Hilton Head Island

Thanks to my wonderful customers and my amazing downline, I was one of thirty Canadian demonstrators who earned a weekend getaway to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina from Stampin' Up!  My husband and I enjoyed four relaxing days last weekend at the Westin Resort and Spa on the island.  I had never heard of Hilton Head Island before I earned this trip, and I was pleasantly surprised when we arrived.  What a beautiful place!

This first photo was taken from the airplane as we landed in Savannah, Georgia.  I just loved how the sunlight came through the clouds, and you can see the lush trees below.  In Savannah, a shuttle picked us up to take us on the short trip to the hotel on Hilton Head Island.

This photo of the beach from our hotel was taken when we arrived Thursday evening.

On Friday, we took a shuttle from the hotel to Shelter Cove Marina, where we walked along the boardwalk, shopped at touristy boutiques and enjoyed the beautiful weather.

We also enjoyed walking along the beach.  There are miles of soft, white sandy beaches here!

 These are five of the six ladies in our downline group who earned the trip! 

On Saturday morning, my friend, Donna, and her husband, Dan, who had rented a vehicle, drove us to Harbour Head so we could see the lighthouse there.  It was another beautiful morning!

Saturday afternoon, we spent bike riding around the island.  Stampin' Up! had rented bikes for us to sign out and use, complete with a Stampin' Up! flag on the back, which we got to take home after!  The island has bike paths everywhere, so it is very bike-friendly.

 

 On Saturday night, Ian and I dressed up a bit and enjoyed a nice dinner at one of the hotel's restaurants.  You can see how curly my hair got because of the humidity!

Every evening, Stampin' Up! left a "pillow gift" for us in our rooms.  The first night, we got a beach tote, the second, there was a fruit & cheese platter with fancy water bottles waiting for us, and the third night we received a storage container filled with a stamp set, designer series paper, ribbon, ink pads and embellishments (that was the best one)!

On Sunday morning, we went for a nice breakfast, walked along the beach one last time, and took a few photos outside the hotel (this one is at the fountain in the courtyard).  Then it was off to the airport for our flight home.

It was a wonderful trip, and my husband and I enjoyed having some time together without the kids (my mom was kind enough to come out from B.C. and stay with our boys while we went on the trip).  So thank you to my loyal customers, my hard-working downline and Stampin' Up! for a trip we will never forget.

Blessings to you,

Ooh Baby!

This is a card I CASEd from Christy Harsch.  I love the simplicity.  It uses the Baby Bundle stamp set - stamped the little images in Basic Black.  Then I used sponge daubers to add dots of ink over the stamped images (Melon Mambo, Marina Mist, Certainly Celery and Daffodil Delight).  To finish off, I tied some Celery satin ribbon around the card and added a layered piece with the sentiment.

Super quick and easy!  My favourite kind of card!

On a personal note, we got the move-in date for our house, finally!  On August 24, we will officially have our new house!  I will be so happy to be out of this apartment!  So now I'm going to get to work planning my New Catalogue Open House (better late than never!).

Blessings to you,

Moving!

I know it's been awhile since I've posted... we've had a VERY busy month!  Our house sold at the end of March (finally)!  And, of course, the new family wanted a 30-day possession, so we've been crazily packing, sorting, storing, changing utilities, finding a place to rent, etc. for the past few weeks.  I really haven't had much time for anything else!

We're building our new house (which I am so excited about!), but it won't be ready for several months, so in the meantime, we'll be renting a condo.  I have a wonderful friend, Susan, who has volunteered to let me use her basement craft area to hold my clubs since the condo will be too small for classes.  THANK YOU SO MUCH, SUSAN!!! 

I've had to pack a lot of my crafting supplies for storage (the condo only has so much space! LOL!). So, I don't know how much extra crafting I'll be able to do in the next few months, besides preparing for my classes.  I'm hoping to get a few things posted after we move in two weeks, but until then, I'll be packing and stressing! 

Hopefully I'll "see" you all soon!

Blessings to you,

All-Day Scrap

On Saturday, my church hosted its ninth annual all-day scrap.  I am one of the organizers, so it has been a busy month getting ready for this!  We basically take over the church for the day!  Each lady gets her own table with lots of gifts, and we have hourly door prize draws, music, continental brunch, a catered supper (this year was southwest chicken with rice and spinach salad - yummy!) and a huge door prize draw at the end of the night.  We go from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m.  I was so exhausted after this weekend, but it was a blast!

Here's the before shot from Friday night after we finished setting up.

Here we are Saturday, going full tilt!

Our theme was "Ever After", so for table gifts, we chose a lot of princess-y things (glitter, sparkly Sending Love designer series paper, a tiara, princess book, chocolate, Crystal Light and water)!

 

For our hourly door prize draws, the ladies could choose from items on this table.

 

All in all, a great day!  I did get some work done, though not as much as I would have liked!  I'll post some of what I did this week...

