Merry Christmas!

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.

What are your plans for the day tomorrow? My husband and I will be spending the day with his family. I saw my family yesterday to give them their Christmas gifts so that I could just relax today and do whatever I felt which was mostly watch Christmas movies.
One of the traditions that my husband and I do every year is watch The Christmas Story which starts at 8:00pm on Christmas Eve and ends at 8:00pm on Christmas day. I have to say I do enjoy watching that movie. Another tradition that my husband adapted from my family is opening your smallest gift under the tree at midnight.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and I hope you enjoy the day with your loved ones.

Here are a few pictures of decorations this year and my favorite holiday decorations

Good Morning and Happy Friday!!!

I want to share with you a great give away at one of the blogs I read faithfully that is just wonderful! Please stop by Suzanne’s blog and read her great give away and how to enter http://scrapbitz.blogspot.com/2010/12/big-announcementgift-giveaway.html

Life has been extremely busy for me with work and then I got hurt. I haven’t even felt like going into my scrap room and create anything which is a little sad as I have the beginnings of a card on my table that I have not been able to finish.

I LOVE to celebrate my birthday because that is really the one day of the year “IT’S ALL ABOUT ME” and trust me I take full advantage of that. I have a purple tiara I wear that was given to me by one on my friends one year and I have been wearing it ever since. I do an annual countdown every year starting on October 1st letting everyone know how many days I have left till my birthday.

Well, this year I did one email as I was swamped at work and was not getting home until real late every night and just wanted to get in the bed. Then four days before my birthday I hurt my back and was unable to really walk it hurt so badly when I moved and all I wanted to do was cry. I went to the doctor and got a demeroll shot which after words I could tell it took away some of my pain but not much and he also gave me a prescription for vicodin but that just put me to sleep and I need to go to work so I only took three of those pills. I ended up going back to the doctor the following Monday and he gave me a prescription for 800mg of Motrin which has helped but if I sit for too long it stiffens up on me but I was determined to get on my flight that Friday 10/22 to Chicago for a friend’s wedding. I am glad to report that I only have slight pain now if I try and do too much at one time like put up my Christmas tree but other than that I can finally sit for long periods

This is the birthday present from my friend Myra. When I got the box I opened it and at first thought she had forget to put the gift in and all I got was a card and a big purple gift bag. Don’t get me I love purple but I had to pat down the bag to make sure nothing was in it. I started to dig in the plastic peanuts and found this beautiful Scrapbooking tote. Can I tell you this thing is just beautiful!!!!

Here is my husband’s birthday present to me that I told him he got me after I had ordered it on HSN.com. I have not had much time to use it but I am hoping this weekend to sit down and play with it.

So, what are your plans for the weekend? I have to finish putting up my Christmas decorations and my brother-in-law's graduation from ITT is on Saturday and then I hope to get some Christmas shopping out of the way.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

I want to wish you all a Happy and Safe Thanksgiving! I hope you enjoy yourself today no matter if you are spending time with family or friends.

I can't wait to spend time with my family today and celebrate everything we are thankful for especially the food LOL!!!

Here is a picture of our food last year!

May God Bless you and your family today!

SO Excited!!!

Have you ever been so excited about something that other people think are NO big deal or think you are crazy for being so excited? Well, that was me last Friday when our new king size bed is being delivered. My husband and I previously had a queen size bed for 13 years and we FINALLY got a new limited edition “Sleep Number” bed.

I had to refrain from lying in the bed or I would have slept the weekend away. I found my sleep number quickly but it has taken my husband several days to find his but luckily he has found it now

Here is a picture of my new bed set which I LOVE!!!!
I know that I have MIA but I will be posting over the next few days to catch you up on all that has been going on with me from my birthday to present

Happy Sunday!

I hope everyone is having a relaxing Sunday so far today. I went and took some time for myself this morning and went and got a pedicure. Things have been so hectic for me lately between work and getting ready for my husband’s family reunion which was last weekend.

In between everything going on I was able to slip in some time and create this great layout of my husband. This is my take on the amazing sketch provided by Beggahuna for this month’s kit.

