Project 365 freebie :)

Did you see it? It is here on the new blog :)

Don't miss anything else, you can subscribe to the new blog by Email or with one of these readers:

xoxo

New blog is ready and going

I see there is still a lot of traffic to this blog, which I understand with all the people subscribed and a lot of freebies drawing people here :)

I am going to repost all the freebies on the new blog when I get some time (when I get some time!!!) In the meantime there are new freebies and a new tutorial over here.

For all the subscribers to this blog, please take a minute to sign up to the new blog :)

You can subscribe by Email here or with one of these readers:

I know it will take a while to get every one over there, but it was a necessary evil :)

Pencil Lines Sketch 118

Pencil Lines Sketch 118 is up and I have started posting on the new blog :) Thanks so much for the great response, you can find my first "scrappy" post here.
I have also included a warning to the header of this blog for when people are directed straight to one of the freebies they know what is going on. I hope it is enough.

Thankful

I am thankful to God.
I am thankful for being born healthy in a family that knew no poverty or hunger.
I am thankful for having had friends with no means so I could learn to value things and also help them.
I am thankful for quitting a relationship that would have taken me nowhere and having met my husband, who I trust and love with all my heart (even when we annoy each other).
I am thankful for moving to Australia and having quality of life I never knew possible.
I am thankful for my BEAUTIFUL children, who are a blessing and make my life so much brighter. They can drive me crazy sometimes, but then make me cry with a simple smile.
I am thankful for having a job and working with great people that I call friends.
I am thankful for having found a hobby and craft that I find meaningful and that have brought me so many friends.
I am thankful for being able to share what I learn and my craft with the world through publications and the internet.
I am thankful for having people around me that understand how I feel and don’t think I am crazy for being upset over a couple of online photos.
I am thankful for having taken the time to blog here, and having found all you guys to support me, THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart.
I am thankful for my darling husband’s encouragement to get my own domain.
I am thankful for having the clarity to see this is an OPPORTUNITY for something new and better than what I had before, so I have decided to start anew.
I am thankful for new beginnings.

********

My prepaid internet was pretty bad the last couple of days, getting so slow I was having trouble connecting. I couldn’t download e-mails because it was timing out all the time. Friday and Saturday I could not connect at all. I was very anxious to see if flickr was going to contact me with any news. I have begged them to at least give me my username so I can still participate on the online communities there. Today the connection suddenly got back to normal, and we received some great news, our broadband connection request finally went through and hopefully we will go back to our normal internet by the end of the week. It will be great to ditch this prepaid crap (excuse my language).

Flickr still have not answered and I am not sure what is going to happen there. No matter the decision, I know the photos are gone forever. So I have decided to drop this blog, I can’t possibly go over 150 posts to fix the broken links, I don’t have time for that. However, I have also decided blogging is a big part of my online life that I so enjoy. Sometimes it is the only thing I have time for online. So we have bought a domain, www.withlovebymushy.com and we have installed blogengine.NET in there, so Alex can help me out with the coding. I have lots of new plans and things I am going to do to take my mind off everything I am leaving behind here.

The new website is nowhere ready yet, I am not sure if I am going to change the settings or not, where I am going to host my photos, where things go, etc. It is a true work in progress, but I am sure it will be a new fun corner so please let me know if there is anything you would like to see there (more tutorials? more projects? More products? freebies? More of my boys? More about me? LOL)

There will be some cross postings, I am not going to import this blog, I am going to start all over there. I might re post some of my tutorials and some of my projects from this blog in the future, but only time will tell.

So, THANK YOU for your support! see you soon and see you around!

Gone

My photos are really all gone. I got confirmation from Flickr they have terminated my account. Here is the e-mail:

***************************

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Flickr Customer Care.

Flickr account "michellefilo" was deleted by Flickr staff
for violating our Terms of Service and Community
Guidelines.

www.flickr.com/guidelines.gne

Flickr reserves the right to terminate your account without
warning at any time.

***************************

Even if I get flickr to let me keep my account name I am told that at this stage the photos are gone for good. One year worth of blog posts, over 150 posts, all very image heavy, all broken.

Maybe it is a sign? Maybe I am not meant to be doing this? Maybe I just wasted A LOT of my precious time. Time I could have spent creating more, recording more, or even LIVING more. All I wanted was to share my stuff with other people that would appreciate it.

Now I have to decide what I am going to do, and honestly, I don’t feel like wasting my time again. I will probably just close this blog and make better use of my time.

I am almost angry at myself for being so upset about this, excuse me while I go shed another tear.

I go away for ONE DAY

and things go REALLY wrong (and I had a lovely day, by the way). But look at this blog, all images broken. It brings me to tears all the work I have put in here.... my flickr account has been deactivated. I am not sure what happened yet. No correspondence from them whatsoever, no warnings, nothing. I can only guess I have breached their Terms of Use by uploading my template previews there with a link to Little Dreamer Designs. If that is the case I wish they would have given me a chance to delete those. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think I have over 2000 photos on my Flickr account of which only less than 50 are my templates. Funny thing is that I only posted there because I wanted to get traffic TO my flickr account.

Actually, I really hope that the breach was the reason my account was deactivated, because the alternative of it being hacked is one I don’t want to think about :(

I am not sure what I am going to do now, my internet connection is really bad at the moment; it took me over an hour to download my e-mails. Then I found out about this. I had a really big day, over 6 hours driving to the Water park and back, I am really tired and I should have gone to bed instead of spending hours here trying to find what happened. I wish I could show you all today’s photos, they were really nice... it was a good day....