Blessings to you,

Our Road Trip to Drumheller

On Thursday, we went camping for one night (that's all I can handle!). We decided to drive down to Drumheller for an overnighter. What gorgeous country! It's hard to believe there's a dessert in Alberta! It's about a four-hour drive, so we settled in with our slurpees and away we went. We arrived in Drumheller around 3:30, set up camp, and went to the Royal Tyrell Museum (a dinosaur museum). The boys LOVED it! We went back to camp around 6:00, roasted hot dogs on the fire and sent our grumpy, tired little campers to bed. Unfortunately, they were so wound up about sleeping in a tent that they could not settle down! They were overtired and excited (a bad combination!) and they went back and forth between tears, screaming and laughing. Ian and I ended up sitting in the tent with them most of the evening trying to keep them quiet so the other campers wouldn't be too annoyed!

That night, three thunderstorms rolled through! It was unbelievable! The canyon walls made the thunder echo so loudly, we couldn't believe it! The tent is waterproof, so we stayed dry, but we didn't get much sleep!

The next day, before heading home, we went to check out the hoodoos and the World's Largest Dinosaur (or so they claim!). It was quite a short, albeit memorable, trip!

Thanks for reading!

Blessings to you,

Happy Anniversary, Ian!

My husband and I are celebrating our 12th anniversary today! (Actually we went out for supper on Friday night because our son's birthday is tomorrow and this weekend has been all about his birthday hoopla!)

On Friday when I came downstairs in the morning, I found a beautiful bouquet of roses waiting for me! What a wonderful man I married! Then on Friday night we went out for supper, followed by shopping for Adam's birthday! Not very romantic, but at least it was just the two of us!

I made this card for him. It's kind of a combination between goofy and sophisticated (kind of like him!). I love the Bella Bleu dsp, so I started with that, then added the "hugs & kisses" sentiment from Love You Much with a vanilla hodgepodge hardware frame.

Anyway, Happy Anniversary, Ian! I love you!

First Snowfall and a Birthday Card

This is the birthday card I made for my MIL, Margo. I was inspired by the wrapping paper! I used Poppin' Pastels technique for this one - I stamped all the flowers from Best Wishes & More in VersaMark, then used my sponge daubers to dab Stampin' Pastels all over them (Tempting Turquoise, Pixie Pink, Yoyo Yellow, Lovely Lilac, Gorgeous Green). For the main flower, I used rock 'n' roll technique in Yoyo Yellow and Pixie Pink, then punched it out with the new 1 3/4" circle punch and adhered it to a large metal edge tag circle. For the center, I stamped the flower again in Pixie Pink, punched out the center with my 3/4" circle punch and glued it into the middle.

On Remembrance Day, we had our first snowfall of the year, so the boys were out in the morning playing as much as they could! It was all gone by the afternoon, but they enjoyed it while it lasted! Here are a few photos:

Christmas Extravaganza Open House!

Well, I've had strep throat for about a week now, so I'm scrambling to get ready for my annual Christmas Extravaganza Open House on Saturday. I am so excited about this event! I've invited several of my friends who are consultants with different direct sales companies to come to my house, and we all get a table to display our products. Then we all invite our friends, customers, families, neighbours - everyone! - to come for one-stop shopping! There will be representatives from Stampin' Up! (of course!), Epicure Selections, Tupperware, Home Interiors, Fifth Avenue Jewelry, Arbonne, Discovery Toys, Pampered Chef, Norwex and Avon. We have a big door prize draw that has products from all of the companies, so for every $50 a guest spends, she gets an entry.

Here is something I've been working on for my Stampin' Up! table. They are tins with note cards that I think would be great teacher gifts!
For the cards, I just used the Note Cards that come in a pack of 20. I added some designer paper and stamping accents to those. Each tin has 8 cards and envelopes (I would have put in more, but they barely close with the 8!). I also included a gift card with each tin. I made Christmas and apple themed tins, using the I Wish Scrappin' Kit and Summer Picnic papers.


Thanks for reading, and if you're in my area, make sure you stop by on Saturday! (Just email me for the address.)

Blessings to you,

Scrapbook Club Layout & School

Hello again! It's been a busy week so far, as I'm sure it has been for all of you with kids in school! My oldest son started preschool this week, so it's been a big change for me. I can't believe he's already in school (I posted a picture of him below!). Then tonight I have a meeting for AWANA - I'm going to be the preschool (Cubbies) director this year, so that should keep me busy!

Here's the layout that my Scrapbook Club will be doing this week. It's our final meeting for this club, and I'm really going to miss seeing these ladies each month! We're doing a Fall layout. Some ladies wanted Halloween and some wanted Thanksgiving, so they get to choose between the following two (it's the same layout, just different colours and papers). And of course, some ladies opted to do both!

For this Halloween layout, I used the Ghostly Greeting designer paper (isn't it fun!) as the colour palette. The pages are Pumpkin Pie with Basic Black and Old Olive (should be Kiwi Kiss, but I don't have enough of that yet - Old Olive works too!). I stamped the letters with the Taffy Alphabet and rolled the Haunting jumbo wheel along the bottom, both in Basic Black. The pumpkins are made using the Sizzix die cut Pumpkin #4 (I love this!). I made the journaling tags with the tag corner punch and put some jumbo eyelets through them with Basic Black grosgrain.

