Bits&Pieces

Happy Thanksgiving, blog readers... from me, Neil, Peter, Dave and Edward

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Holiday posting will be light so I present Elf Yourself, with Edward Cullen as a new member of my family

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Elf Yourself is back, y'all

If you've never tried Elfing Yourself, then this is your year, people.

Mom and Dad, this is for you. You crazy dancing fools. I just never knew y'all had these moves. Dad, you shimmy with the best of them.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Monday Funday Giveaway from Two Chicks Design

And the winners of the $25 gift certificates are:

Steph:
Oh boy Scrappin' clothes....love it!

Valerie:
Watch out Bella, here comes Cathy : )

Thanks for entering me in the drawing.

and

Stacy:
I'm diggin' the yoga pants myself.

Have a Happy Turkey Day!

Ladies, email me at czdesign@comcast.net with your info and i'll hook you up with your gift certificates!

My friends over at Two Chicks Designs want to make your Monday a bit more of a Funday by giving away three $25 gift certificates to shop at their scrap-focused clothes and acoutrement site.

Maybe you'll do what I did and get a pair of HOLY SCRAP! yoga pants, which will tell EVERYONE behind me in my future Yoga Classes: YES, the words ARE THIS BIG.

Or maybe you'll decide to come clean to the world this Christmas with this lovely Ornament of Truth.

Whatever you decide, DO decide to leave your name in the comments. I'll draw three winners sometime after 8 p.m. this evening.

PS. My spoiler alert for Twilight will be coming later this week, but for now, I can leave you with this nice little teaser:

[comments are now closed] Back later with winners!

Which one do you want? No really. I'm buying. [i.e. it's a giveaway, y'all]

And the winner is:

a post from Raven, who wrote:

Totally adorable stamp. Love it!

Raven, please take a look around the Cat's Life Press website, and email me your three stamp requests at czdesign@comcast.net.

Thanks everyone, and have a great weekend!

Because I got this one. And hello? Can you say, "Oh, for cute!"?

You guys know I"m not a big stamper, but I absolutely adore the stamps from Cat's Life Press and they just released some new holiday stamps. I picked up a few, and I'd like to buy a few for you. Whaddya say? You leave your name in the comments, I draw your name, then you tell me which three stamps you'd like, and I take care of the rest?

I'm just feeling that this holiday season is going to be a very different one. I was so inspired by reading your stories of your best presents. It sort of reminded me of something we all know: it's really all about the people we love, with an occasional iPod or car tossed in every now and then. ; )

So, leave a comment today if you'd like me to hook you up with some new stamps!

In the mean time, I'd like to give a shout out to my Design Your Life  students. We are in Week 8. The time does fly, and it has been SUCH an amazing and fun ride. Here's a shot from that video message, when I took a picture of you guys:

And with that, I bid you adieu for today. I'll leave comments open until tonight at 8 p.m. CST. Good luck!

[comments are now closed : ) ]

More photo montages with music designed to gently tug at the heartstrings of all self-respecting scrapbookers

I can't remember what event I made this for—a CKU? a CKC? My trip to teach in New Zealand and Australia?—but I've been doing some computer content organizing, and came across this, and thought: I will place it on my blog, because that is what I do. It's at least two years old, and some photos are even older, goin' all the way back to '03, boyeee. Enough of my yakkin'. (And of course, no video would be complete without the vocal stylings of Mr. Neil Finn. Thank you, Mr. Finn.)

P.S. I think this was for my trip to New Zealand and Australia. And for the record, i have no idea why the last shot of me in the slide show would appear to be one taken in my underwear. Go figure. The light was just really good that day.

It's the kind of stuff only people with Hermafix truly will appreciate

For my job, I get to work on lots of cool projects. And one I worked on last spring was a new, cute little book by my even cuter friend, Lain Ehmann. If you don't know Lain, you should get to know her, in the virtual sense, because she's got a great blog and is generally a very positive force for good in scrapbooking. Ah, who doesn't love that?

Well this cute little project that I worked on is called: Snippets: Mostly True Tales from the Lighter Side of Scrapbooking, and if you want to read more of the above essay sample, there's a sneak peek and listenable audio file here.

There's also going to be a virtual Release Party on the Simple Scrapbooks website this thursday.

Seriously, go. Because it's not often you get invited to a party but don't have to worry one iota what your hair looks like.

Burning through countless hours of what would otherwise be productive and valuable time in my life. Thanks, digital cable and YouTube.

