It's been a fun summer around the Bryson house.  We've been so busy with vacations and other fun activities.  I've been sewing school clothes for Samantha for the past week or so.  We're both loving it!  If you want to read about my SWAP plan, hop on over to my "other" blog: The Provident Mom.  School starts next Tuesday though so it will all be coming to an end.  I still can't quite get over how early school starts in Arizona.  I guess no one really wants to be out of school when it's so blasted hot.  Might as well get out in May when it's still relatively nice. 

I can't complain though.  Aside from July and August, the weather here is just beautiful.  The thing that saves those two months, in my opinion, is Monsoon Season is in full swing.  If you've never experienced a monsoon, you're missing out on quite the thrilling sight.  So much rain at one time that you can't even see across the street.  Seeing your yard turn into a river within a minute.  It actually beautiful to watch the coulds coming across the valley and you know the rain is coming.  Spectacular lightning shows, too.  If it's a good monsoon season, that happens just about every afternoon!

So, I was hoping to have a big Christmas in July thing this weekend.  Alas, with school starting I just have been too busy to get something going.  I am having a sale though!  You can get 35% off all my individual files and collections from today through Saturday (sale ends Midnight US Central Time).  Time to stock up!  I you just want to see what designs you've missed in the past couple of months, click here.  Just want to look at the Christmas things?  Click here!  Otherwise, click on the image below to go shop my whole catalog!

Okie Dokie... what else have I got for you... how about the lastest additions to the Sam & Hailey Designs Membership Club?  We're up to 8 designs for the quarter now and there's a vote going on in the membership for the 9th!  Not a member?  Just click here to join!  Here are the three designs I've posted to the membership since I've been back from vacation.

That's it for today folks!  Thanks for playing!!!

Jan

My name is Gina Kalashnikoff. I live in a rural area of the greater Vancouver area, in British Columbia, Canada. I was born and raised Canadian. It is a beautiful place to live.

I have four grown children, 3 boys and 1 girl. I am also a proud Grandma to a very active 6 year old boy and am very looking forward to another new grandbaby in September.

I own a clothing manufacturing company called Canadian Ultimate Wear. I have sewn my whole life, from about the age of 3 or 4, when I used to sit at my Mom's feet and hand sew. I became more serious about sewing when I was in my teens and found that I was not happy with retail clothing, and wanted clothes that fit my body and that were unique. At this time, I also began sewing special items for friends and family.

I was married young and had all my kids by age 24. Raising 4 kids is a full time job on it's own, and sewing took a back burner for a while. My children attended a private Christian school, and one day I was asked if I could make a golf shirt for part of the uniform. I agreed, and slowly the school kept adding more pieces, until I was doing everything from kilts to socks. Word got out about my uniform company and soon I was making uniforms for several schools. In addition, I also made basketball and volleyball uniforms for several high schools in the Vancouver area as well as a University in BC. I was incredibly busy and had no time for any kind of life. After doing this for over 10 years, we decided that we needed to make a decision to expand or down-size. To expand meant adding on employees and I would be mainly working in Admin. I loved the sewing and did not want to give that up, so we opted to downsize. My husband was also thinking of retirement, so I did not want to be working overtime when he was wanting to travel and enjoy life. I now work part-time, and it is awesome. I have time to spend with the kids and grandbabies and also more time to craft.

My girlfriend is a scrapbooker, and she kept trying to get me to start. I knew that I had no time or money for a new craft. I already cross-stitch, crochet, paint, and sew. And I had put a lot of money into those crafts. But after the down-size, I thought I would give it a try. WELL, what an addiction!!!!!!!! I started and just kept right on going. I love learning new things and love testing new products. And I so love seeing the awesome scrapbooks that I have made. I bought my first cutter last year (2009), when my oldest son moved out. It was a really rough time for me and I needed something to take my mind off losing my son. (turns out I see him more now than when he lived at home!!!). I have learned so much about computers and papercrafting since. I love my cutter, and am excited about sharing everything with my friends at PT.

I was recenlty impressed with a two page layout that Gina created using my Pen Doodles - Flowers design.  She embossed the design with a stylus and then sanded it.  So pretty!

Gina used the same file to create these lovely doodles on a card. I really like the way that Gina thinks of different ways to use a design.  That's what really caught my eye about her!  I have to say that I'm thrilled to have her as part of my Creative Team!

Thanks for playing!

Jan

Sam & Hailey Designs

 

Thanks for playing!

Jan

It's Summertime in full swing here in blazing hot Arizona.  I'm not complaining.  I have my nice air conditioned home.  I'm really glad that we have a western facing home.  There's only one window on the front of the house (true western US architectural style).  So, by the time the sun clears the back porch by mid morning the back yard get's a lot cooler.  In the evening it's so nice back there! 

