FREEBIES - FAMILY LEGACY QP + CHRISTMAS MAGIC QP + FEBRUARY CALENDAR GRID TEMPLATE

So sorry, I missed posting yesterday.  My hubby is home on his two days off and not feeling well at all.  He seems to be fighting a mild flu-like syndrome, first chilly - then too hot, appetite is off, and I can hear some nasal stuffiness.  I'm happy to report that I am feeling 95% improved with my cold, and I don't really know which of the things I'm taking to thank for this.  I'd say it's the Vemma since that supplement is new for me!  I had a note from one of my lovely followers to recommend taking Airborne at the first onset of a cold and, though I know about that one, I don't have it stocked on my home shelves for the winter but am going to pick some up.  Thanks so much Eva, I love it when someone "talks" to me. 

Having missed yesterday, I'm going to bombard you today with all the FREEBIES which I have ready at the moment.  I may get to do at least one more live post before my travels, and from that point until my return on the night of the 28th, I'm going to try to set up some auto-scheduled posts containing the rest of the calendar grids for 2013 and some things I made for contests back in November that I can now share with you since that month has come and gone. 

Ok, hold on, here we go with today's goodies!  First up is my 2013 FEBRUARY CALENDAR GRID TEMPLATE - This, like the first one and all the rest of them, fits the lower portion of an 8.5 x 11 document.  You can scrap the top portion as you desire and, of course, add text or elements to the grid portion also.  I've included in all of these a basic black png file so you can use your own background papers with that, and also a basic jpg file with a white background; both are 300 dpi so you can resize them if desired.  Here is the February grid preview . . .

DOWNLOAD HERE or HERE or HERE

Secondly, I have participated in the December QP game at Ivy Scraps using a charming kit called Christmas Magic by Gail Valverde.  Our QPs should all be 12x12-inches at 300 dpi in a png format.  Mine is right here for you to download.  If you would like to gather up all the free QPs from this game, just visit the Quick Page Contest threads in the forum at Ivy Scraps where you will find the direct download links to all participants entries.  Visit their QP Contest Gallery to get a bird's eye view of all of them by the end of this month.  The links should remain in the forum threads for at least 30 days after the end of the contest, which means you can grab them for free until the end of January.  Here is my Quick Page . . .

DOWNLOAD HERE or HERE or HERE

Thirdly, I have also participated in the December Quick Page Game at Digi Scrap Station using a lovely vintage feel kit called "FAMILY LEGACY" by Karen Stimson - Wool Sweater Street.  At DSS we all make an 8-inch QP for the contest, but I am offering both an 8-inch and a 12-inch size here on my blog.  I am all about having options, as you probably know by now.  Again, like described in the contest above, if you would like to snag all the QPs from this contest, just visit the Digi Scrap Station forum's Quick Page Game threads for December.  All direct download links will be in the posts of each participant.  They should all be posted by the last day of this month and should remain available there for 30 days after the contest ends.  The QP Game gallery at DSS will give you an overview of all of our pages.  Mine, below, is 300 dpi in png format.  (PNGs are great because such a wide variety of scrapping software can use that format!)

DOWNLOAD 8-inch size HERE or HERE or HERE

DOWNLOAD 12-inch size HERE or HERE or HERE

Are you spoiled yet?  Wouldn't it be nice to get that many freebies every day?  LOL! 

I have to keep this short, I'm working with my own mental deadline on a ton of things.  I have some handwork gifts that have to be finished up and wrapped.  I pride myself on giving so much handwork, but it takes an enormous amount of time.  We are keeping the food production on the small side this week since both of us are under the weather, plus that helps me have more time to tie up my loose ends.  However, I did promise to leave my hubby with two homemade pumpkin pies in the fridge by the time of leave, and I never break a promise!  It's the least I can do for him since he has to stay here and care for our animals (mine and my daughters).  Not an easy task since she is a groomer and heavily involved in animal rescue and rehoming.  At any given time there can be a strangely large number of animals at her place.  I think right now there are 5 dogs, one rabbit, and one guinea pig.  I have only one male pup right now; she and I share Yorkie/Poodle brothers that were born on St. Patrick's Day this year.  I will post a Christmas Card I made of them soon for you to see here!

