Around Here

POSTED ON February 28, 2014 IN Life Adventures

Decided to get my “real” camera out this week and take some photos of life around here right now. I know a lot of scrapbookers have fully embraced their camera phones but I still love playing with my DSLR (and am very much itching for an upgrade after almost 8 years!)

Life around here has been going along pretty smoothly this month. Even turned my calendar over to March a few days early – thinking I’m itching for spring already!

I hit 24 weeks this week and it’s crazy to me to think this time next month I’ll be in the start of my 3rd trimester. Craziness! My bump has definitely hit a growth spurt the past few weeks but considering I was measuring about a week behind the baby at my last appointment, I’m welcoming the extra room for sure!

I feel like the 2nd trimester is a funny time because for the most part, I’ve been feeling good and have a lot of energy, but it still feels a little early to start tackling too many of the major baby-related things. At the same time, I fully expect the next few months are going to fly by and June will be here before we know it.

So in the meantime, I’ve been tackling a lot of the bigger non-baby items on my to-do list like the redesign of Nettio Designs, the launch of my NEW site and some apartment-related items I’d been putting off since we moved here.

Adam actually said to me earlier this week that we should finish up more of the apartment decor items and well hey, you don’t have to tell me twice! In the works are an entry way gallery wall, master bedroom makeover (aiming for a mix of naturals with some gold accents) and then eventually turning our current office into a nursery/office combo – very excited for that!

Pregnancy-wise, I’ve become fully hooked on dark chocolate almond milk hot chocolate in the mornings and my Bump Nest pillow at night.

Not going to lie, I kind of scoffed at the idea of buying a pregnancy pillow (partly because I am cheap, haha) but seriously, it’s the best.thing.ever. It hasn’t solved all of my pregnancy sleeping woes (stupid leg cramps!) but as a regular stomach/back sleeper, it has made side sleeping a million times more comfortable for me. I actually look forward to going to bed now – plus it’s SO soft and cozy that I’ve found Adam cuddling with it on more than one occasion.

And I jokingly started referring lately to the pillow as “Snakey” so clearly Adam felt this week he needed an official snake makeover, haha.

I also bought some of the most adorable fabric ever (camping themed!) for a future baby quilt. I’ve never made a quilt before but I can sew and I’ve found some tutorials that seem easy enough so I’m excited to see how it goes.

And this month for Valentine’s Day courtesy of my mother-in-law, baby boy received his first official SF Giants gear! You know he’ll be wearing it proudly once he gets here. Gotta get him started young, right? #MiniSFGiantsfanforlife

And finally I know quite a few of you have been wondering (and asking!) about my future scrapbooking plans and well I’m excited to say that my NEW website will be launching on Monday!

I always feel like there’s a fine line for me between sharing what I’m up to and wanting to just buckle down and get things done behind the scenes and well, I tend to fall more into the latter most of the time, so I apologize for being a bit incommunicado on that front!

But it’s finally ready and above is a little sneak peek at what will be a free download available for email subscribers once the site goes live. Very excited for the new direction I’m heading so be sure to come back Monday for all the details!

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A New Look For Nettio Designs

POSTED ON February 7, 2014 IN Announcements, Behind-the-Scenes

If you happened to stop by Nettio Designs of late, you may have noticed the site’s been in maintenance mode all week. That’s because the web-coding elves, aka me, have been busily working behind the scenes on a fresh new look for Nettio Designs!

Like most web design projects this one took on a life of it’s own, but considering how long it’s been on my to-do list it feels good to finally check this baby off as done.

For reference, here’s what the site looked like before:

And here’s what it looks like now:

A moment of silence for the loss of our beloved woodgrain…

My goal for this redesign was two part: a) to give the site a fresh modern new look that feels more me and b) to make the site easier to navigate for you.

If you’re reading this post in a feed reader or email, I highly recommend popping over to Nettio Designs to check it out! There’s a bunch of new features you won’t see from the screenshot alone. And if you aren’t seeing the new design, you may have to clear out your browser cache so that it serves up the new images instead of the previously saved ones.

With that, there’s a couple of new features I’m excited about that I wanted to point out:

1) A Responsive Design: The site has been rebuilt from the ground up on a new framework and child theme (Genesis Framework with the Dynamik Website Builder child-theme for those of you who like to know those things) which means it’s now fully mobile responsive. What this means in the real world: the design will adapt to display for whatever size device you happen to be browsing on whether it’s a laptop, tablet or smartphone. As a Mac/iPad/iPhone lover who does the majority of her browsing these days on mobile devices this was really important to me and well worth the extra time and effort to make it happen.

