Hurray- it's a long weekend

what plans do you have this weekend? family get together? short vacation? cook-out? are ya gonna go bowling? go to the water park, play in the backyard pool? take the kids to Disney? shop til you drop? wash the car? change the oil? lol

There are just SO many things that we can/have to do on a long weekend that sometimes it can seem overwhelming!! But we handle it well, we pick a couple and do those, enjoy ourselves and then lament the lack of time needed to do the rest! What a strange people we are.

Our weekend will consist of our normal grocery shopping trip to Ocala, then me back in my craft room (which I have neglected horribly as I seemed to be unable to get anywhere with the chore - kept finding projects that needed doing lol) and working on David's book. That seems kinda fitting doesn't it? It being Memorial Day and all?

Speaking of that book, it's getting down to the wire now, only about two weeks before we need to send it to the publishing company! It seems like we just started this project but when I look back, it's been a long time in the making. The time has flown by and the deadline approaches and we realize that there are SO many people that have stories & we can't find them...it saddens me. But we have done the best we could and will be proud of the end product. I am SO very proud of Trav and all the effort and artistry he has devoted to this. Once again I must say, He is the wind beneath my wings.
you can see that layout here layout

My Scrap Shop

Morning everyone,

Just wanted to make sure you all know about My Scrap Shop. This is such a fun site to visit. The people there are super friendly and fun! We just finished a round of Bingo and if you go read that thread you will understand what I mean lol

http://www.myscrapshop.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=878

go check it out.

And while you are on the site, check out the free gift for joining the forum

http://www.myscrapshop.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1034&highlight=

what are you waiting for??? GO!!!

www.myscrapshop.com

Cottage Charm Giveaway

The Twice Remembered Cottage is hosting a Cottage Charm Giveaway. If you want to enter please go to the site for a list of participating blogs. If you are interested in being one of those giving things away, all the details are on her blog - go there and sign up!!!

It's Wednesday

And a very normal everyday boring Wednesday it is too....until the power went out at work and we spent the next hour or so socializing...then had cake for the birthdays...and now I'm just doing mainly all that non-computer stuff that never seems to get done. In between checking my email and trying to catch up all the computer things that NEED to get done lol.....oh well, nothing extraordinary about this...just blogging. See ya later!

Hello

Just popping in to say that I am still out here...going to work on that memorial post I was telling you about...need to get the pics ready to post from that too. I appreciate that you are still checking in to see if I'm talking...and I will do better, I promise!

Arabian Nights

We are here in beautiful Titusville, Florida for our annual visit to the American Police Hall of Fame…to attend the Police Memorial Ceremonies that they provide for the surviving family members, Law Enforcement and anyone else who might be interested. They have been doing this for a really long time now (since 1960) and are very good at it too. (more on this subject tomorrow)

Each year they try to do something wonderful for their guests and this year is no exception. They arranged an excursion to Arabian Nights, in Orlando, for dinner and a show. That was SO much fun! They had 4 buses here by 3:45 and over 200 survivors eagerly awaiting the trip. It was about an hour and 15 minutes to the attraction and it was rather uneventful (meaning I took a nap) and we arrived in good time to get everyone inside, seated and comfortable before the show…but not so long as to be bored by the time it started.

This is not your typical seating arrangement…instead of tables there are long benches with backs and almost a trestle type table to eat on, about 18” wide and 15 people long with a 3” raised ledge on the front portion, so you don’t accidentally send your food down the back of a diner at the ‘table’ in front of you. These tables are set up in a ‘stadium seating’ type of arrangement so all can easily view the entertainment, which takes place in the arena below. We were really excited to see this show! It is a loosely woven story of an Arabian Princess coming into her own and being introduced to her own personal Genie, who is rather inexperienced and needs the practice to protect her new mistress. In the course of this tale we are treated to a visual extravaganza of horses in various settings, the Wild West doing a square dance on horseback, the Native American with symbols painted on her steed, the chariots of yore – complete with a very competitive race in which the two sides of the arena cheer on their champion – trick riders jumping rope, jumping through flaming hoops and doing back flips – all while riding bareback on beautiful horses. And of course they evoked the Black Stallion! There was a nice mix of suspense, yearning and comedy. It was a delightful show and I would feel comfortable recommending it to you as a nice bit of light entertainment. Of course if you have a horse crazy child it might end up causing trouble as they will almost certainly want to do those things themselves and I think that might be something you would want to discourage. Lol

