While I was at one of David’s basketball games last week, one of the other player’s Moms asked me about photography.  She, Rachel, had noticed my Nevada License Plate (ITAKPIX) and asked what I take pictures of.  This got us talking about photography…she shoots Nikon and I am a Canon girl. Most of the other player’s parents shoot Nikon as well.

At the next game Rachel asked me what I did with my pictures, was I a scrapbooker. “Why, Yes I Am!” Rachel went on to tell me she was a Creative Memories rep and that she was having a crop on Friday and would I like to come? YES YES YES!!! It had been SOOOOO long since I had scrapbooked.  However, I did want Rachel to know that I didn’t scrapbook in the Creative Memories style and she was fine with that.

Friday I packed my stuff and went to the vacated store front where we would be scrapping.  What a deal, a big former store, with plenty of tables, was ours for $25 which was split between the five of us who showed up to scrapbook…plenty of space to spread out and got to meet some other scrappers.

It was a nice evening and it was the impetus I needed to get my butt in gear and start unpacking all my scrapbooking stuff…I didn’t realize how much I had missed that creative outlet, especially now that I am done decorating the house.  I keep saying I am going to start spending one day a week, Wednesdays, exploring ND with my camera, but have yet to actually do it…the hold up this week was that David was home sick today and I don’t dare do much driving with the spare on…new tires go on tomorrow.  Maybe I can shoot some tomorrow after the tires go on.

Prior to the Fair, I’d never seen a quilt like this in my life. It reminds me of paper piecing in scrapbooking.  The quilt store had many patterns like this in many different styles.  One looked like a stained glass nativity scene…it was stunning!

This is what I want to learn how to do.  Sonya and I were thinking that these are the kinds of Winter projects we need to work on when it’s too cold to work outside…I have to agree.  I do, occasionally, get burned out on scrapping and need another diversion…something like this will be a diversion.

Mott has a quilting guild here in town.  I found out about it at the quilting store.  And the quilting guild is always looking for more members.  During “Tractor Fest”, tomorrow, I am going to into the guild and sign up to learn how to quilt…I’m hoping Sonya signs up with me, but if not, that’s OK too.

What is “Tractor Fest” you ask? Well…it’s a festival glorifying tractors…DUH!  Now, if your next question is, “Why would anyone want to glorify tractors?”…the answer to that one is, “Beats the hell out of me…I’m a city girl!”. LOL!

I’ll post the lowdown on tractor fest sometime tomorrow or Sunday.

It’s the number of scrapbooking page kits and mini albums that I priced for the yard sale today.

Mark your calendars…my big MOVING sale will be Saturday, April 18th.  Time still needs to be determined. Lots of scrapbook supplies to be had at rock bottom pricing…that is if you are in the Las Vegas Area, or maybe you want to fly into town for my sale? (Not very likely! LOL)  I do promise to have other non-scrapbooking crap, STUFF, for sale!

I had better get back to work.  I see some Iris carts that are stuffed to the gills with stuff I don’t think I have every used! Gee, what a surprise!  I think I hear a 12-step program calling my name!

So, to make my life easier, I decided that I was only going to touch stuff once.  Whatever I touch in the “getting ready to move” process goes in one of three piles! The “going to North Dakota pile”, the “Trash” can, or the “Garage Sale” pile.  As an item goes in the garage sale pile, a price tag goes on it so I don’t need to go back at some point in the future to do that part.

So I took a preliminary cruise through my scrapbook room!  SCARY!  Between DVD’s in the TV cabinet, my collection of Making Memories Alphabet Rub-ons, un-opened packs of Bazzill Cardstock,  and various chipboard sets…I priced over 500 items for the garage sale!  And that was just the preliminary cruise through the scrapbook room!  Now I should really dig through drawers and shelves in the scrapbook room to continue the process.

What scares me the most is that this is just one room!  I want to have the garage sale at the end of the month, but now I am wondering if that is going to be possible?

My pal, Luis and his nephew Jorge, are here doing some repairs around the house. Let me tell you about Luis! He is a phenominal general contractor/handy-man that has been traded around the family and my neighborhood. The first person who had Luis was my neighbor across the street. Crev is a building inspector for the city. He had heard about Luis and had him come to his house to give a bid on work. Crev was so impressed he hired Luis on to do some major renovations to his house.

From there, Luis went to Crev’s next door neighbor and they had him for several more months. After that, Rochell had him come over to do some minor repairs then ended up having him remodel the majority of her house’s interior. Finally it was my turn!

One of the jobs Luis and Jorge have done was to put ceiling fans in the bedrooms, and put recessed light in the kitchen.