2) Updated Sidebar Links: The blog sidebar not only has a new look but has been updated to make it easier for you to find all my best content including: links to my main blog categories, my top 5 most popular projects and a list of must-read posts, chosen by yours truly.

I’m also really proud of the new Archives page which not only made me realize I blogged more last year than I thought, but should also make it much easier for you to find that specific post you know exists but aren’t sure where to find.

3) A New Project Page: In addition to the popular project links in the sidebar, there’s now a dedicated projects page where you can find images and links to ALL of my projects included Week In the Life, Holiday Faves and much more. Check it out here.

4) The Nettio Designs Shoppe is Officially No More: Yes after three years, the Nettio Designs shoppe is officially closed for business. A few of you had discovered you could buy really really old products through the store and while I appreciate the support, it was time for the templates to go. All product links now redirect to the shoppe homepage where there’s a friendly note about my retirement as a product designer and to stay tuned for what’s next.

Of course there’s still a few tweaks I’d like to make (aren’t there always?), like an updated About page, a Work with Me page, a project category with all my digital layouts and some more category customization, but for the most part I’m super happy with how it turned out. It feels fresh and new and makes me excited to share in this space once again.

And finally, if you’re wondering how the Nettio Designs redesign fits into my plans for 2014, just consider this phase 2 of my three-step plan for 2014:

Phase 1: Retiring as a template designer

Phase 2: Redesigning Nettio Designs

Phase 3: The launch of something completely new which I promise I will spill the details on very soon.

For now I’m going to take a break from the world of web coding and try to remember what it’s like to speak in a language that doesn’t involve CSS, PHP or HTML…and maybe take a shower, haha. If you happen to stumble upon anything wonky with the design, feel free to leave me a note below to let me know.

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1+1=3

POSTED ON January 27, 2014 IN Life Adventures

I’m pretty sure today’s announcement should win me the award for Best Secret Keeper Ever considering I’ve been holding this in since OCTOBER. Oh my gosh, you guys have no idea how hard it’s been!

But the stars have finally aligned which means I can finally share that Adam & I are expecting a baby BOY in June!

Well, June 16th to be exact. So far after two ultrasounds lil’ Jack Jackman* is measuring dead-on to the day for my due date, but whether that’ll continue to hold, we shall see. My doctor has assured us she won’t let me go longer than a week late which means for sure he’ll be here no later than June 23rd.

To say we’re excited would be an understatement. This has been a long journey for us, one that by the time the little guy arrives in June will be 4 years to the month from when Adam returned from Afghanistan and we decided to give this whole starting a family thing a try. But that’s a story for a different day…

Today I just want to celebrate that I now have a reason to buy beyond adorable things like this…

Is it just me or are baby boy clothes infinitely more adorable than baby girl clothes? Maybe it’s because I’m not much of a pink-purple-yellow girly kind of girl?

But seriously, I’d been so proud of myself for not caving into the cuteness so far, but then yesterday when we were cruising Target for the pair of tiny-shoes-he-will-never-wear seen in the photo above, I saw this, which I’m pretty sure is the most adorable baby outfit ever. Considering my love for jackets, the color green & dinosaurs as a child (I had stuffed dinosaurs, dinosaur sheets and was convinced I wanted to be a paleontologist at the age of 5), I just couldn’t resist.

Although, as I took it out of the bag at home and laid it down on a chair in our bedroom, I realized, “woah, there’s going to be a tiny person IN this outfit at some point,” which was a totally awesome and terrifying thought all at the same time. Pretty sure that’s normal though.

All I know is, while it’s been a wild ride to get to this point, we are so ready for this next adventure.

And if you’re wondering if this had anything to do with my decision to step down as a designer at Sweet Shoppe Designs, most definitely yes, but I’ll share those details in another post soon.

*No Jack Jackman will not be his real name. We honestly have no idea about names at this point. But yes, Adam is terrified that after all my joking, in my post-birth haze, I’ll blurt out “Jack Jackman” as his name and the little guy will officially be saddled with the most awesome name in the history of all names.

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hello 2014!

POSTED ON January 7, 2014 IN Announcements

Well 2014 started off with a bang, if by bang I mean coming home from two weeks away in California to discover my beloved compy would no longer start. Wah wah. All I could get was a grey screen, a familiar Apple chime followed by a spinning wheel of doom before it would shut off.

Thankfully it was nothing a trip to the Genius Bar couldn’t fix, well if you consider a complete wiping of the hard drive and reinstall of the operating system a “fix.” But it means I am now upgraded to the most current Mac OS, Mavericks (hooray, Finder tabs!) and because I had an up-to-date Time Machine backup I thankfully didn’t lose any data.

