Hillary Heidelberg's Blog

Take 10 minutes, and watch this video..really

This man is amazing. He is a comp science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and he is going to die. He has pancreatic cancer, and he gave this speech last week to students at the school. It's become known as "The Last Lecture", but it was actually entitled Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.

The speech is 2 hours long, so if you like what you see and want to watch the whole thing you can visit this site and click on the link. If you'd like to see the rest of this lecture piece by piece (as opposed to downloading the entire 2 hour lecture from the site above) visit YouTube and just click on the Last Lecture of Randy Pausch #2, then #3 and so on.

For now, this will hold you. It will be worth your trouble.

Prepare to be inspired. Really.

What a great day....

You know when you have one of those great days? They don't come along that often, but everything seems to 'click' (sorta like Murphy's law in reverse)? Today was one of those days....met some other Manhattan and NYC homeschoolers at a weekly soccer get-together near our house, and Luca found a wonderful playmate named A***, the sweetest little girl who totally "got" his sense of humor and style of play (LOVE when that happens). Then we picked up Julian at nursery and got a scoop of icecream for each of them, and headed up to a playdate where the kids we were meeting were just getting out of their car (usually we're way late for things, or way early, so this was a nice change)..and Luca had more fun hanging with some of his long time friends while I got to catch up with two of my mom friends. Then we headed home and the boys are so wiped that they're already in bed (and it's 7 pm here...which means time to scrap and time to watch t.v.....life is good...)

I also completed a couple of layouts for Die Cuts with A View; two I can't share as they're for publication, but I made this one of Julian's summer birthday party in Long Island:

All DCWV except the orange alpha stickers, which are Doodlebug, and the buttons.

In other GREAT news, the fabulous Debbie Hodge, a contributing editor at Memory Makers Magazine,  has agreed to teach a class for NYCscraps.com....it will start October 15th, and it will be fantastic!!! I will be posting more information on the class over at the main site shortly, but for now only newsletter subscribers can register, and it's filling up! Debbie even prepared a sample class pdf, which I will make available for download when I post the info about the class. The class will be all about scrapping EVENTS...you know, birthdays, holidays, parades, parties and will feature primarily 2 page sketches....It will be a blast. Seriously.

Tomorrow we head out to Long Island for a long weekend, and then NEXT weekend is my little baby brother's wedding in Georgia!! The boys will be in the wedding, so let's just pray they're well rested :) Have a great few days everyone!

Bad blogger.

I really like to try and blog every other day, or at least every third day, but lately I have been swamped with my real life. Luca and I have been homeschooling together, and I truly have been enjoying it. What's so cool is that in these last 2 weeks, we've spent more time together just the two of us than we have in ages, and we're becoming even closer. He's zooming ahead in Math 1, and beginning to read. His focus is wonderful, and I'm really proud of him.

I have happily replaced my wallet and my purses from the stolen purse debacle (okay, so I bought 3 purses instead of one..but hey, I'm entitled, right?) and am heading back to the police tomorrow. I think I mentioned before that the thief paid his Verizon phone bill with my card, and the charge came through today on my Amex, along with all the accompanying (read: identifying) information. So I need to go back and give the police all the new info. I am not sure catching a purse snatcher is high on their list of priorities, but hey, it's all about quality of life, right?

We're onto Class Five over at the One-in-48 Sketch Challenge Class and I think the students are enjoying themselves--the gallery is BUSTING at the seams! I hope to join in the fun this weekend; I am finishing up some assignments for Memory Makers book and magazine division, and if all goes as planned, my weekend will be for some "me" scrapping.

What else? Oh, yes! Did you see the new message board and gallery over at 2peas? Hmmmm...not too happy about it. I know change is good, but I think I was just so used to the old MB I could navigate it in my sleep. Not thrilled about the narrow board format either. I have a wide screen monitor for a reason, know what I mean? Well, it's not like I've been posting there that much lately. Still prefer my friendly neighborhood WT board.  I think I will keep loading layouts at 2peas, simply because that's where all my stuff is, but I don't know how much I'll be posting there.

For those of you who are doing my organizational challenge...well....let's just say...I haven't been too organized about posting.....don't know if I can actually keep up that blog :( I will try, but I am not making any promises. I think I overcommitted to myself on this one. In fact, I just noticed that I hadn't updated my August blog header! Off to change that.

RAK Winner!!!

Okay, so I'm a little late, got caught up in the family thing this weekend....here's our lucky RAK winner (I am including her complete post in case she doesn't recognize herself :)
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Thanks for the opportunity and your generousity Hillary!

Posted by: Patricia | September 09, 2007 at 10:26 AM

   
Congratulations Patricia--you won a whole helluva lot of paper, m'dear
......please shoot me an email and I will get your package off to you this week, okay??

Wow.

Just wow. What a C.R.A.Z.Y. few days it has been. Homeschooling Luca is in full swing. Luca began pre-school at Little Mish (where Luca went for 3 years) on Monday. My September One-in-48 Class began on Monday over at nycscraps.com. And of course, on Monday my purse got stolen. RIght from under my nose. Un-freakin-believable. I was so shocked. I've never had anything stolen from me in NY, so I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. Just about everything was in my purse, except (thankfully) my cell and my house keys. All my credit cards, driver's license, the works. Spent a frantic bit of time calling my card companies, only to find out they'd charged $300 on my Amex in about 30 minutes. And get this--they even paid a Verizon phone bill with it. When I mentioned that to the detective the next day, he said that was the second stupid criminal trick they'd seen that week LOL. Supposedly, they'll be able to catch him. I can just imagine the conversation...

