Queen of ALLL Things AWE-SUMMM Award!

Queen of ALLL Things AWE-SUMMM!!! award

I was generously bestowed the honor of Queen of ALLL Things Awe-Summm, an award granted to me by my friend KnitPurlGurl!  To accept this award, I am required to abide by the terms and conditions that come with it: I must list 7 awesome things about myself, and then I must list 7 others who I think are awesome to pass the award on to.

1. I’m crafty. But you already knew that. I knit, crochet, sew, paint, handmake cards and everything else in between. If it’s crafty, I’ll try it. I’m constantly crafting something and always trying to figure out how to make things; I prefer to make something myself if I can, especially gifts for others. I can’t remember the last time I purchased a greeting card for someone. Being crafty means I understand, appreciate and respect others that handmake things, too: the process, the effort, the time investment, the heart and soul…
2. In my professional life, I am dedicated to helping others. I’m an elementary teacher by trade, and have known my entire life that I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up. I’ve been teaching others for as long as I can remember and am proud to have a career where it’s my job to help others all of the time.
3. Along the same lines, in my personal life I am dedicated to helping others. I’ve melded my love for crafts and teaching together here, where I’ve made tutorials on the digital scrapbooking software, My Memories Suite, to help others get the most out of and figure out how to use the software.  My other pastime, gaming, has also been melded with my passion to help others as I write tutorial articles for various games, too.
4. I took a huge plunge and moved to another country in the summer of 2006. Moving so far away from family was hard, but it was the best decision I have ever made in my entire life and the best thing that I’ve done for myself, ever. If I had to do it all over again, I’d do so in a heartbeat.
5. That being said, Lucas and I have made the decision to move back to the states this summer (or ASAP) to be closer to family so we can start our own family soon. And while we’re moving back, which makes my family very happy, I’d still not change the three wonderful years in Canada nor change my decision to move here back in 2006.
6. I can multi-task. Seems boring, but I get a thrill out of having multiple things to do and managing them all at once. To be honest, I think I am more efficient when I’ve got a lot of things due and am up against a deadline. I think this is because I’m very organized and get excited about organization and prioritizing.
7. I can rollerblade. Don’t make fun, because not only can I rollerblade, I can do so without killing myself. While this may seem silly, rollerblading makes me FEEL awesome, and I can’t get enough of it when the weather is nice.

Whew! That was a bit challenging. Really, I thought about it for two days. However, it’s easy peasy to come up with 7 awesome people out there that I would consider Queen of All Things Awesome. In fact, the hardest part about listing 7 awesome people is limiting my list to only 7 people! Ugh! So here goes, in no particular order, the 7 awesome people I am passing this award on to:

1. Daniella of DaniDo Crafty! – fabulous patterns, owns a white mini schnauzer too, and an overall awesome person :)
2. Crazy Aunt Purl – love her writing style, humor, and perfect rolled brim hat recipe!
3. The Yarn Harlot – sure, this may be obvious, but it wasn’t until recently I started using Google Reader and actually following other peoples’ blogs more efficiently than just remembering to go down the list every week or so. Now that I’m on top of it and reading/following/stalking regularly, I can’t believe I’ve been missing out for so long. The Yarn Harlot’s blog leaves me in stitches! (See what I did there?)
4. Maria, creator and maintainer of the DigiFree digital scrapbooking freebie blog. I heart it.
5. Scrap Stuff with PSP – Shawna’s tutorials for PSP and PSD are my inspiration and where I learned most of my digital scrapbooking design techniques. I’d be nowhere without her!
6. Glamour Gals – My friend, Julia, is the director of program expansion for an amazing charity called Glamour Gals. Check her out!
7. Teresa Richardson’s Crochet Mania blog – I taught myself crochet via her YouTube videos. She has over 300 instructional crochet videos or something amazing like that. All I know is she is my top resource for all things crochet. She even has a Video Crochet group on Ravelry!

And there you have it! Special thanks to these lovely people for being blogs I enjoy following and for doing amazing work in your field. You’re all an inspiration! And thank you to KnitPurlGurl for thinking I’m AWE-SUMMM enough to deserve this award in the first place! I’d have included her in this list but since she just had to do it… I figured I can’t really send it back to her. But she’s definitely an AWE-SUMM crafter and overall fab person, and you simply have to pop in and check her out :) Have a great afternoon!

Cool Stuff to Share!

Lauren's Fall Festival Layout

So I’ve got some really cool stuff to share with you today. Not a freebie, but something even better — a page created by a reader of the pink toque craft blog using a lot of my past freebie giveaways, and another blog award!  How exciting, huh? :D

First of all, Lauren created this beautiful page for her son’s Fall Festival.  Isn’t it absolutely gorgeous?  She used my chalk alpha, pinktoque dots font, the chalkboard background paper and some elements from my Asparagus freebie, too!  You may even notice some of my freebie crayons and one of my notepaper tags, too!  The awesome notebook that Lauren used was created by Pamela of DigiTreats.  SO cool!  I love this page and love that Lauren took the time to share it with me AND give me permission to share it here with all of you :)  Thanks, Lauren!  It’s absolutely stunning.

Also this week I received another blog award.  This one is the Fabulous award, given to me by the very sweet and talented Knit Purl Gurl over at Scrap Paper Scissors! How lucky am I?  It’s been such a wonderful week.  Thank you so much for the award, KPG! :D  And I don’t know about you, but WOW isn’t her blog design FABULOUS?!  It looks so professional!  I love her blog; you should totally check her out!

The instructions for the award are that I need to list 5 addictions and pass the award on to 5 deserving bloggers.  So here goes!

My 5 addictions (at the moment):
1. World of Warcraft
2. crochet
3. digital scrapbooking
4. coffee
5. Cadbury 100 calorie almond bars

5 deserving bloggers (in no particular order):
1. The Chronicles of Nani
2. Treeparty
3. How I Pinch a Penny
4. Mrs. Multicraft
5. Hey, Knit Happens!

Congrats, award recipients!  Hope you’re having a great week :)

Another Font and a Blog Award

LesleyK Print Personal Use Font

Hi everyone :)

Today I wanted to share a very generous blog award that I received from my friend Nani over at The Chronicles of Nani: the Kreativ Blogger award!

The award calls for me listing 7 things that I love and passing it on to 7 people who I think deserve it. First, my seven things:

1. football (go Bears!)
2. hockey (go Flames!)
3. my boys: Lucas, Oliver and Winston
4. snuggling
5. cadbury chocolate
6. my computer
7. crafts

And now… I pass the award along to 7 people, in no particular order:

1. vicki’s blog: a work in progress
2. crafting with cat hair
3. aunt judyL’s house
4. delicious scraps
5. pillowgirl
6. scrap paper scissors
7. star scraps

Congrats! Also today I wanted to release another freebie font — this time it’s for PERSONAL USE ONLY (my last one was commercial use but this one is just personal use please) and it’s called LesleyK Print — coming in regular and bold print :) I made this one myself, too, and it’s of my actual handwriting!  How cool is that? :) I hope you enjoy it.

Download my LesleyK Print personal use freebie font HERE.

Are you watching the U.S. elections? We are! Guess we’ll all know very soon who the next president will be. Anyway, see you back here Friday (my husband’s birthday!) for another fun freebie :)  Take care!

scrapbook