Nicolina's Big Birthday Bash!!

Guess what? My birthday is tomorrow (July 1st)!!! I'll be 33. I just can't believe it because I certainly don't feel that old! OK, OK...so 33 isn't old per se, but the point is that I certainly don't feel as if I'm in my 30s!

I want to celebrate. Will you celebrate with me? Great! I'm having sales at 2 of my stores (which reminds me that I need to get my ad together for Bits2Kits! Oops!) Anyway, at Bits2Kits, you can anything and everything in my store for 33% off July 1st thru the 8th. And that includes brand new releases that you can ONLY find at Bits2Kits! I'll have 2 Grab Bags offered there as well...one for July 1-15 and one for July 15-31! Don't miss out!!

The big Birthday Bash will be at Designs In Digital. Check it out:

Woohoo! This is going to be SO much fun, and I hope you'll all join me as I celebrate all month long! As the ad above states, I'll be taking 33% off everything in my store from July 1-8. There might even be a surprise sale later in the month, so you'll have to keep an eye open for that one!! Tomorrow, don't miss out on the RAK at DST. Look for a thread called "Scrap Me A Birthday Wish & Get RAKed" in The Happy Place forum and 3 lucky people will be randomly chosen to receive a $5 coupon to my DID store. There will be random RAKs and Give-Aways all month, so be sure to check back here frequently as I'll be posting a heads-up before I start a new thread with the Give-Away info.

I'm going to try to offer a new Grab Bag with never before seen products each Monday (except the first Grab Bag will be released tomorrow, of course!) in my DID store. Notice I say try because, let's face it, life happens and with everything that happened at the end of June for me and my family, I got WAY behind in this Birthday Bash planning and wasn't able to get all my Grab Bags completed. I will be trying my hardest, however, to make sure I get them finished in time to put in the store...even if it means lowering the price of the bag because I only have a couple items inside instead of the 4-5 I'm aiming for! After the Grab Bag's week in the spotlight in over, I'll be revealing it and, for the rest of the month, you can buy it as a bundle at a discount from the normal store prices.

What else is on the agenda? Meg, the awesome new owner of Designs In Digital, has given me a whole forum just for me to host some Birthday Bash Challenges!! I have 10 challenges planned and, after I post them this evening, you can find them under "Nicolina's Birthday Bash". Here's the rundown on the challenges:

1. Template Challenge (I'll provide the template, you do the layout)

2. Flatter Me Challenge (pick a layout from my gallery and scraplift it)

3. Green Goodies Challenge (use at least 1 of my products on your layout)

4. Birthday Bag Challenge (use an item from one of my grab bags to nake a layout)

5. Photos On Strike Challenge (no photos allowed! Use altered art, digi items and journaling only)

6. Font Challenge (I'll give you 2 of my favorite fonts; pick the one you want to use on your page)

7. Quote Challenge (use my favorite quote and create your page. I might even provide the quote as wordart for you to make use of, if you so wish)

8. Nicolina's Favorites Challenge (I'll give you a list of some of my favorite things; use 1 or more to include on your page)

9. Count Down Challenge (I'll give you 2 possible lists with specific quantities of items to include on your layout. Choose the one you want and use it as a guideline for your page)

10. Celebrating Myself Challenge (a special AAM challenge that you'll have to visit the forum for more information!)

The challenges will be going on all month long. Your deadline is July 31st and you can do some or all of them! Each challenge will have a separate prize...some will be QPs and some will be a piece of my brand new kit! If you complete ALL the challenges by the deadline date, you'll be entered to win my entire store for free! And that includes all new releases from July AND August! What an awesome deal for one lucky individual!

Later in the month, there will be a scavenger hunt hosted right here on my blog with 3 winners getting $10 coupons to Designs In Digital. Who knows what other surprises I'll come up with along the way for you? I guess you'll just have to stay tuned to find out! And here's my Fan Of blinky because, if you wear it, who knows when, where or with what you might get RAKed !!

Apologies, Explanations, & My New Wacom

Once again Nicole had gone MIA with not even a note of explanation! What happened to blogging at LEAST every Monday? What happened to making sure I stayed in touch and let everyone know what was going on? It all flew out the window once we decided to sell our home and move into a new construction. Let me tell you, it has been nothjing but one HUGE headache!

The people who bought our existing home bought it for the husband's mother, whom they wanted living closer to them. isn't that sweet? I thought so too....until we realized they are selfish, petty people who are unwilling to give even a little. We did everything we could to make things easier for them, bending to almost their every whim. Won't make that mistake again! They gave us nothing but grief, made unreasonable demands, failed to get their paperwork done on time and kept pushing back the closing date. Now Thomas and I only had 2 days off from work. We were supposed to close at 10am on the first day which would have given us all that afternoon and the whole of the next day to unpack. Yeah right. They pushed back the closing until we threatened to call off the sale and sue them. Then, all of a sudden, the paperwork was magically completed! Unfortunately, that didn't happen until 4pm on the last day we had off. And can you believe the b**** (excuse the language, but I'm still angry) never once apologized? All she did was whine about how she had to pay for us to stay in a hotel overnight (yes, that's only right since it was HER fault we weren't able to close. The time and date was set up because the closing attorneys were told that everything was complete. It wasn't until 4pm the day before we were supposed to close that the woman's lender woke up and realized she didn't have all her paperwork in!) and complain about how inconvenienced she was!! Excuse me, but SHE still had a house to live in! WE were the ones who would be living out of boxes in a garage for the rest of the week because we had to go back to work the following day!!! How was she inconvenienced by this? Other than maybe she had to reschedule her manicaure.

OK...off my soapbox now. That's my explanation for why I went MIA. There was just so much to be done between getting all our ducks in a row, packing, and then living in limbo for a while (oh yeah, did I mention I ended up with food poisoning from the hotel room service? That was loads of fun.), and then trying to get somewhat unpacked so I could get my family comfortable in our new home. I'm a Cancer, a crab, my home is everything to me and I'm not doing real well without everything being in its place! I hope to have most of it done by the end of this week. Of course, all our spare cash is gone, so I'll have to wait indefinitely to decorate.

My good news is that I was talking to our custom sign guy at work and told him I was saving up for a graphics tablet. Leter, he came up with a Wacom Graphire 3 and told me I could have it because they bought it to try ages ago and no one liked it! Hoorah! I know nothing about this tablet and it's not what I was going to choose myself, but it was free! I downloaded the driver upgrade for Windows Vista and the tablet DOES work...I just have yet to play with it. Can't wait until I have a free moment to play! I also ordered a 500G EHD, which I found for just under $87!! That's my b-day gift from my parents. Yippe! I can FINALLY have all my purchased kits unzipped and in one spot. no more shuffling through disks, unzipping and erasing once I'm finished! Now I just need to find the time to do all THAT too! LOL

Well, that's it for now. But I'll be doing another blog post in a few moments with big news!!