Hillary Heidelberg's Blog

oooooh, aaaaaaah.....

Ugh, it's 95 degrees here in the city...why oh why couldn't we stay out in Long Island til September.....anyway...on the bright side, DCWV is coming out with some AMAZING new stuff..Swiped these images from Sam Cousins'  blog (thanks, Sam!) Tell me the Rockstar line isn't fantastic....

Been getting ready to teach at GASC Grand Rapids, and I really hope to meet a lot of my online friends...let me know if you're planning on attending!!!

What a weekend...

...Saturday was Julian's 2nd birthday, so we spent the day at Victorian Gardens in Central Park. Basically, it's an amusement park right smack in the middle of NYC. They have carousels and mini-rollercoasters and all sorts of fun rides for the kids. Julian and Luca had a fantastic time.. We're going to "officially" have a party next weekend when we go out to East Hampton to visit my mom. My sister and brother will be there, and my future sister-in-law Mimi too (who is basically a sister already, since she and my brother have been dating for about 40 years).

(Reminder (ahem, Mom...) to double-click on the images to get a bigger, clearer picture) You might think Julian looks a little stunned...scared?..in these photos but the reality is that every time we got off he screamed to go back on, as is evidenced by the last photo, when after 5 rides on the slide we told Julian it was time to stop. Poor sad boy.... And in a couple of these shots I have to admit, Michael looks a bit crazy but really that's just his special way of expressing himself :)

Also spent a bit of timeworking on some layouts for the fabulous Scrapbook Sussies kit club. Lara runs a wonderful team of women over there, and she has a wonderful eye for mixing patterned papers. She asked me to be their first guest designer and I hope I do justice to the July kit! Hope to post my layouts here tomorrow :)

Michael is travelling in London again for a couple of days, so it's just me and the boys for now. Need to sneak in some time to give feedback to my students in Dig Deep: Journaling from the Heart over at nycscraps.com  I have been hard at work revamping the site over there to make it more user friendly--there's a lot more I need to do, but if you have a minute, zip over there and tell me what you think.  Have a great Monday, everyone!!!

Working the WRMK...

I have to say, I received another box of goodies from WRMK a couple of weeks ago, but I hadn't had the time to play with the kickass product until last night. The Coppered Out line of embellies and paper is very, very cool.....Double click for a clearer image.....
I actually made this layout for my current class over at nycscraps.com (it's an online class, so wherever you're located, you can participate--we've had people from all over the world participate). I am teaching a bit about using brushes in Elements, and downloaded this pretty one from designfruit.com...for free (gotta love that.)

Proud mom alert.... Luca was in his "big boys" TKD class today and at the end, the teacher has a playful opportunity for each student to try for "first place" in that day's class. Luca was by far the youngest in the class, and we'd already talked about how "having fun" is the most important part of the class...personally, I'm just glad he's not crying that he's the smallest. Anyway, Luca comes bounding out of class with a grin plastered on his face and announces to me "I got first place!" He was proud of himself, but not too proud (you know what I mean, right? I mean, nobody wants their kids to be like "I'm the be-est...." and all boast-y and stuff)...he pretty much forgot about it right away, too, which is funny. When Michael came home this evening I prompted him to tell Papa about his "exciting" day in TKD and he looked at me and said "what? what happened?" Hehe. Guess it didn't go to his head. At all.

In the New York Times yesterday, there was a front page article in the Metro section about a phenomenon called "freeganism". What's freeganism you ask?  Well, basically, it's a philosophy of living that promotes using the least amount of "stuff" possible. Freegans, as they're called, actually try to acquire most of their belongings by digging through trash. Sounds a bit gross, but in all honesty, NYC-ers throw out a HUGE amount of perfectly good stuff. Like when they move, and craigslisting the stuff didn't work, and they don't want to lug it to their new apartment..into the trash it goes. Anyway, long story short, I knew the guy who is basically the "leader" of the freegan movement over at freegan.info -his name is Adam, and I met him waaay back in a former life when I was a big-time animal rights activist. Even among AR activist, he was a bit fringe (which is saying a whole HELL of a lot, if you think about it..) He was always trying to get us pumped up about bug rights. Even I couldn't muster much enthusiasm for that. Anyway, I dug up a couple of photos at me at some animal rights rallies 15 years ago so you see I really was a freak (kidding--it was a big part of my life for many many years...) I'm including some helpful pink arrows in case you can't pick me out :)

The first one is a shot of me at a lockdown at a fur store in Manhattan, and the second is me at a rally at NYU. Ah, that's gotta have been a proud moment for my parents, dontcha think? Seriously though, I think if my kids were that passionate about something, I might be proud of them, even if I disagreed. Right? A lot of good did come out of it, in truth. I learned a lot about myself, met some amazing people..definitely a 'growing' period in my life .....

Anyway, off to create some layouts for Scrap Room The kit this month is really, really great...some Love, Elsie stuff, some MM krafty goodness, and the fantastic MME Bohemian line...Wheee!

Yes, I did it.....

...I ran 3 miles on Saturday...If you'll remember it was a mere two or three weeks ago that i complained about barely being able to run 15 minutes. Well, the times they are a'changin' because i ran for 35 whole minutes at a pretty brisk pace. I am not exactly following the Couch to 5K program anymore, mostly because I feel comfortable running for a period of time now. But I still like the idea that I am progressing towards a goal, so I am trying to find a 5k race in July to run. I WAS going to do that race near my house in the beginning of June, but I just wasn't ready.

Spent Saturday at Luca's school's fundraiser which Michael organized. It was called the Kooky Karnival and it was a hit! There were water balloons, ring toss, bean bag toss, and a water slide. The bake sale had incredible goodies and cupcakes, and we sold about 60 hot dogs. Overall, a success. And considering Michael worked his tail off to make it happen, I am happy :)

I made two layouts for my design team work with Die Cuts With A View....man, do I love this glitter paper!


The journaling reads: Luca: Mom, why does Gaga like commercials?
Me: What makes you think Gaga likes commercials?
Luca: Well, her t.v. always has them on. And you have to watch them! At our house, you just fast forward!
Me: Oh, well, Gaga doesn't have Tivo, so you have to watch live t.v.
A few minutes pass in silence.
Luca: what's live t.v.?
Me: Well, that's when you have to watch whatever's on when you turn on the t.v. You can't record your shows and watch them later. You can only watch whatever's on.
Luca looks confused.
Luca: What do you mean? If Gaga is tired and can't watch her show, what does she do?
Me: Well, I guess she wouldn't get to watch her show.
Luca: Mom, that's TERRIBLE. you mean she has to MISS her SHOW??? July 2007

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Okay, since it's Monday, I figure we all need a laugh to get us off on the right foot.....check it out and have a GREAT day :)

Playing with some DCWV goodies....

...finally getting to actually POST some of the work I am doing with my Die Cuts With A View goodies that I was sent a couple of months ago.  I am really digging the new Nana's Kids line of paper.

[pulled the layout - requested for pub]

 
Struck me today as I was walking home from Tae Kwon Do with Luca and Julian that we're in a pretty unique situation here in NYC. I mean, we're constantly surrounded by people, noise, movement, energy. I used to  think it was exhausting to live here. But funnily enough, whenever I go to the countryside, I sleep! Now, you could argue that I am simply recovering from living in the city, and that finally with some peace and quiet my body is doing what it needs to do. But another way of looking at it is that the city simply energizes me. You just step out the door into the hustle and bustle. Anyway, I caught this shot which captured exactly what I was feeling at that very second and I wanted to share.