Here is the crux of the story. After all those jobs, there is some touch-up painting that needs to be done. Being a scrapbooker, I saved the paint swatches for the interior painting Brian and I did almost 6 years ago. I knew which scrapbook the paint chips were in. I went right to it and pulled out the scrapbook page. I handed it to Luis, he took it to Lowes and got the paint we needed. See, easy peasy!

As an aside, if you are in the Vegas area and need a VERY REASONABLE, VERY GOOD, general contractor/handy-man, shoot me an email and I can give you Luis’ phone number.

I found a cute chipboard mailbox by Maya Road that came with a 12-page chipboard album in the shape of a large postage stamp.  I decorated both for Brian’s Valentine.  Wanted to remind of those of us still in NV that love and miss him.

Here are the photos of the mailbox.

I thought it turned out pretty cute…I don’t know if my husband will like all the pink, but hey, it’s Valentine’s!  Below are the contents of the mini album:

Sonya's Canvas

Above is the 12×12 canvas I mad for Sonya.  I took Danielle and Cam out to Floyd Lamb State Park to take some portraits.  I decided to use this one for her canvas.  The embellishments are all from the Basic Grey Granola line and the paint is Making Memories.

Mom's Canvas

I’d been wanting to make a canvas for Rochell (Mom).  After talking to Gigi and Sonya, they thought that a canvas with Pop’s picture might be too hard to deal with on our first Christmas without him.  I decided to go ahead and make the canvas but decided to give it to her early, like in October.  The paper is Basic Grey, the flowers are Prima, the other embellishments are Making Memories.

I wish I could have photographed Mom’s canvas without getting such a glare.  The photos you can see are the larger one, which I took.  The upper left picture is Pop’s High School Senior picture.  The one that caught all the glare is a photo I took of Mom and Pop together…Pop’s head is turned, kissing Mom on the cheek while she looked straight at the camers.

I had a ton of fun making the canvasses…Now I just need to make some for me.  Plus, I didn’t get one done for Porter which I had intended to do…so someday when he picks up the mail, there may be a surprise for him.

Since “Black Friday”, the various craft stores have had the Cricut Design Studio software on sale.  The neat thing about this software is that it will allow you take the fonts and images of the cartridges you own and mix and match them, as well as “welding” them together to create new designs and images.  I found this idea very exciting.

For example, one of the cartridges I own is a Mickey and Friends cartridge.  One of the designs is a filmstrip frame…including sprocket holes and frame openings.  I was able to weld the iconic signatures into each of the frame openings.  So when I cut this it will all be in one piece rather than cutting the filmstrip and the “Mickey Mouse”, and the “Donald Duck”, and the “Pluto”, etc., and adding them in manually.

Now that I have the whole Design Studio Software thing figured out…I’m really excited about some of the Christmas presents I am making.  It’s opening up a whole new world for me!! LOL

If you have the Design Studio Software and want my .cut file for for the welded border I created you can download it here (copy and paste the link):

http://www.mediafire.com/?htcmgqnnyyd

Thanks…just had to share my enthusiasm!

Due to the economic crisis the family is having a “homemade” Christmas.  So I needed to get into my scraproom to create the gifts I’ve had in mind…but also because I took a roadtrip with the girls on Friday.

www.whyslice.com

Eileen had come across a Scrapbook USA Expo that was going to be in St. George UT this weekend…well, Friday and Saturday.  Taking a roadtrip with the gals to St. George is something we’ve talked about for a few years but had yet to actually do it…we finally did!  The expo was great!  We didn’t take any classes but there were a ton of manufacturers there that were selling for pennies on the dollar!  Basic Grey kits that normally retail for $20 were $3.  Fancy Pants had a HUGE booth with chipboard sets for $1, huge paper packs for $5, 12″ acrylic stamp sets for $2.50…ridiculous pricing!!!  Plus some of the bigger stores in UT were there selling their stuff too and they had some NICE deals. Like Keeping Memories Alive…they were selling Making Memories new die cutter, The Slice, for the normal retail price but there were throwing in an extra design card ($40 value) and they were selling all their other design cards for $30 ($10 savings).  I had to get one once I saw it demoed!  It also became my “prize” for cleaning up my scrap room.

Yep…I wouldn’t let myself unpack my goodies from the trip on Friday until my room was done.  I got the room almost completely done (working until 4am this morning, thank you very much) but couldn’t wait to get my slice out and play with it.  OK…maybe I worked til 3am and played until 4am. I LOVE IT!  Lots of interesting application ideas come to mind!!

So my weekend is almost half over (David and Brian both have Monday and Tuesday off too) and I feel that I have gotten quite a bit accomplished…I still have a week’s worth of laundry waiting for me, but I can do that tomorrow.  I’m going to keep playing in my scraproom in the meantime.