HAPPY HOLIDAYS + TEMPLATE FREEBIE

Alas, the busiest month of the year has arrived, good ole DECEMBER! I'm going to keep my posts short and to the point this month to save us all some time!  My brief highlights include that I've been playing nurse to my youngest Yorkie, who is 13 yrs. old and who has had a severe head cold or sinus infection since early October!!  I've always had lots of dogs all my life, but I've never had a dog get sick like this; it's been brutal, and I've felt so sorry for her.  We've had two visits to the Vet, lots of phone conversations with the Vet, lots of pills to give, and I've been running a warm steam Vicks vaporizer now for over two weeks.  The liquid Vicks Vaposteam is awesome, and the vaporizer seems to be the thing that has done my dog the most good.  It has actually produced some results by helping to break up the mucus in her head which she has been expelling over the last few days now by doing some actual doggie sneezing.  You can't begin to imagine the cleaning I've been doing, and luckily I have mostly tiled flooring!  No matter how hard I think this has been for me to play nurse-made to her around the clock, I am compassionate that this has been harder for her.  She was so clogged up that getting her air sounded like croop as she was breathing through her throat rather than her nose.  She would get so choked up that she has had several faint away episodes which scared the life out of me!  We were worried it was pneumonia or something worse in her lungs.  A good Vet check laid those fears to rest, and the rest of this has just been dealing with getting her meds in her, keeping the vaporizer going and cleaning.  It's not over yet, but it's getting better.  Darn thing is; she's a house dog so we don't know how or why she got so sick.  I am going to blame this on a new liquid floor cleaner my DH brought home and used while I was away up north for two weeks in October.  She came down sick shortly after I returned home.  I began to hunt for answers, thinking she may have an allergy to something.  When I read the back of that jug of floor cleaner, I noted that it contains bacilla and live spores and may cause respiratory irritation.  Well, that was enough for me!!  I read that to my DH and told him we were discontinuing the use of that no matter how well it cleans!  My Vet even seems perplexed by the duration and severity of this illness and said we may need to take her to a specialist.  I'm going to trust my instincts and my homeopathic type treatment.  Will give you an update post on this later as she hopefully gets completely well.

I've started my treat as of Dec. 1st, my Tiffany Tillman's class, Holiday Templates 2011, so I'm deep into that with my spare time at night!  Yeah!  We are making a 12x12 post-bound album, complete with a cover we each design.  Hope to have it completed and ready for print by early January.  We have mega discount coupons for that from Persnickety Prints, and they do have a late January expiration date, so the push is ON!!  My album will totally document this December's happenings in my immediate and extended family, as much as I can capture photos thereof.  It's already a ton of fun, and I ALWAYS take oodles of pictures anyway, so I'm all set for sure!

Also, be sure to check in over at Jessica Sprague!  She has new classes on sale now, inspiration galore, a new rewards program, a free holiday project class starting today, Free Template Tuesday every week, and just so much fun going on in the forum and throughout her blogs and entire site!!  By the way, she announced the return of PhotoShop Friday episodes starting in January 2012, available now by subscription!  I'm hoping Santa will put this in my stocking, oh yeah!!  I've loved those from the start!!

Okay, that's enough chatter from me right  now.  On to your FREEBIE!  Working with the class templates of Tiffany's inspired me to make one of my own for use with some vertical shots I wanted to use of my grandson, Mason.  I wanted to show his little body, the expressions on his face, and not so much of the background of the photos.  So here is the layout I did . . .

Supplies used in this LO are from our Tiffany's class kit, a collaboration kit called "Oh Joy" by both Creashens and Paisley Press.  From this layout, I decided to whip up the template of it to share.  This is a 12 x 12 inch, 300 dpi psd and the download includes the a tiff file and all pngs, so you can use it in just about any scrapping software.  Here is the template preview . . .

DOWNLOAD HERE OR HERE

Again, I'm providing two different download sites in case I run short of bandwidth at either.  Leave some love if you download.  It means a lot to get a feedback for the time we spend creating things to share for free!

I will be back soon with a DECEMBER PAPER PACK.  I designed the focal text paper back in August, so I'm working on the rest of the papers for the pack for you!  Check back! 

I'm also thinking of bringing another effort up-to-date really quick-like this month.  I have up to 40-some templates already designed and used to post one each Tuesday ("Template Tuesdays"), but I somehow fell off the wagon on getting those posted for you.  I LOVE templates, and I'm sorry I let that run aground.  I'm a template junkie, so I should do better for you.  What say I post one each day for the next 20 days or so???  Good deal???  If so, leave some love about it; and, if there is enough interest and love, I will push to get 'er done!!  Remember, templates are just having a starting point, like a sketch to work with.  You can change anything and everything about them, so it just makes scrapping quicker and easier on occasion when you need to make the most of your time.

Have a great month and "Happy Holidays" to you and your loved ones.  I have lots to show you, so do drop back by!

TOOTLES!!