The Zielskes recently upgraded to digital cable, in order to get the Comcast Triple Play package for cheaper phone service.  After careful consideration ("hasty" isn't exactly part of Dan's Box o' Research Tools) we figured out that we were paying way too much for our phone service through MCI, so we decided to make a switch to both save money and consolidate yet another bill. (Stay with me, this is going to get GOOD, people.)

Enter all these new channels I never had before. No, nothing crazy like HBO or Showtime. But things like VH1 Classic, and all those Encore movie channels. And so many other channels, that honestly? It borders on overwhelming. I mean, what are you in the mood for? 16 Candles? Jacob's Ladder? or The Abyss on TWO different channels? Yeah, I KNOW.

Saturday night, I was flipping through all of my new special channels and could not believe what was about to air on VH1 Classic: Staying Alive, that brilliant, Sylvester-Stallone-directed-sequel to the original,  where we were led to believe that Tony Manero had gone from being a potty-mouthed, misogynistic disco king, to a struggling albeit charming dancer on Broadway.

Where's the stretch there, I ask? Really? I mean, if the Fonz can eventually teach high school... right?

So for two hours, I echoed dialogue back to the actors, sang along with every single song, and even found my shoulders twitching, willing my muscles to recall the countless hours I spent in my garage in Everett, Washingon, trying to learn those edgy dance moves. What? You don't remember those moves? Here, let me and YouTube fix that:

I watched this movie probably 25 times or more after it came out on video. I played the soundtrack so many times the tape broke. It's not even that I was a big fan of the music of Frank Stallone, but there was something about that movie that sunk in deep under my skin and filled me with hope and joy and inspiration. And let me tell you, people, it all came back on Saturday night to the point that I had to remind myself if I went ahead and bought the soundtrack, it'd be one of those things that might be really good at first, but also one that I'd very likely regret in the morning. And who doesn't know what THAT feels like.

That said, one of my most favorite scenes in the movie was when Tony has been dissed by the lovely but snobby Finola Hughes (you remember her line, spit out in that haughty British accent, "Everybody uses everybody, don't they?"), and he goes to see his long-suffering girlfriend, played by a woman who should have been a way bigger star, Cynthia Rhodes. Yep, Pa, they even had that one on the YouTube:

I wish I could accurately recall the number of times I sang this song when I was 16, deluding myself with all of my heart that I sounded pretty much exactly like her. Sigh. I even did the hand reaching out thing, just like her.

Cynthia didn't do so badly in the end. She got Tony back (reaffirming for me that nice girls eventually won out in the end and that I too, would one day find true love), and later went on to marry Richard Marx (and star in his video) and have babies and live happily ever after.

And here's the point of my post today: I can't get anything done thanks to my ever-expanding technologies. Case in point:

The winner is…

Robin, who wrote:

the best present I ever recieved...I was 15 almost 16 and my sister and I had just finished opening all of our SanTa gifts..we were both so excited with all the gifts (everything we had asked for) then dad brought out one more for the 2 of us to open together..it was 2 green baseball  hats with "pilot and "co-pilot" on the brims.. we laughed and put them on and then dad said look in your stockings...we both pulled out a set of keys.."Go Outside" he said...and there sat the cutest small green CIVIC HONDA with a big red bow on it in the driveway..with LOVE SANTA on the windshield...I had the coolest dad ever..he passed away in April and I'll always remember the excitement and joy of that special Christmas.

Robin, email me at czdesign@comcast.net and I can get you hooked up!

Thank you SO much for sharing the stories. Talk about the spirit of all things good.

Want to win one of Becky Higgins' Super Adorable Holiday Card Kits? Then you're in the right place!

So are you making cards this year? What? No time you say? Too much to do?

Wouldn't it be nice if you were able to just have someone cute like Becky Higgins design and make' em for you?

Okay, maybe she's not coming to your house to help you write them all out, but I have the next best thing: her Holiday Card Kit to give away to one lucky (and busy) blog reader.

You get a lot of stuff. And, in plenty of time for Christmas.

If you would like to be entered into this giveaway, I ask only one thing of you:

When you leave your comment, tell me what the best present you ever received was, in your whole life, and why. Because I'm nosy, and I want to know.

I will leave comments open until Saturday afternoon at 5 p.m. CST.

Good luck!

[comments are now closed, a bit later than i'd planned! Check back to see who is the winner!]