Hope your holidays are blessed and merry.  Be of good cheer.  Oh, I have to mention this:  One of my good friends posted to all his friends on FB that if they were sure the world was going to end on Dec. 21st, they could all drop off their valuables to his house for safe-keeping.  I really cracked up when I read that because he usually mirrors how I think, but he has the gumption to say it out loud.  I applaud!!

Do stop back in often this month to pick up the rest of the goodies I have for you!  I'm sorry to be dribbling these calendar templates to you one at a time, but I didn't begin designing them soon enough, nor have I found time to finish them up yet.  Would love to have had them all in one zip for you, but it didn't happen.

Stay safe!

TOOTLES!!

FREE CALENDAR GRIDS FOR THE NEW YEAR!!

Good Morning, peeps!  Wowzah!  Do you all realize we are only a week away from Christmas Eve?!!  That's right!  Seven days left, that's it.  I'm a procrastinate until the last possible moment on finishing up the things in my mind left to do, but then I work well under that intense pressure.  I've always performed my best with deadlines to meet and not enough time for most people.  I wish the sun would come back out; it's been gray here for a few days, and I don't do well on gray days.  I need lots of yellow sunshine!  I think I'll get out my bread machine today and fill 'er up!  That always makes the house smell so good, and I'm giving 2-pound loaves to my favorite neighbors as gifts wrapped in foil with red bows.  I can bake about 3 complete loaves in a day if I stay on reloading promptly.  Sounds like a good plan.  I've got to get things finished before I travel on Friday.  The clock is ticking, and my folks are so excited.

I do feel better of this cold today.  It's still there, but I believe I have whipped the worst of it for once.  The older I get the harder they are on me to shake it seems.  I generally try to stay out of crowds, especially during holiday shopping, to avoid contact with so many germs.  But try as I may, I've been around a lot of kids lately, and even if I don't go out much they will bring it in to me.  It's a no win situation sometimes.  My DH feels like he is coming down with something too.  More "chicken soup" please!! 

I promised to be back with a little something different today.  I've been wanting to make these so I could use them myself, so I figured I may as well get on the task of getting them done.  If you have never made a calendar for yourself or somebody special before, why not give this a try.  For your FREEBIE, I've made a transparent png template file in black so you can use your own background paper under it.  Also, in the download I've included a jpg file of this which has a white background.  It's ready to simply pop onto the lower portion of an 8.5 x 11" background, scrap up the top portion any way you like, write some special birthdays, appointment text, or holidays onto the blocks and then print it off on card stock or your favorite matt or glossy photo paper, your choice!  I like having the option to make the top portion of my calendars to suit myself, so I didn't do a whole page for you!  Today you get January 2013.  Come back tomorrow (hopefully) for February!  Here's the preview . . .

DOWNLOAD HERE or HERE or HERE

That's all from me for the moment.  I've have to get up and get busy on my day!  I have a few things to wrap, baking to do, and a few downtown chores to run.  My DH is off on Tues. and Wed., so that always slows me down right in the middle of my week; it's like his Sat. and Sunday and it really gets me confused sometimes!  Thursdays are like Mondays in this house! 

Stop by tomorrow for more goodies!  Have a great week Santasizing!  (A word used by my beloved departed eldest daughter who was always coining new words of her own, just was her thing to be funny.)

TOOTLES!!

