Happy New Year with our New Designers!

The new year is bringing about a few changes here at Heart 2 Heart Challenges, first with the addition of three talented "new" faces.  Please join me in welcome our new design team members!

I'm Nikka Geers.  I am a military wife currently in Texas, but Michigan is my home.  I have been with my hubby for 11 and half years, but only have been married for 5 once he joined the army. I have a fur baby named Bonnie.  She is a bull terrier, like Spud Mackenzie.  I have been a CTMH consultant since 2010.  When I became a consultant, I had never touched a single product from CTMH, just a catalog for 2006.  But I got the consultant kit and I fell in love.  I have crafted almost my whole life and I think I would go crazy (crazier actually) if I didn't craft.  I was super excited when I got the news that I am going to be on the design team. My hubby looked at me like was crazy.  I can't wait to create with you guys!

Cynthia McCloud here!  I have been scrapbooking since 2005, but I have been telling stories much longer -- as a journalist, since 1996. After a dozen years writing and editing at a midsize daily newspaper, I get to do what I love from home. I've freelanced for various publications, including The New York Times. I'm a part-time reporter for The State Journal newspaper and I freelance for a regional lifestyle magazine. In January, I'll start taking online classes at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. My eventual goal is to get a Master's of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction. 

Scrapbooking is a different chapter of my life story. I founded a scrapbooking retreat with a friend that we're slowly trying to grow. I have been a Close To My Heart consultant for three years. When I teach scrapbookers, crop alongside them or speak to them through my blog and Facebook, I passionately encourage them to make sure they're in some of the photos on their layouts. I'm like many women who scrapbook to record our children’s lives for them. We are a big part of that life! Moms, as the chroniclers of family history, are the people behind the camera. Caught up in recording the milestones in their families’ lives before the details fade moms overlook the missing pieces: themselves. No one’s telling their stories and if they don’t start, who will? It’s our history, too, and we should be a main character not a footnote.

The other characters in my story are my high school sweetheart to whom I have been married for 17 years; our 11-year-old daughter, who scraps with me at crops; and two fat beagles. We live in a snowy, mountainous part of north-central West Virginia.

Hi!  I'm Alyson Mayo from Barrie, Ontario, Canada.  I have been a Close To My Heart consultant since 2007 and I am a former teacher of grades 7 and 8.  I began scrapbooking when one of my nephews was born and haven't looked back since.  Cards are my first choice but I also do a variety of other types of crafting as well.  I enjoy reading, walking, and am very active in my church community.  I have a beautiful little puppy named Mika who is great source of laughter in my life.  She is a year and a half old now and weighs in at a whopping 6.4 pounds.

Thanks, ladies, for joining us for this first term of 2015.  We're excited about the talent that you are bringing to our Design Team, and can't wait to see how you interpret our challenges.  See everyone again on Monday for our first challenge of the new year.

Happy 2015!!!!!!!!!!!