy Birthday. Nice.

Okay, here are some Eli pictures to tide you all over. :) He absolutely loved having a backyard at Nana and Grandpa's house, which he utilized all the time, by making my sing "sube" while he climbed up the hill in back. (For those of you who don't watch Go, Diego, Go, that is "climb" in Spanish) He also loved wearing Jeff's motocross helmet, which was literally twice the size of his normal head. Too cute. He may just be a skateboarder yet!

Have you ever seen a cuter kid in a helmet as big as his head? LOL.

This one is great, he's gearing up to get on the skateboard, but can't make it himself...

...so Uncle Jeff steps in to help out!

And here's the big ride!

What a fun adventure for Eli, I'm sure if he could, he'd ask for his very own skateboard. Jeff had a lot of fun showing off his skills as well, which I'll have to post about later. Right now I should be packing for our Utah trip, but I know that it's been forever since I posted here, so I'm trying to do my good blogging duty. Or, I could just be procrastinating. LOL. You guess which one is correct!

Identity Theft SUCKS

Well, Nathan and I have learned a big lesson this week. Password protect your stuff when you're using a remote desktop.

I'm here in Ohio, visiting my family. Yesterday morning I got a call from my bank asking me if I had recently used my credit card to through PayPal to buy something worth $1700 that morning. Shocked, I said 'No, I'm out of town and I haven't used that PayPal account in months.' Then they told me that someone had also used it to buy something worth $1400 before that. All of it using my PayPal account. So the first thing we thought is that someone had hacked that PayPal account, which I couldn't understand because I hadn't used it in months. So then Wells Fargo told me they were canceling that card and sending me a new one.

So then I got on the phone with PayPal and put in a report to them that the charges were fraudulent and we needed to suspend that account. (All of this was going on while I was driving around with my mom, not in front of the computer.) So I was freaking out, hoping that this person wasn't sitting there buying stuff as I was talking to the account people, trying to get it fixed. At this point, we still had no idea how they had gotten my information -- my credit card wasn't stolen, it was sitting in my wallet.

So then I got back to my parents' house and got on the computer to check this stuff out. I found an email from eBay notifying me that I had won several auctions, all of which I had never seen before. So it was then obvious that this person had access to my eBay account as well as my PayPal account. I couldn't figure out how this was happening, so I wanted to check my own computer at home.

So before I had left to come to Ohio, Nathan had set up a remote desktop access thing so that I could connect to my computer at home from my parents' computer in Ohio. So I logged on to my computer at home, and immediately got kicked off. So I logged on again and got kicked off a second time. I thought that was really weird, so I logged on a third time, and this time I stayed on. So then I started using my internet from my computer at home, looking up my bank account information, eBay account, and PayPal account. Then I had an impression to check the internet history for some reason. So I did, and realized that this person had hacked into the remote desktop connection and was using my computer from somewhere in France.

I immediately called Nathan to get the connection shut down so that they wouldn't have access anymore, and started assessing the situation. So they got onto my computer, opened my internet connection, and since my passwords had been saved in Firefox, they were able to log in to my eBay account, and start bidding on things, paying with my PayPal account, which had the password saved.

So I went through and cleared my saved passwords on my Mac, reset all of my passwords, and checked to make sure that they hadn't accessed anything else.

Talk about a nightmare.

I'm just glad that my bank called to check on these charges, as I would not have noticed it as fast as they made me aware. Thankful for that today. Thankful that it wasn't worse. Thankful that we figured out exactly what the problem was and were able to fix it.

What's funny is that this type of thing is what Nathan does for his job! :) It was just one of those things that we didn't password protect it because he was trying to make it easier for me to connect. We learned a great lesson. :)