Designer Survivor Template Freebie

I'm participating in a Designer Survivor competition over at Brownie Scraps and would love any of the support you'd like to show! For the first challenge, I created a template for you, based on my Traffic Jam Lovin' layout from a week or so ago. Hope you like it!

To download the template, click on the image and look in the description section. The download link is in there. If you wouldn't mind leaving a comment there, I would really appreciate it! Thanks for the support!

Top 10 Perks to Being Unemployed

Yesterday, I lost my job. It's a weird feeling, being unemployed. However, I've wanted an excuse to build up my online businesses for a while, so this is really a blessing in disguise. After a long walk through the mall with C, a carton of sugar free ice cream, and a chick flik, me and C came up with a plan. I'll be working on building up my online stuff for 5-6 weeks until C starts fall semester here at BYU. That means we'll both enjoy 3 long weeks of having NOTHING. No job. No school. etc. and we'll be able to stop acting like grown-ups for a while, head down to Lake Powell for a week, and then mosey on down to Queen Creek to spend some much needed time with C's family. Luckily, C and I are big Dave Ramsey fans and have built up a 3-6 month financial reserve, so we got to skip the "panic" stage. So, aside from feeling "weird" here are the top 10 perks I've found so far to being unemployed.

Sleeping In. I am not a morning person. Never have been. Most likely never will be. I don't intend to sleep in until 10 am every morning, just today, but man oh man it felt good!

Feeling Productive. Being laid off made sense to me. I would often walk in to my bosses office 3-4 times a day asking him for more projects to work on. I had a feeling this was coming because I had nothing to do at work! It was so frustrating to want to do so much for my personal business ideas, but be stuck at work wasting my days away. No amount of money is worth feeling like your life is passing you by.

Making Leaps and Bounds Toward Working from Home. It isn't any secret that I would much prefer working from home. I am a housewife at heart and it was so frustrating for me to spend so much time away from home without really making a difference. I love C and would love to make our home a "haven" for the two of us, but my time and energy were spent outside of my control every day.

Being Confident in my Abilities. When I was laid off, we had a great conversation. It wasn't upsetting or a negative break in any way. My superiors told me they were happy to contact any potential employers to give me a great recommendation. They assured me that I did nothing wrong. I believe the word "perfect" was even used. The lay-off made sense to me. I could see it coming. Me being employed at an office that doesn't really need me was a waste of my time and their money. I think everybody is happier now.

Time with C. I just got a text from C, "Want to go do something fun tonight?" In the past, I've had to say "no" because I've had clients to get designs to, new products to get into the shop, and other obligations. Now, I have a life! I can date my husband in the middle of the week. Major score.

Two words. Digital Scrapbooking. Now I have time to not only design products for all you awesome scrappers, but I have time to get our family history designed, printed, and organized on our bookshelf.

Dinner Time. I love setting a beautiful table for dinner. It's something I get from my Grandma McGuire. Tonight, I'm going to have everything on the table before C gets home from school. Hot, flavorful, colorful. Cloth napkins. Wine goblets. The whole she-bang. And this may just become a regular occurrence at our house.

Mundane Chores. The task of keeping our home in order has fallen into C's responsibility lately. It's so frustrating to me. My mom raised me to keep my space clean. Do the dishes. Fold the laundry. etc. She taught me how to find joy in that. So, I really hate it when *I* am the one "helping" C, instead of the other way around. I'm making a chore chart today. :)

Design Clients. My clients are really getting the attention they deserve. I finished a logo order last night and started in on a blog re-design this morning. I have so much I want to do with my design abilities and I can't wait to start spreading the word! Things are really looking up, and I wouldn't be able to take on so many clients without some extra time on my hands.

Vacation. A real one. Like no obligations for DAYS. We'll be able to spend an entire week with each of our families and then spend another week just us. 3 weeks of paradise. Sign me up. How delicious does that sound?



oh. and if you want to help out with the cash-ola. Take a trip to my shop and buy a kit to show your support, OR, just click on one of the google ads!