For the Thanksgiving/Fall page, I used the Haiku designer series paper with So Saffron as the page base. I layered Close to Cocoa and Old Olive. The letters are stamped with Lovely Letters in Close to Cocoa, and I used the Fall Harvest wheel for the pumpkins with Chocolate Chip ink. I coloured in the pumpkins with my blender pens using Tangerine Tango and Old Olive ink. For these tags, I used copper eyelets and hemp twine.
And finally, here's a photo of my little guy on his first ever day of school! He was so excited, he hardly slept the night before. He's wearing his new Cars backpack, lunch kit and socks! He had a great time. I got to be the parent helper on the first day, and his teacher is amazing.

Thanks for reading today.

Blessings to you,

Jamaica Photos

As promised, here are a few photos of our trip. It was a great holiday with my husband's parents, his brother and sister and their spouses and kids! There were fifteen of us altogether, including seven kids (six of them under five!). It was quite an adventure, but lots of fun!

I actually didn't take a lot of pictures in Jamaica because my FIL and BIL are both camera nuts, and they took TONS of pictures that they will be making into a DVD for me. So until I get their good pictures, here are a few of my own favourites!

We went on a glass bottom boat ride to the reef off the shore, and there we were able to go snorkeling (I sat in the boat with Noah because he's too little, but DH enjoyed the swim!). Here he is with Adam, who wanted to snorkel with Daddy! Look at the colour of that water! GORGEOUS!
Adam learned how to swim with water wings while we were there! Both the boys just loved the ocean, and they played and ran in and out of the water. It was a great white-sand beach with not much surf. The water was really shallow for quite a ways out, so it was perfect for all of our kids.This is my FIL, DH and our two DSs(?) at the beach outside our hotel. DH has a bit of a "farmer tan"!This is the hotel we stayed in. My parents-in-law had the ground unit by the pool, and we were in the one behind there. The beach is just beyond the pool, so we could get up each morning and go play in the sand! It was a beautiful hotel, owned by my FIL's cousin. It was really neat to get to meet some of our extended family there.We went for a boat tour of the Black River, where there are a lot of crocodiles (who knew?)! The guide would stop and feed them chicken from the boat. Here's one of our reptilian friends!We also went to YS Falls. You are allowed to walk in the falls, but we didn't go in as the boys are pretty little and the rocks are slippery. It's a beautiful waterfall.This is DH and the boys at the Tree House Restaurant (one of our favourites!). I love that we could just sit and eat right on the beach and enjoy the views. I know this is a lot of photos! Thanks for your patience! Guess who took most of our pictures? As I went through all the photos, I noticed that I'm hardly in any of them! Oh well! Thanks for reading! I'm going to spend the afternoon blurfing and catching up on what other people are doing, and I hope to get some stamping done this weekend.

Blessings to you,

Back From Jamaica!

Hello All! I've been on holidays for the past 2 weeks, playing at the beach in Negril, Jamaica with my extended family! It's been an amazing holiday, and now I'll be spending the next two weeks catching up on everything!

I did set my blog to post a few items while I was gone because I don't like it to look like I'm away from home (you can't be too safe in cyber-space!). But now that I'm back I can tell you all about it - which I will this week! For now, I have about ten loads of laundry to do, plus unpack, get groceries, read the 200+ emails I missed (I probably subscribe to too many blogs!) and catch up on all my blog friends!

I will post some pictures after I go through the disc and see what I have. And I will try to be a better blog friend from now on (I know I have missed out on visiting all your blogs, so I'll be there this week).

Thanks for reading, and I'll "see" you soon!

Blessings to you,

Soccer Thank You

I had to come up with a thank you card for DS' soccer coach since the season is ending, and I recently bought the Just Soccer set to use for scrapbooking his soccer photos. Well, it turns out it works perfectly for a soccer thank you card as well (who'd have thought?! LOL!).

I just stamped the soccer ball image several times in Basic Black on Whisper White and punched them out with my 1 3/8" square punch. They are layered onto Yoyo Yellow and Basic Black cardstock (the team's colours). Then I stamped the "thank you" from Much Appreciated (how can they retire this set?) and layered it on with dimensionals.

Quick and easy (and stunningly soccer-y, if I do say so myself!).

This was Adam's first year in soccer, and it is so much fun to watch four-year-olds "play" soccer! What a fun age! Their team is called Mello Yellows! Here he is in his uniform.

I must say that it hit me this week that I am now a minivan-driving soccer mom. When did this happen!? AAAH! I suppose worse things could happen! LOL!

Thanks for stopping by today.

Blessings to you,

Canada Day Fireworks!

I'll allow myself one more non-stamping post, then I'll get back to the good stuff! Thanks for indulging me!

We decided that Adam is old enough to go to the Canada Day fireworks, so DH woke him up at 10:30 to take him down to the fair grounds to watch them. He was VERY tired today! Grouchy four-year-olds are not fun. But it was worth it! Here's my tired boy with Daddy:
Blessings to you,