Team Member Since June 2011
Mary Kate is one of our team members I’ve had the opportunity to meet in person – in fact, before I relocated to Kansas City, “MK” and I used to live about 20 minutes away from each other! I’m so glad I got the chance to know her and meet her two adorable little girls before I moved away because I now consider her more than just a team member – she’s also one of my personal friends. MK’s family is one of our amazing military families – her husband’s job moves them around a lot, including a move just last year back to the suburbs of Philadelphia, which is where Mary Kate and her husband grew up. She is loving being close to her and and her husband’s families again, after missing the Philly area for the twelve years prior.
Scrapbooking is currently Mary Kate’s only hobby, but she also loves photography and hopes she can someday purchase a DSLR camera and spend time learning how to take awesome photos. Right now, I think she does a pretty good job with the basic DSLR capabilities on her point and shoot camera! MK spends her free time volunteering at her children’s school and is hoping to get more plugged into their new community with other volunteer activities soon. In our former neck of the woods, she volunteered with the local welcome/hospitality club in town.
When she has time to watch television, MK loves NCIS and Walking Dead (yeah, I don’t get the zombie thing, but I try not to tease her about it). She likes to listen to singer Peter Gabriel’s older stuff and counts herself a college football fan. She also enjoys watching the NCAA basketball tournament each year when it comes around. Mary Kate loves to spend her weekends hanging out with her little family and doing what else but scrapbooking!
In fact, Mary Kate says one of the things that would be super hard for her to give up is her scrapbooking because she values the creative outlet it provides her. It’s a good thing she loves it so much because that means she is happy to spend lots of time in her role as my “quick page” designer on the team. If you’re a fan of those awesome speed tools, you have Mary Kate and her talent to thank! MK got started with digital scrapbooking in 2007 right after her second daughter was born. She had been searching for a way to scrapbook that made less mess and didn’t take up so much space. After dabbling a bit in digital scrapbooking, she made the choice to switch, and says she couldn’t be happier with that choice. She loves that she can use the kits she buys over and over again, that she can print layouts multiple times (and in different sizes). She loves that digital scrapbooking allows the flexibility to make artful masterpieces with her photos and she enjoys learning new techniques in Photoshop to create different looks. MK has a strong eye for color and layout organization seems to come naturally to her. Again, check out the quick pages she makes – they are fabulous!
Mary Kate hopes to be remembered as a good person and as someone who cared deeply for her family, friends, and society. She hopes others will recall that she always made the effort to see the good in everyone and everything, no matter how bad things sometimes seemed. Here are a few of MK’s favorite, beautiful layouts she has made as a member of my creative team:
