Needed Some Cards

I did this one for a woman in the nursing home, hoping she can enjoy memories of Halloween, and hoping her family comes by to see her...and of course bring treats! I cut the corners from Butterfly Designs Elegant Corners, used my prismacolor pencils, and added rhinestones and stickles for the mandatory bling, and poof! I was done! I did this for my daughter who just turned 1o! It coordinated with her gift bag :) The frame is from Michelle Hessler at paperthreads.com (you can find Butterfly Designs there too), the image is from Mo at Digital Pencil Too. As usual, I used my prismacolor pencils, and added more rhinestones and stickles. This one was so much fun to do! I was inspired by one of Yvonne's cards (her link is in my list of blogs to the right), I really like how this turned out! Again, prismacolor pencils, and the fleur-de-lise border is a file from Butterfly Designs that I used with my Wishblade. Thanks for stopping by!

Another Birthday Bag

Again, a plain white gift bag I dressed up. I used another bow and a border from Butterfly Designs. The name frame is chipboard that I covered with a couple colors of glitter and a layer of Glossy Accents to keep all that good glitter right where it was supposed to be!

Been Hard at Work Creating

But not editing. This week has just been crazy, and I havent' had a chance to sit down and edit, so, instead of trying and being frustrated when it didn't work, I just decided to wait until Monday when birthdays, parties, halloween, halloween parties, parent teacher conferences, dentist appointments, and sending family memebers off was all over. I'm tired all over again just from writing that list! I need some birthday cards and bags, as well as thank you cards, so I worked on that instead, and I thought I'd share them with you.

This is a plain white gift bag that I jazzed up. I used a digital file from Butterfly Designs for the bow. I added stickles and pink rhinestones, and of course, pretty paper.

Thanks for stopping by!

Today I Said Goodbye

to my sister. She joined the Navy and she leaves tomorrow for bootcamp in Illinois. She's only 16 months younger than I am, so I don't really remember a time that she wasn't around. Because we were close in age, and I've always been little, my mom constantly fielded the same question, "Are they twins?" For the longest time we shared a room, my sister was always around. When I went to school, she was there the following year. When I learned to drive, she was in the backseat waiting for her turn. When she played softball...I tried...I wasn't very good at it though, but we were out there. We were on different teams one year, and I asked her what she would do if she was guarding the base I needed. She said she'd let me have it. Family came before the game. She was there when I got married. When my children were born, even came to some of the sonograms with us. She's always been forgiving and supportive. As much as we did together, we were nothing alike...she was actually good at sports, and she was scared to death on a stage. I'm not too squeamish about bugs, spiders, and snakes...she runs the other way, often times with a high squeal, a shiver, and a few tears. I've often thought that if you meshed us into one person, we'd be a very well rounded, nearly perfect person...and now she's moving away and it's hard to see her go. I didn't cry much when I said good bye to her today, but I'm by myself now, and that's usually when I cry. I'm going to miss my sister. She's one of the bravest, strongest women I know. I'm proud of her, but that doesn't make it any easier to watch her go.

Friday Writing Update - Claimed

Prologue and first three chapters are mostly edited. I'm getting a little discouraged, I'm trying to find my groove, and it's not happening as quickly or easily as I thought it would. I've never done this before, so I'm in the trial and error zone. Do I edit the paper and then go back and edit in the doc? Seems redundant to me. It's playing with my eyes too, trying to change focus between my printed page, and my computer screen. Argh...I need to find something that works for me so I can get excited about it and not stall when I should be working. I keep trying new set ups, and new ways and so far, I'm still working on it. I've got my laptop, jumbo notebook (to hold first and second drafts, as well as research), and my tablet that I need to make space for. During the writing process, I sat on the couch - but now it's kind of hard to spread out there. Unfortunately, sitting on a hard chair at the dining table isn't doing it for me, desks in general are kind of hard for me to work at, physically, and creatively. I'm short, and tables and desks always seem too high for me to work at comfortably. I have a chair that I can lift, but then my knees are too close to the bottom and more than once I've jammed my knee into the underside of the thing when I was trying to get comfortable - that didn't really help any. Part of it's my clumsiness, but you get the idea. Tonight I tried a different set up on the couch and it might work. We'll have to see. My goal was to have this finished by the end of the year, and at this rate, it's going to be close...I need to get into my groove and get working. Thanks for listening to me rant a bit...