We were a little concerned about the quality of the meal. I’m sure you have all been to places that mass serve, and usually that means inferior quality. We had a choice of one of the following menu items…

New York strip steak

Grilled chicken breast

Certified Black Angus chopped sirloin with gravy

Children’s chicken tenders or

Primavera penne pasta bowl (vegetarian/vegan option)

Almost all the folks at our ‘table’ chose the New York Strip. When our food arrived it really didn’t look that great…the Strip was coated in pepper and looked dry, we had mashed potatoes and a broccoli/carrot mix, and a roll. I was pleasantly surprised when I took my first bite of that steak…it was tender, juicy and flavorful, despite the pepper (which I’m sure you know I DON’T DO PEPPER, so that’s a pretty high accolade from me). The vegetables were tender and with a little butter on top the potatoes were really good. It was a bit difficult to eat in the dark whilst screaming, er I mean cheering on our champions, but we managed without any mishaps. (unless you count the butter that somehow managed to fly through the air and attack Larry a row behind us) Our waitress had a great sense of humor and was really quite good even with all the people she was serving; I think she had either two or three of those long tables. The entire experience was one I would happily repeat if the opportunity arose and I hope you all get a chance to do the same.

Trav's Blog

Wow, Trav's really gotten on the blogger wagon big time!!! He has posted a few really good ones lately - you should head on over there and see what he's been up to...Read him with your coffee in the morning to get you ready for the day lol. here's the addy http://travstales.com/

Ya might leave him a comment to let him know that I sent you...I get points for that sorta thing - hey life's a game, even when you're married, why not have fun while you play?

Anyways, I've been totally unable to write anything more than my name lately, and I don't know why, but - that is going to change...I will be back in full force soon. We are going to Titusville next week for the Annual Police Memorial Day Ceremonies, so maybe I'll even have something to write about! There will be at least one post on the Memorial - that is a promise.

So, I'll see you soon...go see Trav!!!

Craft room update

ok, so we got some more done on the craft room this weekend…it’s not finished, but most of the construction stage is done…got new flooring down, have the shelves cut back and lined and trimmed…got most of the new under counter drawers in…have the counter installed. all that’s left now is the organized re-entry of ALL MY STUFF!!!!

That is going to be interesting…to put it mildly.

I am really excited tho, even if it IS taking a lot of time and effort…I’ll be able to find all the things I KNOW I have, but cannot locate. That will be worth a lot to me, and I can get my craft stuff off the kitchen table and counters, THAT will be worth a lot to Trav lol.

Updates to follow with a pic of the finished project.

My Craft Room

Trav and I are in a perpetual state of remodel! No wait, not US---our House!

We were supposed to be working on the back room (referenced in a previous post) but for some reason we are not. Saturday we started working on my craft room…

I want my craft room organized and neat and for it to be somewhere that I can go to relax and be creative. It is none of those things at the moment, nor has it been.