CHRISTMAS TREE QPs No. 4 & 5 - FREEBIE

Hello, All!  I hope your Holiday preparations are going well!  I've come down with a dreadful heavy cold after not being sick for about three years straight.  And this, a week out from my travel plans!  Ugh!  What Irish luck I have!  The last thing I want to take to my elderly parents is a communicable illness.  I've been popping meds, vitamins, minerals, liquids, my own homemade Mexican Chicken Soup, fruits, and a Vemma (mangosteen + essential minerals) supplement as well as a few packets of Emergen-C daily for the last 3 full days.  My faithful standby OTC medication for the heavy, wet sinus headcold that feels like your head is so full of congestion that it's going to pop open is a little red pill, sold by many different brands, but the only ingredient in it is 30 mg. of pseudoephedrine hydrochloride (which is a tip-top nasal decongestant).  I take two of those every 4-6 hours at the onset of misery, and they really help alleviate symptoms.  It used to be known as "Sine-Off" or "Sine-Aid" and also contained 500 mg. of acetomenophine (Tylenol) per pill, but nowdays you cannot find that combo.  But, you can substitute your own dose of Ibuprofen or the like along with the little red pills.  Plus, these days pharmacies keep this pseudoephedrine HCL up front in the store (behind the cash registers) and you have to ask them for it and show the clerk your driver's license because they track who buys and how much.  The reason for that you can probably guess, yes, it's the ingredient young folks were using to make meth at home.  Shame, shame!  Oh well, it may be a tad harder to get, but it's still worth it.  Enough said on my medical lesson for today.  I'm feeling lots better already, and I'm the type I keep going even when ill.

It was gloomy gray here today and drizzled a little misty type rain off and on, so I turned all the lights on in my house, turned on the music and cleaned a bunch of things.  I'm a "light-oriented" person, the more sunshine, light, or brightness there is, the better my mood is.  I made good progress!

Today's FREEBIE is two more of my 2012 Xmas Tree Series, #4 & #5, Quick Pages.  One has a green plaid background, and the other is a slightly textured solid sort of "plum" color.  Again, they hold 15 photos, and you can add as much of your own embelishment as desired.  Have fun if you're collecting these.  They'll be useful in the years to come, right?  You can do a different colored one each year!  They are 12x12" png files at 300 dpi.  (You can easily resize them down to an 8x8", etc.)  Here is the preview . . .

DOWNLOAD HERE or HERE or HERE

I'm getting sooo frustrated with 4Shared acting so goofy lately.  Am looking for a good third option.  I'm currently giving top kudos to OpenDrive and Box for giving totally flawless performance without hassle to the uploader or the downloader!  I also have DropBox, but the storage is small, so I use it more for personal things that I don't intend to leave in the account forever.  It works beautifully also.  Looked at plans by GoDaddy last night and will give that some thought, it looks more affordable than all the rest, and I've already seen how well it works from the downloading end.  LOL! 

TODAY'S "SHOW & TELL" INSPIRATION - - Below is my layout for PhotoShop Friday 2012, Week #50 over at the "Spragueground".  It features a total little angel boy (my nearly 7 yr. old extreme preemie grandson) playing a snowflake in his 1st-grade Christmas Musical.  Truly, he is such a sweetheart; mannerly, obedient, generally happy & good-natured.  It was so fun to get to the elementary auditorium bright and early at 7:30 a.m. to see him and his little friends sing and dance their hearts out.  He never missed a beat or a motion & seemed relaxed and happy doing this performance.  I took lots of pictures, had to use zoom, and the lighting wasn't great.  Luckily for me, the school filmed the whole thing professionally, so I'm sure the DVD I will receive soon will be better quality than my own photos turned out.  The cool thing about scrapping this page and having the PSF12 weekly class available - of course, the template from Jessica; but the technique she taught this week was the use of our own text as an overlay.  So after watching the class video (love those!), I gave this a few minutes of reflection back to the songs he had sung that morning, and I used the lyrics from one that was so cute to make the text overlay.  The little verse I remembered so well because of their annimated gestures as they sang went like this, "You take a little snow, mix in a little dirt, and what you get we call "SNIRT"!  So you can see how I've used this song overlaying my background paper.  Very cool.  Someday when he grows up and looks at these pages I've made for him, he will actually be able to see one of the songs he sang as a first-grade Snowflake!  The photos may not be my best quality, even with PSE tweaking, but my overlay is the BOMB!  We used two different fonts to make it.  Have a look . . .