I am sorry, I try to keep rants like this away from my blog but I am only human :( I am going to bed and hope that things get better when I wake up.

home decor

I have been having some fun at this new place. We feel this is the place we will stay for a looong time, maybe even retire in here, so we are a bit more willing to invest our time and money making it ours. We never did that before. So I started a little photography wall, which is going to expand in the future:

I also decided to play with Fancy Pant's All Fall Collection and create some shadow boxes. It was a lot of fun to put together:

These were also featured at the Miss Fancy Pants blog.


**** **** **** **** **** **** ****

I am packing now, we are going to Jamberoo Water Park tomorrow. It will be a hot day and I bet the kids will enjoy it. Will have to finish catching up another time :)

xoxo

Pencil Lines Sketch 117

Sketch 117 is up, and here is this week's free template based on the sketch by me:

(click on image for link)

Reminder: if you do use the template above, don't forget to post a link to your page at the Pencil Lines blog for a chance to win great prizes from our sponsors :)

Here is my page:

and a little more detail:

I just love the colors of the Fancy Pants' About a Boy line :)

Hope you like the free template!

********

Still no internet here. I am going crazy, but I am starting to upload things and catch up even if it is soooo slow.

Mix it Up!

I am sorry I am sorry I am sorry I am sorry I am sorry I didn’t post this before, but it got released in the middle of a crazy busy time for me and as I said, I have a lot of stuff I should already have shared.

There is a new SUPER cool challenge blog in town: Mix it Up. I really like the whole concept of mixing sketches and different techniques for making a page. Plus, I LOVE to mix mediums and scrapbooking styles and ideas. I am loving it :) The blog is owned by Melanie Blackburn and is peculiar as it is written in French and English. They have started on the 9th of December introducing the team.


Then there was a giveaway (as I said, I am sorry I didn’t let you know before). Then we had a just for fun challenge just before my move. I was able to create a couple of pages even though my scrapbook stash was all packed, that’s the beauty of digiscrapping right? :)

Here are my pages:

It was a sketch and colour scheme challenge, after I brought the sketch to photoshop and created my page I felt I wanted to do another one without being so loyal to the colour scheme.

We call the challenges “mixers”, and this week our first Mixer was announced: Mixer #1

Have a look at the blog for skecth and details about this word challenge (word is beginning), here is my take on it:

And a closer look:


Love these Making Memories goodies :)

So, you want to mix it up?

Playing with Paper - Set 6

I meant to post this new product on my birthday, but it was so busy I just did not get to it:

30 photos in two templates to kinda "celebrate" my 30th birthday :) Well, at least I tried to be creative LOL It is perfect for that fun photoshoot where you can't pick a photo to scrap or to scrap a big event like a Christmas lunch :)

One of the pages I posted here. The other one is this one:

I created this page for a challenge at the Little Dreamer Designs blog.

As usual, here is the matching page, a scraplift of new dream girl Laura Watson.

I just had a look and there are at least 10 other layouts I need to share here, and 4 other products, I promisse I will get to it, I just wish my internet were not so slooooow :)

xoxo

Pencil Lines Sketch 116

Sketch 116 is up, and here is this week's free template:

Reminder: if you do use the template above, don't forget to post a link to your page on the Pencil Lines blog for a chance to win great prizes from our sponsors :)

Here is my page:

It is actually a pretty bad photo of this layout, so I am totally taking another one when I have time (pfft, time?)

*************

I have loads to share, scrapbooking and personal stuff that I should have blogged about already, but I still don’t have my internet back and this prepaid wireless thing is much more expensive than we thought (it is mobile phone internet, you might understand). On top of that, it has become really slow, so it has been hard to be on line.

The new house is finally on track, a lot of little things to sort still but it will be slow because I want to do it properly. I am cleaning up and getting rid of a lot of dead weight, especially baby stuff we don’t need anymore. I also want to redecorate with my own handmade things, just don’t know what yet :)

The old house was sold, thank God and it just needs a good clean before we hand it over.

I don’t really like to write much without photos to illustrate so I will wait to share my many news when I have proper internet (or at least take it slow, we already have two images on this post LOL).

2009 has been great so far, hope it has been good for you too!

xoxo

happy new year :)

happy new year :), originally uploaded by michellefilo.

I am here, in 2009! I feel the *new* already! I spent the first 3 hours of 2009 going back home from a party, putting the kids to bed, talking to mom, checking my e-mails, uploading pages to flickr, and creating a little card for this moment (and post), and now I am blogging. A lot of what I will do many more times this year, so that’s a good start, right? (except it is past 3AM and I plan to not go to bed so late during the year LOL)

And what lies ahead?
Lots of sharing, planning, expectations, lots of NEW. A new house, a new decade for me to enjoy (going to miss my 20s though), a new lens :D, new scrap room, new ambitions, new work regime, new routine, new school for Mateus (big boy school, wow), new childcare room for Lucas (up a level), new ATTITUDE towards life!

Planning includes redecorating the new house, learning photography, organizing myself, eating better, exercising, more activities as a FAMILY, but also, more ME time. Maybe even a trip to see family and friends in Brazil, maybe!

Anyway, hope your new year has it ALL!!! Happy 2009!

with love, mushy