When we first discussed what we needed to do in there I envisioned a row of storage totes all labeled with craft components and just Waiting for me to drop pieces and parts into them in preparation of redoing that room. Reality once again rears it’s ugly head…somehow we ended up starting willy nilly – without a shred of organization, just jumped in and started pulling things out!!! Oh NO!!!! I am traumatized – sniff sniff - I think I’ll stop this line of self pity right here…just know that I DIDN’T LIKE IT one bit! and Trav found a way to make it a little easier on me, so…onward…

This is a room approx 8 x 6 that has shelves on both long sides, a drop down work surface on one short side and the door on the other short side. The shelves on one side are about 5 inches deep and on the other side are about 18 inches deep. We cut 3 of the wide shelves back to about 12 inches, leaving the top two for long term storage as opposed to everyday accessibility. The bottom two shelves were removed and one put back in at table top height to extend my work surface the length of the room. We are going to extend the top shelf across the short end over the work surface to give me a little more storage space. We will be putting drawers under the work surface and smaller drawers on the surface towards the back for pens and things like that. On the wall to the left of the work surface is a group of shelves that are wider than the others, just one section that is about 15” wide…we are, hopefully going to turn those into a paper rack. I would really like to see shallow shelves that are tilted to a 25 or 30 degree angle with a small lip on the outside edge and a finger notch…then put a piece of chipboard on this shelf then the paper on top of that. (Then maybe I can color coordinate my papers and cardstock and actually be able to FIND things?)

Right now it is a major disaster and I’m not able to do any crafting….hopefully we will be able to get back to it soon.

I haven’t decided what I want to put on the work surface…Formica? wall board?? or??? There is a pegboard on the short wall next to the door, and I have some components to use with that, but I really haven’t figured out the way I want to do it yet. We will be putting some form of lighting under the shelves on the long wall (over the work surface) and mostly that long desk will be used for ‘work stations’, such as my die cutter, my large trimmer and things like that.

I‘m not really sure where we are going from here…we really need to put something different on the floor or go to the bare wood look, but not just an area thing, all or nothing I think. And something easy to keep clean.

I don’t know…I’ll give you an update when we have something new going on and after we are done I will upload a pic so you can see by beautiful new crafting area!!!

Wild animal story addendum

Since I named them in yesterdays story, but didn't give you a picture to look at, Trav suggested that I add this today....hope you like them, this is Michael and Loverboy, ignoring the excitement - as usual. lol

Wild Animal Story

hhmm, I promised you a wild animal story didn’t I….guess I should tell you about it then….

Once upon a time, there was a family with 3 dogs (Micheal, a maremma, Tug, a jack russel/spitz and Spunky, a pomeranian) and a cat (domestic shorthair gray tabby, Loverboy), that lived in the woods outside of town. Every now and then different animals would wander into the yard and the dogs or cat would take after them and the family would have to go save them. Some times it would be too late, and sometimes the ending was happy. And sometimes they weren’t sure which of those it was….

Ok, so let’s just say that last Monday, the lady of the house stayed home from work to play with all the new toys she got from the Scrapbook Expo. And let’s say that first thing that morning, before she was even dressed, one of those three dogs was barking funny in the front yard. And let’s say that this lady went to the window to see what was the matter. and found….

Tug barking at a ‘possum! Ok, so it wasn’t the Biggest ‘possum in the world, but it was at least as big as Tug!

Now it is not unusual to have critters out there, but usually Trav (the man of the house) is home to handle things…not this time…he went to work. That left me….and as I mentioned above, I wasn’t exactly dressed to go wild animal taming. But something needed to be done, soon, so…in my flip flops and sleep shirt, off to the rescue I go. I grabbed the broom off the front porch on the way out and started hollering at the dog to leave it be (as I do not know the gender of our visitor I will hereafter refer to it as ‘he’ for ease of reference). Of course Tug ignored me and started really going at the attack and I was terrified that he would get hurt so I jumped right in with that broom and tried to separate them. That worked.-.sorta…every time I poked the ‘possum it

would show me ALL those teeth and gggrroowwll and that would set Tug off again!

Finally got Tug to listen a little and back off and so I started trying to herd that poor ‘possum towards the gate to get him to safety…once he figured out that I was pushing him in the direction HE wanted to go he stopped fighting me so hard and sorta ambled in that direction.