We've eaten dinner out on the back patio for over a solid month now.  Every single night!  It's such a treat!  I bought some cheap summer dishware and a big bucket to keep it in.  Every night the girls grab the bucket and head out to set the table for me.  Oftentimes we grill so all the heat stays outside.  Bandit especially likes it when Victor grills because he knows there's hope that a small tidbit of something might make it his way.  He just sits behind him waiting for a handout.

We also set up our medium sized inflatable pool a few weeks ago.  The girls have been loving it!  It was all going so well until Sam decided she didn't need sunscreen on Memorial Day and got fried to a crisp.  Poor thing.  I felt really bad for her.  But she finally seems to be on the mend.  I might let her back in a swimsuit in a few days.

This week I started up some sewing again.  I discovered a lovely pattern company out of Finland called Ottobre Design.  You can subscribe to their magazine which comes with about 30 patterns every other month. I was a little intimidated by their patterns at first.  They are printed on several heavy sheets in different colors. Because they are printed on top of each other it takes a little getting used to reading and finding what you need, but there is a key printed on the side that helps. I just used tissue paper to trace off what I needed. Samantha is hard to fit because she is so slender. It was nice to be able to combine two sizes based on her measurements as I was tracing the patterns and was very happy with how it came out. The instructions are all translated so once you get past the tracing part it's smooth sailing! 

Here are the cute dresses I made this week!  These are called "Three-Way Dresses" because of the drawstring at the neck.  You can wear them without sleeves or with two different sleeve options.  The girls just love them.  They wore the pink ones when we went to the store yesterday.  Every aisle we went down, someone commented how cute they were.  A lady asked me in Spanish if the girls were twins.  I was so taken off guard that I answered yes until I realized what she was asking.  Oops!

We had an impromptu photo shoot in the family room which involved varying levels of cooperation, silly faces, posing, and the dog.  I hope you enjoy the pictures, Mom!  I know... it's about time!

I have a ton more things to write, but I figured I'd get this one posted and then I'll have more to talk about next week!

Thanks for playing!

Jan

I don't know what my deal is lately.  Here it is the day before Mother's Day and I haven't done a thing for it!  I was able to create a couple of cute Mother's Day themed designs for my current membership, but that's about it.  I thought you'd like to see them if you aren't a member:

I even forgot that I had a sale scheduled this weekend! I'm offering 30% off all my individual designs and collections!  The sale ends tomorrow night.  There are some cute Mother's Day designs if you need a last minute card! Might as well check out the Father's Day things while you are there and get ready for next month!

Today we went shopping for my Mother's Day present.  An apple tree!  I know, you are probably thinking, "But Jan, you live in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona!  Apples don't grow there!"  To which I say, "Au Contraire!  There are a few varieties that do!  The "Anna" Apple being one of them.  I researched the very limited information online about growing apples in the desert and found that variety to be the best.  We went to our little local nursery and wouldn't you know it... they had it!  I'm so excited about it!  We had a beautiful Desert Willow tree that was my favorite but somehow it died this past winter.  So, we're replacing it with an Anna Apple Tree.  I'm looking forward to harvesting apples for years to come off our very own delicious tree!  The girls are thrilled to death with planting a tree.  And poor Victor has ripped the dead tree out and dug a giant hole.   I'm off to see the tree get planted in just a few minutes!  Happy Mother's Day to me!! :-)

Thanks for playing, and Happy Mom's Day to all you Moms out there!

Jan

Here's a little something for you.  Over at Paperthreads I'm hosting a Make-N-Take/Challenge!   Come on over and join in and you'll get my new Tri-Shutter Card cutting file!  I've been seeing these all over the place, but I've never seen a cutting file for one.  This is a super easy way to make a very cool card in just a few minutes.  If you want, sign up for the Make-N-Take and then complete the challenge!  If you finish the challenge on time, then you'll receive my Tri-Shutter Album that I'm completing right now!  

Don't you just want this file?  Just pop on over and sign up!

While you are over at Paperthreads, check out my National Scrapbooking Day Sale!  50% off all my individual designs and collections through Midnight tomorrow night (5/1)!

Thanks for playing!

Jan

I guess I need to return to what I started this blog off with in the first place.  My girls.  What have they been up to lately???  Let me fill you in a bit!