So let this be your friendly reminder for the start of 2014 to always always always back up your computer. If I hadn’t, I would have lost 9 years of photos along with all my scrapbooking layouts and non-CT products. No fun, right?

This is also why I always advocate for having both a local backup (like on an external hard drive) as well as an online backup (like Backblaze) because even with restoring everything directly off my external drive, it still took six and half hours! to copy everything over again. Pretty sure if I’d had to download all that data from the cloud, I would have been here for days.

But hooray, I am back up and running which means we can now move on to more exciting things, like the start of 2014!

I was just telling Adam the other day, that with the exception of years that end in a “5,” I always feel extra optimistic toward years that end in an even number – perhaps because I was born in an even-numbered year? – and 2014 is no exception to this rule.

I’ve got some exciting stuff to share over the coming weeks, including more details about why I chose to leave Sweet Shoppe Designs, why I went crazy and retired all my products, and what that means for the future of Nettio Designs.

From what I hear there’s been some speculation, probably partly due to it seeming like an abrupt, out-of-nowhere decision to those on the outside, so all I’ll say for now is that while the execution of it ended up seeming a bit abrupt due to the holidays, it was most definitely a much thought out decision on my part. And I chose to leave so I could focus my time and energy toward building something new, not joining anything that currently exists.

But I’m afraid that’s all the hints you’re going to get for now since I’m not quite ready to spill the beans on my plans, haha.

In the meantime though I will share more details about my decision as well as my 2013 Holiday Faves mini album wrap up, 2014 goal-setting and a few other things I have up my sleeve. I’m really excited for this year and I hope you are too! It feels good to start the year off fresh and have time to dedicate to this space yet again.

So with that I say, hello 2014. So happy to have you here.

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Final Hours of the Nettio Designs Retirement Sale!

POSTED ON December 31, 2013 IN Announcements

Happy New Years Eve everyone! I’m just popping in real quick from my California vacation amongst the big trees with a friendly reminder that the Nettio Designs 40% off product retirement sale ends TONIGHT, December 31st at Sweet Shoppe Designs.

After today, all of my templates and digital products will be retiring so there’s only a few hours left to grab these goodies before they are gone for good. If you’ve had your eye on something, now’s the time to grab it!

Click here to shop the Nettio Designs retirement sale!

I’m keeping this short and sweet today but I’ll see you in 2014 with more details on what’s next for Nettio Designs!

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Changes Are Afoot at Nettio Designs!

POSTED ON December 21, 2013 IN Announcements

Hello hello everyone! I hope the last week before the big day is treating you well.

If you’ve already read the Sweet Shoppe newsletter, you’ve probably seen my big announcement but I wanted to tell you myself as well and share a little more about why I’m making this decision. Changes are afoot here at Nettio Designs and while it may not seem like it on the surface, it’s actually a really good thing!

Since I’m pretty sure there’s no good way to sugarcoat this, I’m going to take the bandaid approach and just go for here, so here goes:

I’ve made the decision to step down from Sweet Shoppe Designs and retire as a template designer.

Now before you panic too much, hehe, I am NOT retiring from scrapbooking nor will I be retiring from having a digi business. I’m simply shifting my focus away from templates and product design toward something I believe will not only be a better fit for me and my strengths but also provide much more value you for you too. I’m not quite ready to spill the beans on my plans just yet – you’ll have to wait until the new year for that – but I can say, if you’re a fan my work and my approach to scrapbooking, I think you’re going to be excited about what I’ve got planned.

In all honesty, this was a tough decision for me and definitely not one made lightly! I love the Sweet Shoppe and am so proud and honored to have called it my digi home for the past six years. But I’m not superwoman and sometimes you have to be willing to close one door in order to have room to open another.

Nettio Designs Retirement Sale

Robin was kind enough to allow me to host a retirement sale on all my products at Sweet Shoppe Designs so between Dec 21st and Dec 31st you can save 40% off ALL Nettio Designs products. After the first of the year, all Nettio Designs products will be retiring for good so if you’ve had your eye on something, now’s the time to grab it!

Click here to shop the Nettio Designs retirement sale!

Finally before I go, I wanted to say THANK YOU to each and every one of you who’ve supported me during this Nettio Designs venture. I’ve loved seeing all your different takes on my templates over the years and I’m so honored you felt my designs were worthy of your awesome stories. This is definitely not the end for me or Nettio Designs, it’s just the start of a new adventure.

And with that, I’m going to wrap this bombshell email up. You may hear from me again with a reminder about the end of the retirement sale but otherwise have a very merry Christmas and I’ll see you in 2014!

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