Things went quite well until….about 5 feet from the gate. At that point he decided that he wanted to go to the back yard (which is probably where he came in) NOT out the gate and turned on me….man, was THAT scary. Have you ever tried to keep an angry ‘possum at bay with a broom? and no pants on? and open toed shoes? I was feeling so exposed – more than I can remember in my whole life. But what could I do at that point? so I ran around him and opened the gate and then back to the other side to give it my best. Wasn’t enough, he managed to scoot by me and into the bush at the base of the tree that grows next to the front porch. And as soon as he did Tug went in the other side of the bush and Spunky thought it would be fun to get involved too!! I yelled at them both and Spunk backed off, Tug I had to broom again. Finally I got them to go in the house and I sorta locked us in.

I never did get that wild animal out of the yard, but by the time I allowed the dogs back out, he was gone. As far as I could determine, Tug was completely uninjured. The ‘possum had a couple of what looked like minor bite marks on his side, but nothing major that I could see.

And as far as I could tell, Michael never even woke up. Great watch dog, gotta tell ya. But given the choice of having him in that mix as well, I’ll take a grumpy sleepy mutt to an alert attack dog any day!

Did I live up to my promise?

Scrapbook Expo Day 2

Hi Ya’ll, I’m Back!

Have you been breathlessly awaiting today’s installment? Well? Have you? oh, not really? sigh, I was afraid of that….Oh well, I’m here now, so I will tell you the rest of the story!

Ok then, the day started at 7, got up, got all my stuff together, went downstairs and got some French toast and coffee and headed out. The first class was at 9.

The first one was A boys life chipboard album, by Rusty Pickle. Parking was horrendous so our instructor was a trifle late and flustered, but her Teacher’s Assistant (TA) had everything well under control…we already had our kits, she had already collected our ticket stubs and we were all ready when she walked in at 5 minutes til class time. That was a fun class, it was rather fast but not frantic…we did not finish the album of course, that rarely happens in a workshop, but it was fun anyway. I finished that one when I got home and it’s really cute.

Then came the marathon! I signed up for FOUR S.E.I. classes! one right after the other, one at 11, one at 12:30, the next at 2:30 and then the last at 4:30. That is with a half hour between each class for clean up and set up.

Ok, the first one was to teach us 4 ribbon techniques. And although I don’t have a picture up of that one, it was really cute. It is the word Friends, cut out and embellished. We only had an hour for that class and it really wasn’t long enough to get it all done…that one was truly frantic! But with everyone helping each other, we finished on time with a great little album.

Second came the 4 album enhancing techniques – In that class we worked on a “scrapbook in a box” and learned how to make French knots – work with linen paper – doodle with a stencil and ink edges. That was an hour and a half and it took a bit of work to keep up, but it was still fun. We almost finished a 20 page 8x8 album. I finished it when I got home and now need to find photos that will do it justice.

Third was a 2 page spread to learn how to have motion on the page. We learned how to cut page protectors and make slides and folded papers to hide then reveal the photos or journaling. This class was a little more leisurely and we did finish everything there. Again I need to find the ‘right’ pics.

Last, but certainly not least, was the Velvet paper techniques. We were supposed to learn 4 ways to work with/enhance/embellish velvet paper. Inking, stamping, embossing and rub ons. That was a 6 panel accordion album made out of heavy chipboard and is really kewl! It is one of my favorites. That was a really laid back class since it was the last one of the day and we didn’t have to be out by any specific time. It was a lot of fun and I would really like to do one like that again.

I didn’t really have any time left over for make & takes, so when I had a couple minutes between the S.E.I. classes I ran around the exhibit floor and bought my stuff and purchased the M&T kits to bring home and do.

I also bought a Zutter Bind-it-all system! www.binditall.com That is going to make some of the paper crafts I do SSSOO much easier! That is how I bound this word bloom album that was one of the M&Ts.

And I also used it to punch the holes in one of my coaster boxes (not this one of course, but the other one lol).