Working On It

Okay, I managed to do a bit of revision and my brain is happy. I've known my story was too long, and I knew that the best place to cut was in the beginning. There was a lot of info there that worked for me getting to know my characters, but didn't necesarily belong in the book itself. I just condensed 18 pages into 3. That will definitely help! Whatever was causing my mental editing block, I think this may have fixed it. I'm going to go through my written edits in my notebook, (about 100 pages) then I'll switch to editing directly in the document. My eyes are getting confused jumping back and forth between the book and the screen!

Couldn't Do It...

Couldn't keep moving, so I'm reworking the first 20 pages or so of Claimed so that I can move on. I was also working with paper and pen, but may just need to work directly with the doc on the computer. I hate feeling like I'm duplicating work by going through my paper draft and then going back to the computer to find and fix everything. I hope I'm saving a step by working directly in the doc. itself. I've never done this before, so I'm trying to figure this out as I go, and that's frustrating me too. Any authors who want to comment on how they do the editing process, please, feel free! Thanks for stopping by!

Figured Something Out

I think I know why I'm not just jumping into edits, it's taking me time to agree to finally look things over. I know I need to re-do the beginning of the story, and I haven't done it yet, so it feels like I'm editing something that's not ready, because it's not completely finished. Now that I know this, I wonder if I can trick my brain into agreeing to just continue with the edits and then do the rewrites all at once. Some how, I need to assuage that part of myself that feels like I forgot to do something. I'm at page 105 for edits, I started editing a while back when I read over the first 70 pages to refresh my memory, it had been awhile since I'd sat down to write. I couldn't help it, I edited as I went, so now, I just have to pick up where I left off, then I can go through and make things better - that's the plan anyway! Wish me luck! Thanks for stopping by!

A Few Cards I've done the Last Couple Days

I found this great digital stamp place on line called Mo's Digital Pencil. The great part about digital stamps, is that you can size them to whatever size you need. You don't need any special software to use these, anything that will read a jpg, and a computer is all you really need. And for those rubber enthusiasts, who think stampin isn't stamping without a stamp, if you like these adorable images as much as I do, they're going to start releasing the images as actual stamps. This is an image that's part of a trio, Dani and Friends. The mat is by Michelle, from paperthreads.com. Colored with prismacolors pencils :) This is another image of Mo's, little Punkin' Elf. The frames are stencils from CTMH, and, again, colored with prisma color pencils. He's so cute! I added the words, and the bat and spiderwebs are stamps from CTMH. One day I'll figure out how to scan the images better so they're not so crooked! Thanks for stopping by!

Today - Tuesday's Work

I'm picking up at page 205 of Jennifer Chase's Dead Game, I hope to finish and get it back to her today. Isn't technology great! All changes, ideas, suggestions, etc... are done directly to the digital document. No prinitng pages of manuscript, sending them off, marking them up, and sending them back, all the time waiting on the USPS. When it's finished, it's at her desk within minutes :) I hope to start edits and rewrites on my book, Claimed tomorrow or Thursday, we'll see how things go :) Claimed is part of the Annwyn series, because there's more stories floating around in my head ;) Didn't sleep well last night, guess I should have spent it working on Dead Game, but at 2 am, I really thought I should go to bed, since I had to get up at 7:30 to get the kids moving...maybe I'll have better luck tonight. Once I did fall asleep, I didn't sleep that well...sad, huh?

