A Nikki update....

Hi all, its Nikki here today! I hope everyone is having a great Summer! It is so HOT here in MO and we’ve not hit our hottest months yet… so we took Bella for a swim! She's a good little swimmer too... especially when there are ducks to swim after!! 

 Had to share this one.. 

Gosh I feel like I haven’t blogged here is so long, time goes by so fast, I’m still in shock we are almost half way through the year. Where does time go!?! 

I have several things I’d like to share with you…

After a lot of thought I’ve decided not to design for the fall/winter or go to Summer CHA 2012. It’s been a rough last year in my personal life, loosing my grandma has been so hard. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to not have her around and I’ve not done a great job at grieving, instead I’ve just acted like it never happened then it hits me all over again so this is something I need to get a handle on.  I also just recently found out that one of my dads has prostate cancer, he’ll be fine just hard to have a parent go through the process. My dad goes in for surgery today so hoping all goes well for him and his recovery.  Then there’s my poor baby brother, Barron, who just got released from the Grossman Burn Hospital in LA, CA. (He lives in Santa Monica.) Barron was at a beach party and they had a fire-pit (its chilly in the evenings near the ocean) a girl tripped and fell on Barron and he then fell backwards into the fire. He has 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd degree burns on his, back, butt, back of one arm and one leg. He’s had two surgeries and they’ve taken skin graphs off his thighs to cover the worse burns. Luckily he lives near one of the best burn hospitals in the USA so we do feel very lucky about that. I’m hoping to go out the Santa Monica to take care of him for a week as he has a very long recovery ahead of him.

(These are pictures that he upload on Facebook.)

This is him and I about a year ago...

Okay so I don’t want to sound like a “Debbie-Downer” as everyone is going to be okay and make it through its just been one “hit” after another and I need some time to be with my families and focus on them. Also on myself too, I’ve put on 12 lbs, my blood pressure is too high and so is my stress level. I just need to try and relax and breathe. I need my family and they need me.

I do have some fun stuff coming up though, like I’m going to have monthly project kits that I will sale here on my blog and I’m working on selling all my product directly to the consumer too.  I do plan on being at Winter CHA 2013 which I’m sure I’ll be ready for after some nice down time.  I’m keeping my design team diva’s too so they will be working on projects all fall and winter. 

I personally started training for a 5k using the “Couch to 5k” trainer app. I’ve never been a runner but I really like it. A lot! I start running and there is a sense of release and letting go that I just love, so maybe in 7 weeks I’ll be running in my first 5k! (I’m only one week down.)

I do want to share some great “press” that my company has gotten lately…

Creating Keepsakes Magazine has one of my layouts in the August 2012 issue from my new “Exit Here” collection:

Canadian Scrapbooker published 2 layouts created by some creative Canadian’s in their Spring issue, they used my “School is Cool” collection:

And Australian Scrapbook Memories wrote a nice article about my company and interviewed me for their May 2012 issue:

Please stay tuned for some of the fun monthly project kits and all the design team diva’s awesome projects. And I just want to thank all of you that have been by my side during this last year and recently too. I have the best friends and support group. I look forward to some summer days of nothingness.  Hey maybe I’ll get to even scrapbook again!

Thanks for your time and understanding.