The trip home was pretty uneventful, except that Trav was the navigator, since I was driving, and he sent us the wrong way on I-4 and we ended up going approx. 24 miles before turning around and heading back. Got caught in the traffic madhouse by Disney and that took some time to work thru, but once we were past that it was smooth sailing all the way home.

I had taken Monday off from work too just cuz I KNEW I would want to play with all my new treasures, so I just planned to craft. And except for a little run in with a wild animal early on in the day, it went relatively nicely. (and I’ll tell you THAT story in a day or two lol)

So there you have it folks…the continuing saga of the crazy lady with the funny name. (read that in a radio announcers voice….bet you can’t help but laugh!)

Bye ya’ll

Need an Excuse to NOT drink and drive?

link to the story

http://www.gainesvillesun.com/article/20080404/NEWS/804040359/1002/NEWS

Scrapbook Expo

Scrapbook Expo

We went to Orlando this weekend to attend a Scrapbook Expo. I was SO excited!! I signed up for 9 classes/workshops!

We took Friday off and got up at 4:30 in order to make sure we were packed and on the road by 7am. We were taking the laptops, the cameras, the food and on our way we went. Got about a mile from the house when Trav turns the truck around and said, Forgot my laptop!!! Lol. Since he was planning on working on a project while I was in class, he had to have that little baby! So, we went back.

Actually got on the road at about 7:30, and headed out 27 to Ocala. We planned on stopping on the way to pick up an insulated mug that would fit into my drink holder that clamps on the table, figured that wouldn’t take long. Wrong! Couldn’t find one that fit…so we stopped at Wally World knowing that they had the Bubba mugs with the skinny bottoms – rrriigghhtt, that was a real adventure. Couldn’t find them in housewares, nor could we find anyone to help us…oh we found people all right, they just were not going to help. The guy in automotive, when asked where the mugs were in his department acted like it was an imposition to point down an aisle and say, “somewhere past the oil”. Finally a young lady from sporting goods tried to help and was totally confused when she realized that an entire aisle was missing. That’s when it hit me, seasonal!!! So I went searching for the coolers and sun tea jugs, and there they were. One style, looks like a basket ball…ugh. But it would work, had a cover, wouldn’t sweat, could put a straw in it and it fit the holder. So 45 minutes later, we were back in business.

Back to the truck and let’s get going!! Ah, shucks, I’m hungry! Ok, make a quick stop at Mickey D’s for breakfast and get back on the road. Finally!!!

So, on the road we go, and believe it or not, the rest of the trip down was uneventful. We were running a little later than I wanted so we arrived at the Convention Center at approximately 10am and my first workshop was at 11. I needed to find the registration desk, get my tickets and room info and find the room and be there on time. And I MADE IT!

My first workshop was Celebrating Sisterhood, with Sue from Albums & Answers, making a 6 x 6 accordion album – using accordion paper for the inside, but constraining the spine with ribbon so it was really a book. It was fun and the instructor was very good with an excellent sense of humor.

My second one was was Bright Birthday Mini Album, same as Sisterhood, but with a different theme. Very cute.

and then we scrap outside the book with a wall hanging, absolutely adorable…Live, Love, Laugh with Keller’s Creations – they were hilarious and the class was great…fast paced, but not the speed of lightening fast lol

After that was about an hour and a half break, so I called Trav and asked him to pick me up so I could eat, then bring me back in time for the 6:30 workshop. Which he did. While I waited for him I took my first walk around the exhibit floor, lots of kewl stuff just waiting for me to find it.

Which eventually I did

This one was Expanding Baby Album – This was kind of a unique project, and I think that if all the components had fit together properly and the instructor wasn’t ill, it would have been a great class…but…I am planning on making this one at home, on my own, to see if it works out any better. I would really like this one if it is done correctly.

and that was it for Friday, Trav came and got me…it was right about 8pm. Long Day, but BOY did I have fun!!!!

And that’s it for today…stay tuned for Saturday!!!