Never Pay Full Price for CMKD Scraps Again & CT Call!

Today, I'm leaving with C for Arizona. We haven't been down there since Christmas! [That's pretty great for us. Last year, it felt like we went down there every month. Financially, that just wasn't good.] I'm so excited to see everybody. We have a family reunion for my mom's side of the family on Thursday and Friday, and then a reunion for C's dad's side of the family on Saturday and Sunday. It's a good thing we LOVE everybody! Because I'm going to be gone, I wanted to let you know about a promotion I'm running. I would love to get a gallery of pages & projects made with Call Me Kristin Designs products. It keeps creative juices flowing! So, to reward you for taking the time to send me your designs, you'll get a 50% off coupon for your entire order in the shop! The good news is that your projects can even include pages/cards/home decor/etc. made with my freebies! That means you could possibly not pay full price for anything ever again! [You know how I love a good deal. :)]



So here's how it works. Just send me an image of your page/project/card/etc. made with mostly Call Me Kristin Designs products and I'll send you an exclusive 50% off coupon, just for you! Once I get back, I'll start putting together the gallery. Every image you submit will be linked back to your blog, so if you're looking for a way to promote yourself, here's a great place to do it! Just let me know the URL you'd like the image linked to.

I can't wait to see your pages!

Note: If you're interested in being on my creative team, I will be holding a CT call in the near future. Gallery submissions will be used as your application, so get a page in if you'd like to be on the CT!

To Be Beautiful

[caption id="attachment_977" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="via notebookdoodles.com"][/caption]

I'm willing to bet C thinks the same of me.

But this week has been hard.

And it's only Monday.

I thought waiting by the phone ended when I got married.

Freaking doctors. Call me!

In the meantime, I'm going to go find something to be pretty about.

What's your reason to smile today?

UPDATE: My reason to smile is a long hot bubble bath in which C reads the second Hunger Games book to me and a knock on the door from a stellar friend who has sugar free popsicles in hand along with an amazing array of rainy day goodies.

There are seriously wonderful people in my life.

Wordless Wednesday:Better Use of Time

Does it count as wordless if there are words in the picture?



I'm gonna say yes.

Back in Action!

Sorry everybody for the blog being down! I've been so frustrated! To make up for it, you can use coupon code: TWO4TUESDAY to get $2 off any order in the shoppe!

I actually took some time on Sunday to go through all of our photos and organize them into 3 folders: To be scrapped, To be burned, & To be printed. Because of the 3 different computers I blog/scrap from, I had tons of duplicate copies and nothing was organized. It was hard to motivate myself to scrap anything, because I couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. It thrilled me to start scrapping pictures after everything was organized and I whipped out 4 pages in 2 hours! I feel like I haven't done this in a long time, but here are my latest!

[caption id="attachment_964" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Credits: Gina Cabrera, Shabby Princess, Amy Teets"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_961" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Credits: Kevin and Amanda, Flutter Expressions, Ali Edwards"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_963" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Credits: Paislee Press, Ali Edwards, Therese"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_962" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Credits: Vinnie Pierce, Fei Fei's Stuff"][/caption]

It feels really great to be back on the horse and moving forward. I've about finished a HUGE project I've been working on, so stay tuned! It was a Christmas present for my parents last year and every one of my 5 siblings along with C and my brother-in-law, Mackay have all contributed to it and I'm ready to see it finally printed.

2810 Is My Man

This post is long, LONG overdue.

C's marathon was on June 12th. Corralling the pictures from 3 different cameras has taken a while, but not this long. I don't really have a valid excuse, but better late than never. Especially for something this amazing! C rocked it.

He had to take off to the starting line at 3:30 in the morning. I am sincerely not a morning person and C was very OK with me not getting up with him. I did, though, want to make sure he felt like I supported him. I don't make a fuss over him near enough, and what he was about to do was MAJOR. So, I sent him to bed early and made a quick trip to the store.

