A New Year, a dose of reality, a recycled idea and a foot in the door...

Now that title is a mouthful isn't it? ;) Hello to anyone out there in cyber space that still may be listening! I know that it's been quite a while since anyone has heard from me so I thought that I would pop in to say hello.

June 8th was the last time that I posted on my blog and it seems like a life time ago that I left you all without any explanation. Few of you know that I, like many of you deal with depression and sometimes it rears it's ugliness right when I'm about as busy as I can possibly be. Part of may absence deals with that and the other part deals with being so busy that I actually burnt myself out and shut my self out of the stamping world. And I mean no Splitcoast, no visiting blogs, not stepping foot into my craft room for months, thoughts of selling all of my stamping goodies, and not much interacting at all with the community that I loved so much, including not answering some very sweet emails from you all that were wondering where I had gotten too. For that I'm very sorry! Part of my depression hangs on not wanting to deal with reality and for me I was waiting for my "blahs" and "blues" to just blow over in a timely manner which of course they didn't :( All and all, I think the mental break from stamping came at a good time because my life ended up getting a whole lot busier!

Let me catch you up to date. Since my retreat into my own little world some good things came of it and some not so good. Some of you know that last February my father in law had a heart attack and stroke and that left my husband 2 hours away trying to help with his father a lot of the time on his days off. At that point I had started working again and started to pair down on my design team responsibilities to accommodate my lack of crafting time.

In July we adopted a 12 week old Labrador Retriever cross from a rescue center in Alabama :) We named her Bella and she as been a wonderful addition to our family! Just like a toddler, she required constant supervision ;)

This past summer was the first time in a few years that I was able to do a lot of fun things with my family and not have to say "Sorry, but mommy has to make a card for her deadline" leaving my husband to enjoy doing the fun stuff with the kids. Please don't take that as a complaint in anyway but I was a very slow worker when it came to colouring and making a card so I literally spend 4-5 hours making one card and that time added up when you had to make a handful a week, photograph, edit and blog about the card after creating it.

When September rolled around, life got insane! The kids were back in school and the sports frenzy started! I'm now proud to be a soccer mom and a swimming cheerleader for my daughter :) Who knew working around my husbands messed up schedule, and juggling sports and child care would be so crazy? I'm kind of a one-step-at-a-time kind of a girl and I don't even think that I had time to breath until Christmas break! LOL

With breaking from stamping/blogging I have spent many quality hours being there for my kids, getting my head on straight and as of the end of November losing a total of 25lbs from walking my dog for the most part...daily. I'm very proud of myself and and starting to feel like the me that I used to be :) So you all must be wondering where I'm going with all of this, right? Well on to my recycled idea...

Just before I dropped off the face of the earth I had an idea to start up a challenge blog. The idea came about because I really enjoy participating in them and mostly coming up with the challenge ideas. I thought that if I started a weekly challenge then I could administrate it, and have a design team all while taking a step back from the creating cards. This way I could still be in touch with all of you and keep some creativity in me going. Well it didn't pan out when I had originally planned, however it has recycled itself and is going to happen now instead :)

 Here is a sneak peek at my foot back in the door to the stamping word! I'm in the process of scouting my design team and look for the debut on February 3rd, 2012! Stay tuned for more details ;)

I'm not sure where my card making will take me or if I will even get back into the groove with it but at least this will allow me to dabble in what I love while I motivate my creativity and hopefully yours :)

Thank you to all who have been waiting around and to those sweet souls to checked in on my through my missing months! I love all of you guys so much and I'm ready to make a fresh start for the year, how about you? :)

Stay tuned.... :)