I took these pictures of the girls at Christmas time.  Can't believe I haven't shared them until now!  As you can see, Hailey still isn't a fan of holding still long enough to smile for a photo.  It's a good thing she's so adorable, that way even the funny faces and looking away from the camera are still cute enough to share.  Sam was doing her best to follow orders and smile at the camera.  Every once in a while Hailey led her astray.

Samantha lately has been her mama's girl.  She wants to be grown up so badly and get to do grown up stuff.  I gave her all my paper scraps that I started saving a long time ago and then gave up saving because I had too much.  I'm glad to finally have someone use them.  She makes crazy things up with them like cards and signs and who knows what.  She even made a cool diarama out of them for her school science project.  At Valentine's Day she wanted to make all her Valentine's cards.  I drew this cute digital stamp based on her and she colored and put the valentines together.  She had such a good time and I tried my best to keep my hands off her project!  Doesn't the stamp look like her?

Undisputedly thought, Sam's most favorite thing at the moment is Bandit.  She just can't get enough of the little guy!

As for the elusive Hailey, when she's not out creating chaos at preschool she's at home with me and Bandit... creating chaos.  I really enjoy spending time with her when she will let me!   Probably the most amazing thing that happened to Hailey in the past few months was going to visit her neice Zoey.  Now you might think that the greatest part was seeing Zoey.  And although she thought Zoey was quite nice, she much preferred her first real expeirence with snow.  It was a snowy week in Connecticut while we were there, much to her delight!  Every time we got out of the car, she grabbed some snow and threw it at her dad.  He was such a good sport about it!  She didn't even seem to mind getting hit with a few snowballs in return.  Sam and I, of course, high-tailed it out of there as quickly as we could.

Well, that's about it for excitement around here.  It felt good to finally blog about something other than business.  I seem to be caught in a loop of merely getting done those most important things that need to get done.  Time for me to stop and smell the roses once in a while!

Thanks for playing!

Jan

I'm having a Three Day Earth Day Sale!  Since it's the 40th Earth Day today, why not celebrate with 40% off some new cutting designs from Sam & Hailey Designs!  Click that name right there to go shopping!

I've got a little something for you.  Many of you probably have kids in school and preschool who will be doing Earth Day activities and projects today.  Why not commemorate them with a scrapbook page?  Or, if you have a friend who is very environmentally conscious, why not an Earth Day card?  I hope you enjoy this little design!

Thanks for playing!

Jan

Last week Heidi posted a comment here on my blog asking about what kind of files are included in the Sam & Hailey Designs Membership Club.  I do my best to include a lot of variety in the membership each quarter.  There is always at least 20 designs and they are in the five common cutting file formats: AI, GSD, KNK, SVG, and WPC.  If you'd like to see the kinds of things I include in the membership, check out this link to the store.  Most of these designs were included in last quarter's membership.

Here's a peek at the latest upload to the 2nd Quarter Membership!  We had a little poll about digital stamps last weekend.  Most people were interested in 1 or 2 stamps being included in the membership.  There were also a few who weren't interested at all.  We came to the agreement that one digi stamp with an accompanying cutting file could be included in this quarter's membership.  I thought you'd like to see it!  It's a cute baby design in the Sweet Sisters line called "Hailey - Baby Carriage."  I really, really love how it turned out.  It includes a cutting file for the carriage portion of the stamp so you can pop it up on a card.

The only place you are going to get this stamp right now is in the membership!  If you aren't a member you can sign up here!

And now for something completely different!

My friend Heather and I get together and craft every week.  It's so fun to just sit and make stuff with a friend.  We decided to open an Etsy shop and see if anyone wanted any of the fun stuff we've been making.  We've started with the cutest hair doo-dads!   Aren't they adorable?  We've called our shop Wendy's Wig Wash which means absolutely nothing, I promise all you Wendys and wig wearers out there.  It's just a silly name we came up with one late night when we had the giggles.  You can see I made a print and cut on my KNK Maxx for the cards they are mounted on.  Check 'em out!

Thanks for playing!

Jan

A few Easter themed files to get you going on scrapping those Easter pics from last weekend:

And a new Springtime file, just added today!

What's in the future?  Well, it's Spring and that means Motherhood and Babies (of all kinds), to me.  So get ready for some fun files along those themes.  You might also see a few digital stamps along the way!

Want to see the latest addition to our family?  Meet little Bandit!  He's a Chihuahua with a littl Rat Terrier mixed in.  And he's 100% adorable!

Here's Samantha and Bandit on the night we got him.  She is soooo excited. Sorry for the camera phone picture.  I don't know why we keep thinking that it will take a decent picture!

Here's Bandit in his little sweater I crocheted for him.  Doesn't he look cute cute cute???

That's all folks!  Thanks for playing!

Jan