Werewolf Conversation with a Five Year Old

He doesn't want to sleep in his own room, by himself. His sisters told him, "no." He's on his way to ask his brother now. But before I got him to go up and do that, he tried to convince me he needed to sleep in my room. He said he was scared because of the werewolf on the Jonas Brother's haunted firehouse episode. I suggested he wear the Santa hat that's still out from last year, explaining that even werewolves liked Santa - he didn't go for that. He then asked if I had werewolves in my room, I told him no, because I wrote about vampires the wolves left me alone. Here's our convesation: "Mom, werewolves aren't real" "Really? Then why are you afraid of them?" "Because I'm five," he said with exasperation - like it's obvious. So, yeah, my son is scared of something he told me isn't real, and it's because he's five. At least that's his logic. He makes me laugh...love that little boy!

Today

Today, I feel like I didn't sit down until about 9pm... Got up this morning and finished a *cute* birthday card for my new buddy Colton, he's four. Used this cute little elf punkin, I have a scan I'll post later. Then I rushed to get ready so we could leave for Colton's birthday party. All the kids had fun, and I think the grown ups did too. When we got back, we spent the afternoon cleaning up some, then it was dinner time, then it was clean up time again, then bed time, I also had some trim back the roses and cover them with buckets and dirt time - our first freeze is coming in kind of early. I also got a loaf of cinnemon raisen bread baked (yay breadmakers!). When I finally did get a chance to sit down, it was to work on my sunday school lesson for tomorrow, and now that's done. I also finished another card, and now I'm sitting down again, and I'm getting ready to start proof reading Jennifer Chase's newest novel - Dead Game. I've been trying to get to this all day. Oh, I don't think I mentioned, Paul's been gone all day, so I've been pulling double duty, but I've got good kids and they pitched in to help. It's fun to hang out with them too :)

I'm Done!

Wow! I didn't think I'd do it, but I finished today. My first draft is done! This feels really good. I think it took me 8 weeks to do everything after page 70. I ended with 245 pages, and 124,282 words. That translates into about 414 book pages. I'll start revisions on Tuesday, most likely since the kids are out of school on Monday. I've already got a good idea of where to start cutting. I also came up with some title and series ideas. My friend Kathy brainstormed with me last week. The series, because there are other characters to follow, is tentatively called Annwyn. I think this book will be called Claimed. Yay!

Wednesday Writing

Field trips, feeling sick, cross country meets, scouts, service projects, things like that are holding me up. I'm not sure I'll make my goal of finishing my rough draft by the end of Friday. I still have two more writing days though, so that will help :) I'll at least get closer! I added another 10 pages today and I know where I'm going, so picking up in the morning should be pretty simple. Sometimes the hardest part about writing, is just sitting down, holding still, and starting. When I know what's going on and I'm just too tired to keep writing, it's much easier to get back into it in the morning. So, here's to good mornings, I hope you have a great one!

Monday's Writing Update

I've got one more big scene, then two smaller ones, and I should be done :) I spent today doing some research though, needed another dress and a fantastic home in the Welsh countryside. I found the perfect dress, I need to add some shoes. I may have the perfect home too, just can't find many pictures of it :(

Light at the End of the Tunnel

I can see it! I think I have about five more scenes to write! And I don't think I need a lot of filler between the scenes :) I'm upto 213 word pages, and 108,000 words. I'll be pretty busy this weekend, but maybe I can sneak in a bit more writing, I hope to be done with my first draft by the end of next week. My goal is to be done with the book by the end of the year, I might make it :D I'm beginning to get excited :D

Happy Birthday Sirius!

My puppy turned one today! This is the same dog, that 6 months ago, the vet thought would die, the dog we prayed over for an entire weekend, the dog that had a miracle, and is too innocent to even understand it. I took him with me to drop the kids off at school, then we went to PetSmart - sliding doors freak him out.... Once we got passed those darn doors he was a little better. We picked up some nail clippers for him (he so needed a trim!) and a pig ear. He's sitting on the floor in front of me, now, with trimmed nails, enoying a pig ear. I think it's kinda icky, but he seems to really be enjoying himself! I made it to the half way mark in editing Jennifer Chase's ebook How to Write a Screenplay. I should finish that up today, and maybe get back to my story - which may have more than a working title right now! I'm excited about that. Or, I may just read, take a little break and read.