Ring...ring...
Stupid Criminal: 'Uh, hello?"
Detective: "Hello. This is Detective Smith. Did you happen to rob a woman with a green stroller a few days ago? She had two small boys with her."
Stupid Criminal: "Why yes, I surely did. Would you like my address so you can come and arrest me?"
Detective: "Oh, thanks, but we already obtained that information from Verizon."
Stupid Criminal: "Okay. So should I just sit tight til you come over and arrest me?"
Detective: "Yea, that would work. See you in 10 minutes."
Stupid Criminal: "Okey doke. See you then."

Anyway, luckily, the DMV wasn't nearly as big a hassle as the last time I went there. I was in and out in about 40 minutes. Not bad, for NYC. And on a positive note, my One-in-48 Class is a BLAST. Man, I love that energy. And Sharon, from linnecards.com (great online scrap store, btw) is a HOOT. Seriously, that woman, what a joker.

We're heading to Long Island tomorrow, so yet again, I have gone another week without paper scrapping. Next week is the WEEK to make it happen. And a good thing, since I owe Sherry Stevenson 2 layouts for her upcoming book, and also need to hit my DT requirements for WRMK and DCWV.....Until tomorrow, when I will pick the RAK winner before I head away for the weekend!

Ps. oh, and if you're a web-savvy criminal...and you happened to google my name and found this blog....HI! Have fun in jail, sucka...

RAK Time again....

In concert with my organization challenge, I cleaned out about 3-4 inches of QUALITY patterned paper from my stash...CI, SEI, Cosmo Cricket, Bo Bunny, Crate, Heidi Grace....lots of great stuff, but in my efforts to simplify my stash (and life!) even further, away it must go. My guess is it will just fit in an $8 dollar priority box, so if you're interested, post here! I will pick someone next week :)

How psyched am I??????

I am so happy to have been selected as the Featured Artist of the Month at Designer Digitals First of all, it's my favorite store. Second of all--i get a $20 gift certificate!!! Cooooollll......I feel like not having any paper supplies really forced me (in a good way--can you be forced in a good way??) to really learn more about digital scrapbooking, and it's a wonderful world....I truly am enjoying creating digital stuff. But! That said, I am also VEDDY VEDDY happy to be back home in NYC amongst all my wonderful paper supplies. Okay, so most of it is still packed up in boxes, as Michael had to box a bunch of stuff up so that the apartment could be painted (note to self: do not allow husband to touch sacred scrap supplies as said husband seems to not realize the gravity of placing heavy craft tote on PRECIOUS PATTERNED PAPER, nor does he fully understand the implications of placing lovely Tote-ally Cool AMM tote on side in cupboard.....yes, all the stuff fell out and some stuff spilled...but I still. love. him. I am a patient, ever forbearing wife.)

On another note, we started homeschooling on Monday!! Okay, let me tell you this. Part of me was worried. I mean, home alone with the kids is hard enough. But teaching one of them to read, add, subtract, learn his states etc etc....I kinda worried what I was getting myself into. But it's been FUN!! I mean, really really fun! It's a blast to answer his questions, to see which direction his mind takes him in after we read, say The Frog Prince ("but WHY didn't the princess want to sleep with the frog? That would be SO COOL!") or when we're practicing math concepts. We're playing a lot of games, and did our "science experiment" in the park where we raced 4 different cars down the slide and tried to predict which ones would fly out the furthest from the edge. We predicted the heaviest one, but it ended up being his new yellow race car. So we got onto a tangent about friction..any way...so far so good. It's only been one week, but you can be sure all let you know if and when things start to suck on the homeschooling front.

Oh, I can't believe I almost forgot to mention this!!! I received my GALLEYS FOR MY BOOK, Scrap Simple!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The book looks really cool; a few minor edits need to be made, but other than that, I am really happy with it. I will be getting a color version sometime next week so I can see how the images look too. I am so pleased with the work of my contributor (Tracey Odachowski, Severine Di Giacomo, Celeste Smith, Nichole Pereira and Amanda Probst). Their layouts really add so much to the book and I am still over the moon that they all agreed to contribute. I hope you've all pre-ordered the book on Amazon hint hint.......

Until tomorrow, my internet friends.

Back in the city...

We arrived back in NYC on Friday evening to a HUGE number of IKEA boxes...Michael went shopping the prior week for some much needed shelving and things, and came home with....

1. a bunk bed for the boys
2. a new desk for Luca to work on
3. a new desk for me and my computer stuff (YAY!)
4. four new sets of shelves for the living room and the bedroom
5. two new laundry baskets....

and the list goes on...so, while I am TOTALLY PSYCHED to have all this stuff, there's always that dreaded "putting together the IKEA stuff" that you have to deal with. The instructions always seems so straightforward: "Insert dowel into hole and press..." Of course, you put the dowel in backwards, then try to remove it and end up breaking it, then you put the shelf in upside down and can't remove it and decide, "hey, exposed pressboard doesn't look THAT bad..." Needless to say, it's been an exhausting weekend. Nonetheless, we've made a commitment to begin our homeschooling adventure this morning, and our OLS at k12.com is up and available for us to use. Michael is just downstairs in the building's playroom with the boys working of some excess energy before we begin....

On another note, today is the first day of my blog's Towards an Organized Life challenge...I will be posting the first week's challenge later today, so be sure to come back and check it out (you can just click the link on the right to see what we're up to.) And I've already gotten a couple of BEFORE pictures from some Willows so it should be veddy veddy interesting....

Here's a layout I created last week...all digital...everything from designerdigitals.com (I will post the supply list later today)