BTW, the PSF2012 course is on a huge sale right now if you'd like to pick it up to work on throughout the coming year.  They are having the annual year-end sale, so that's just about everything going for reduced prices right now. 

I'm working on a gift for my folks, a 2013 wall calendar which I will home print on my Kodak and take to Office Depot to bind for me because I want a spiral binder with a metal hanger in the middle so it's easy for my Mom to flip the pages monthly.  She totally writes all over the blocks of her calendar, so many notes and appointments, etc.  This is basically a premade QP type kit I purchased on sale over at JS and it is by Pink Paislee.  It comes complete with a cover page and, of course, you can add text to the day blocks or fancy it up as desired.  I'll show you my January and February pages here . . .

That's my parents' home in the Appalachian Mountains of southeastern WV during winter snow; and February is all of the great-grandkids from my downline.  These are quick and easy pages to complete, so I'm on time with this one!  Yeah for me!  They always love this type of useful personal thing.

Check back tomorrow, I will attempt having something different for you!

TOOTLES!!
 

WORD ART + QUICK PAGE FREEBIES

MY OH MY!  I'm a little more than behind with the blog posting plans I had in mind.  Just goes to show that we are not really in charge, real life is in charge.  I'm preparing for the holidays and will be traveling for a week to visit my parents up North.  My daughter and her family will be making this journey also, and we will all be in time to spend Christmas Eve and Day with my dad, who is just shy of 90, and my mom, who is almost 85.  Their whole spirit lifted when we told them we would be there this year; they sounded like two little kids who all of the sudden had something wonderful to look forward to.  My DH doesn't have enough time off to make this trip, so he has volunteered to stay and care for all of our family pets.  This also means I will be away from my special preemie grandson, who is almost 7 years old now, and that will feel very strange to me.  We've been getting together on the weekends and having Christmas craft sessions to make up for the time with him I'll be losing.  So, it's just been a little more than busy around here. 

Last night my daughter took me out for my Christmas gift.  She kept the whole thing a total surprise, and we ended up at a new business here at the beach called "Wine & Design".  It was their Christmas extravaganza session complete with a wine tasting, fondue, and painting a piece of art.  There was even a musician playing guitar for us all evening.  We got there at 5:30 p.m. and didn't leave until probably close to 11 p.m.  Time flies when you're having fun!  I'll post some photos of that soon so you can see what we all painted.  Meantime, if you're curious, they have a website to browse, just dot com the name.

Okay, gotta keep this short and on track, not so much rambling.  I wanted to get the last two sets of my THANKFUL Divided Word Art out to you in November, but oh well.  Here it is now.  Set #5 and #6 is a little more whimsical, and #7 is more spiritual.  Again, these are basic black png files which you can resize, recolor, clip papers to, or apply a style to.  Below are the previews and download links for each . . .

DOWNLOADS:  Open Drive or Box or 4Shared

DOWNLOADS:  Open Drive or Box or 4Shared

Next up is another Quick Page in my 2012 Xmas Tree series, this one is #3.  It will showcase 15 photos, and you can add other elements, words, journaling, etc.  This is a 12 x 12-inch, 300 dpi png file.  You can easily size this down to an 8 x 8" if you prefer.  Here's the preview . . .

DOWNLOADS:  Open Drive or Box or 4Shared

I hope to post again tomorrow since I have several contest QPs to share, a recent template, and a printable card.  Also, I have a slew of different backgrounds on the above Christmas Tree QP to share with you in the days to come.  Stay tuned in!  Don't forget to leave some love if you download.  It's so appreciated. Also, unzip promptly; there's a discount coupon to my Etsy shop in each download.  If you've had your eye on something there, now is the time to go for it!

TOOTLES!!