In the morning, he woke up to this set-up:

Chocolate milk [his favorite recovery drink], power bars, orbit mist [a fabulously quenching gum, just like the commercials say], blister band-aids, and a rubber bracelet with Alma 44:4 on it [his family's scripture that reminds us that God will support].

Behind the shoes, I laid out the shirt I'd be wearing to the finish line, so he'd be able to find me on the sidelines and at the finish easier.

I couldn't sleep because I was terrified I'd miss the finish like last time. And then, I proceeded to wake up late, due to a dream I was having about trying to get my family out the door to the finish line. Yeesh. I decided against make-up and took off for mile 21 to snap pictures, running numbers in my head to try and figure out if I'd missed C or not. I hadn't. [woot!]

He came around the bend, looking great! I was so proud of him! His training partner and cousin, Nicole, was about 50 yards ahead of him, which was nice to have a heads up that he was coming soon.

He was making amazing time and in as much pain as could be expected after running 21 miles. He gave me a quick smile and headed on down to the finish line.

I ran back to the car to meet Emilee and her cute little girl at the finish line. We cheered Nicole on as she crossed the finish line, positive that C would be a few strides behind. He didn't. I started seeing people I remembered being near by him at mile 21. More and more people came in and C was nowhere to be found.

I started getting really really worried. I really knew something wasn't right. C is one strong, determined man and he wouldn't just roll over and die, even if he was in pain.

Right before I entered complete melt-down mode [30 minutes later], C came around the corner.

I finally got to see him at the finish line. After he caught his breath and gave me a good smooch, he explained what had happened. Around mile 22, his entire legs cramped up so bad it knocked him over. He had to take some time to stretch, walk it out, and try to get back on the horse. He would jog for a short distance and they would cramp up again. [A little disheartening for being within 4 miles of the finish line!]

He finished strong at just over 4 hours. I got him some chocolate milk and we headed back to the massage tables. His masseuse kept asking him to relax his quads because she couldn't do anything with the state his legs were in. [ouch!]

Left to Right: Julie [Nicole's Mom], Nicole, C & Kiara [C's Twin Sister]. Julie & Kiara ran the half. Nicole finished in 3 hours 37 minutes and qualified for Boston!

After a nice long nap, we headed up to Rodizio grill so C could get some serious protein. He definitely earned it!

Laundry & Pantry Makeover

Part of the major changes for our family mentioned in the 3 things post was that we'll be staying in Utah for another two years. C will be getting a business minor in addition to his Exercise Science degree. We think it will come in handy when he's running his own Chiropractic practice in the future. Because this means we'll be in this same apartment for a longer period of time, it means I suddenly have more motivation to make it a nicer place to be.

One of the biggest eye-sores in our home is the "pantry" or really, lack thereof. Our non-refrigerated food was stacked on a bookshelf out in the open right next to our kitchen table, like so:

cute, eh?

Eyesore #2 is the Laundry nook. It is also in the kitchen and just looks washed out, boring, etc. It wasn't terribly cluttery or dirty, but was far from being pretty.

And so, on our day off [Happy 4th!] C and I took a little jaunt down to the fabric store. $20 bucks and an hour later, our pantry and laundry nook got a major facelift!

I'm totally thrilled. My mom would be so proud. Now that corner has a major pop of color, we have room for a portable dishwasher [more for C, because let's be honest...dishes and me really don't get along.] and our cluttered pantry isn't glaring at us all through dinner. Win-win-win.

Want to Score a Major Deal?

So, I've been spoiling my twitter peeps with coupons all day to get screaming deals on my new products. I just thought I'd share the love with my blogging friends too! Here are the active coupon codes:

Get Bistro for a Buck: Use code Table4Two

Get Vintage Vinyl for a Buck: Use code CMKVVDOL5

Get the Love Letters Templates Set for a Buck: Use code IHEARTTEMPLATES

There are only a few of each coupon left, so be sure to check back for more!

Is there a product you'd like to see a coupon for? Let me know in the comments!