Hey bloggy friends!!  I've been outta the loop for the past week or so, but have soooo much to share with you!!!  Just wanted to let you all know that I'll be back and blogging tomorrow about all the stuff that's been going on...

It feels like it's been ages since I participated in Favorite Family Foto Fridays hosted by Deborah @ Pictures Post Pens!!  Check out her blog for more favorite fotos- here's mine...

So my return to the blogging world has begun and what a great omen to kick it off with...I headed over to one of my favorite blogs (it was the first blog I followed) knowing it was time for her weekly meme of a writing assignment...Kat, you must've been in my head when you chose the prompts for this week!  Amongst the other great prompts to write about this week, there were 2 that I had a hard time choosing between:

2.) Name your current addiction...we can get through this together.

(inspired by Lula)

3.) What have you been busy doing that's keeping you from updating your blog? How hard is it for you to get back into the swing of blogging when you take time off?
(inspired by Sera)


Me and Kat, we're like right here.  Since my answer to prompt 3 is the answer to prompt 2, I'm gonna combine them- it's my blog, so deal!


You may or may not know, but I have 2 blogs.  This one- my personal, family, stuff I love and hate, day to day life blog- and my scrap blog which covers my current addiction- digital scrapbooking!  I guess you could say that I've always been a scrapper, I always had shoe boxes full of stuff and pictures I wanted to remember but didn't really start putting them into books until I was in high school.  When I got pregnant with Kassie and had to leave work at 7 1/2 months I had nothing to do but sit around being pregnant.  My soaps are only on for 3 hours out of the day!  That's when I found digital scrapbooking- or digiscrapping as we call it...LOL!

I didn't do much scrapping right after Kassie was born because every free minute I had I spent sleeping, but once I started to get the hang of this mommy thing I started again.  And believe me, I have yet to run out of pictures!!!  It was just so much easier to have all the mess supplies contained to my hard drive as opposed to my dining room table- especially since Kassie couldn't pick stuff up off the hard drive and put it in her mouth!! 

I scrapped for a while, then for some reason just kinda fell out of it- but didn't stop collecting pictures and stuff to scrap with!  Then about 3 months ago I decided I wanted to start scrapping again.  I don't know if it was more that I wanted to play with all the stuff I had obtained, actually use the thousands of pictures I had taken or my guilt of not having a baby book for Kassie but I jumped right back in- with both feet!

Do you have any idea how expensive digiscrapping can get?  Don't get me wrong, scrap kits usually only cost around 4 or 5 bucks (and there's TONS of freebies out there plus most stores have $1 bins where you can pick up awesome stuff!!!), but with literally thousands of pictures to scrap and tons of milestones and events to capture- it can get expensive!!  The solution?  Join a CT.

CT stands for Creative Team and just about every designer has one.  It's a group of scrap addicts like myself that work with a digi designer and their kits.  When a designer completes a kit they need help- showing off what the kit can be used for, giving other scrappers inspiration and advertising it's release.  It'd be alot of work for one person, especially when they've then got to start a new kit!  So they get a CT. 

The CT members get the kit, scrap some pages with it (it's called a layout or LO) and get to keep the kit- for free!!!  All they've got to do is then advertise it, which most of us do on our blogs.  Alot of CT members also make freebies, like quickpages (qp's) coordinating alphas or brag books (bbs)to give away which helps advertise the kit (and brings traffic to our blogs!!!)  Since each scrapper has their own style it gives others a better idea of how they can use the kit themselves. 

Soooo, with that being said, 3 months ago when I started scrapping again I went to a few of my favorite scrap forums to look for CT calls- that's when a designer puts out like a casting call to fill spots on their CT's- and found a ton!!!  I figured that the more CT's I applied for, the better chance I would have of actually getting on one- so I applied for 5.  The next day, I opened my email and found that I had been accepted for 4 of them!?!?!  I must've chosen some really good LO's for the designers to look at, huh? 

So there I was, a CT for 4 designers, pretty much getting 4 kits a week to scrap with.  Most designers have a forum they call home and you generally begin to spend alot of time there yourself.  Well, there's always stuff going on in the scrap world so ontop of scrapping for my designers I got involved in forum stuff like blog trains and bb exchanges...I was a busy scrappin bee!  Then, one of my designers decided to kinda "merge" with another designer and her CT was now really CTing for 2 designers, which brought my total to 5!!!  At one of the forums I'm active at I saw a guest CT call (that's when a designer needs someone to do CT work for just one kit or for the month), and since I absolutely loved the designers work, I applied, got it and scrapped her kit.  She then offered me a full time spot on her CT (which I happily accepted) bringing my total number of designers I currently CT for to 6!!!!

Do I really even need to explain why I've been such a bad blogger?  I've got 4 designers that release a kit just about every week and 2 designers that release like 2 a month (that GOD!!!) plus the forum stuff I'm involved in, add to that the mommy and wife duties and sadly the blog (well, personal blog anyway) falls to the back burner.

It was all a bit overwhelming a first but I think I've just about figured out the perfect schedule to be able to get it all done while still being able to maintain this blog- which I love so much.  I really missed blogging here, interacting with my followers, participting in weekly memes and carnivals and basically just having some place to get it all out!!! 

Well, I'm back- and Life, as it is, will be just that- life!  I'll be back here sharing my recipes and kitchen adventures, some great craft stuff, my mommy things and anything else that strikes my fancy!!!


For more weekly writing assignments, visit our lovely hostess Kat @ Mama's Losin It and if you're interested in my digital scrap obsession, visit my scrap blog For the Love of Scrap...there's always freebies on there and I love new visitors!