Thursday, October 25, 2007

Almost time for Halloween in the sunshine state

Yay!! Alex is getting so excited, we can't wait to spend Halloween with grandma and uncle Robert and Michelle and Pookie, too. :) I'm bringing lots of scrapping goodies to give to Robert's group for their scrapbooking projects and of course pages to add to mom's book that I started for her. I also have a special surprise that I can't wait to work on while I'm there.

Aside from the Halloween festivities I'm looking forward to working on some packages to send out to my Marine sons as mom has been collecting supplies and donations from the people in her community. With any luck we'll be doing a nice big mass mailing to our boys while I'm vacationing. With Veteran's Day just a couple of weeks away I want to be sure that none of these boys are forgotten by any of us back home, we are free to enjoy our lives because of the Brave...those who make sacrifices every day for us. This is one of my favorite pictures of Robert from his last deployment and I knew that I wanted to have it on it's own page. Yes, that's a beautiful rainbow in the background.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

12 hour crop was so much fun!!

Wow, I had a great day at the 12 hour crop yesterday. It was a fundraiser for Island Harvest and all of the raffle ticket sales went towards the charity. I bought $30 worth of raffle tickets and I couldn't believe that I kept hearing my name being called while I was getting a 10 minute massage and they were doing the prizes. When I came out and went back to my table my friend told me I'd won a basket, a free 1 hour massage and a free night in the hotel where this same group is going to be doing a weekend crop in January!! HOLY COW!!! In total my raffles winning are worth over $250!! Yay me!

I completed 16 pages yesterday and did 4 "Make and Takes" which was awesome!! They were all done by my friend Laurie who is a Close to My Heart consultant and I love her stuff so much, I've taken some of her classes before and I'm going to one this coming week and can't wait for it! Laurie had a bonus little make and take area to make a little treat bag for $1 and the money went to the charity so I made one for Alex, it turned out so cute! I love this stamp set with the cat/trick or treat/pumpkin. I have to say I really fell in love with the CTMH stamps yesterday and that could be a bad thing!! HAHAHA!!

Here is another Make and Take I did at her table, 4 tags...one for each season. Now these were all plain tags when we started and everyone of them is done with stamps. We colored them in with pencils/markers/chalks...it was really creative and fun to see these come together!

More to follow....

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Cookies, work....music

So today I was home all day and decided it was a good day to bake cookies to send to my favorite Marines...I just love the smell of fresh baked cookies on a dreary and rainy day, don't you? I think I made 12 dozen chocolate chip cookies and I bagged them with my Seal A Meal so that each of my Marine sons will be receiving 5 big yummy cookies in their next round of packages. I put them all in the freezer until I'm ready to ship them out.

I'm changing jobs at the library and I've decided to leave the video room for now and head out to the floor and work with the books and other material for a change of pace...I think I'm going to like it once I get the hang of it. I've gone in 2 nights this week to train with one of the page captains and I've learned quite a bit but a lot of it will just be stuff that I need to learn as I go along. :) I'm still working some shifts in the video room so I've been putting in extra hours and my scrapping time has really suffered as a result of that but I did manage to get a challenge finished up today thank goodness because the deadline for it was today!

I'm really enjoying the new Chris Botti cd and I find that it has helped me relax so much this past week just listening to his music and I especially love the track with Andrea Bocelli on it...his voice is so soothing, the man has an incredible gift from God.

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Is it really October???

Last friday I prepared some Halloween goodies to send to my Marine sons over in Iraq. I made 2 batches of rice krispies treats and cut them into pumpkin shapes after spraying them with orange food coloring mist. I made faces with black icing, the best I could...hahahaha...some of them look pretty sad but what can ya do? I made goodie bags for all with the pumpkins and some other candies. I also sent Robert some peeps and some halloween pencils to give out to the Iraqi children.

I took Alex to the farm yesterday and we got some pumpkins and spent some time in the corn maze and went on the hay ride. Man, was I sweating!! I can't remember a time when I went pumpkin picking in shorts and sandals. It was 88 degrees when we got back in the car. Alex's face was so red and he was overheated, it was insane!!

Monday, October 01, 2007

Weekends were made for Croppin'

It sure is good to be back home in my own bed after being away for 2 nights for a scrap weekend. It was fun but I didn't get as much done as I had hoped, I packed too much and I guess I had ambitions of doing more but it didn't happen. I've decided that I am more the "day cropper" and will stick with that for a while. I do have my eye on a weekend next summer, though...so we'll see if that pans out. We stayed at a nice hotel in New Jersey and the staff was so friendly and helpful to us, everyone said hello and had a smile on their face when I passed them in the hall. I love the look of the building from the outside, it looked like a castle. I got there a little earlier than Sandi so I took a walk around the grounds in the back and it was very beautiful and the weather was glorious this past weekend, almost a shame to be cooped up inside the whole time, though. I think there should be a rule that it rains while you're cropping and then it stops only when you need to pack up and load your car at the end of the crops.

This was one of the layouts that I knew I had to complete because it was for a challenge on the scrap message board I belong to. These pictures are from 1984...I was about 2 weeks away from giving birth to Jesse and boy was I huge, not to mention I was so swollen.


More to come..........