I love this picture of him that I took in October 2008 when we were in Jamaica on a mini vacation to celebrate my cousin’s 30th birthday.

I used the Swirlydoos September kit “Mon Amour”. This kit is filled with beautiful papers that give you a Parisian feel. When I saw all of the red in the kit I knew the picture of my husband would work perfect with these papers.

I used my zutter to distress the edges of the circles and then ran distress ink around the edges.

Supplies:
My Mind’s Eye- Lost & Found Union Square “Home Sweet Home” Love Paper
My Mind’s Eye- Lost & Found Union Square “Favorite”Birds of a Feather Paper
My Mind’s Eye- Lost & Found Union Square “Moments” Seamstress Paper
My Mind’s Eye- Union Square Collection “Glittered Die Cut Pieces”
Prima Crystals
Prima- Valentine Vine Collection “Heart and Flower”
Zutter Distrezz it All
Distress Ink-Black Soot




Below are some pictures from the family reunion last weekend that I was able to capture:

Memorial & Comic Con Convention

Yesterday marked the 12th anniversary of my mother’s passing. Usually it is a very difficult day for me and I try to keep busy so my mind does not stay on that all day. Every year I put a memorial to her in the paper as a tribute to her.

Well this year my husband got a booth at the Baltimore Comic Con. I am sure you are wondering what that is. Well, it’s basically a big convention for the lovers of comic books and super hero art. This is my husband’s first show and even though we did not sell much at the show but he did sell several copies of his novella and did a commission painting which in my eyes is very good in this economy as I didn’t see many people buying much this year so I think even though we didn’t hit his goal we did good.

Here are a few pictures from the show and the people I was able to get pictures of in their costumes.

Watercolors he did at the convention:

One of the many people dressed in costumes:

Antother watercolor he did at the convention:

Our table at the convention:

Well, It's time to start getting some work done and hopefully have a way better week then I did last week. I was never so happy for a Friday to arrive!

Lost Pictures

As a scrapbooker the pictures we take mean the world to us and losing them would just be one of the most devastating things that could happen. Well yesterday that horror almost happened to me. On Sunday I went to go see my new little cousin and when I got home I immediately went to my computer to load up pictures that I could send to family to share as they all saw the baby when she was first born and I was away on a cruise.

Well, I use Creative Memories Memory Manager for my pictures and I love that software. Well to share the pictures I was going to use Google’s Picasa which I had only used once instead of using my shutterfly.com account to share the many pictures I had taken. Well with Picasa they just load all pictures on to it without asking if you just want to load one thing after it had finished loading all these random pictures and all they folders showed up that I did not want I started deleting the folders. In the back of my mind I wondered if they were messing anything else up but kept on deleting and then when I woke up yesterday I had decided to jump on my laptop and make a quick disk of the pictures to take and send thru email at work (yes was going to be slacking at work but I get in so darn early it would not of mattered) I logged on and opened Memory Manager and a big note flashed up when I went to my picture library letting me know my pictures were damaged. Well that is what deleting that stuff from Picasa did it was deleting my pictures from my memory manager file. I was so ready to cry but LUCKILY last time I say my CM consultant we got to talking about Memory Manager and she told me about the option of making a shadow copy of my picture database instead of having to do disk back-ups every time. I immediately went out that weekend and got an external hard drive just for this and that came in so handy yesterday when 7542 pictures were damaged (YES that many) and all I had to do was restore from my shadow copy. I only lost 74 pictures but they happened to just be the pictures I took on Sunday of my new little cousin which were still sitting on my card so I just reloaded them again deleted Picasa from my laptop and set up a shutterfly share account.

If I would of ended up losing all of those pictures. I would of just gotten back in bed called in sick as I would of not of been good to anyone. As it stood I couldn’t wait to get home and see if I could figure out what the 74 pictures were that I had lost.

Back from Vacation

I am back home after seven fun filled days aboard the Carnival Pride for our Exotic Eastern Caribbean cruise. We went to Grand Turk, Half Moon Cay, & Freeport, Bahamas. In total there were 10 people who joined us on this cruise and we had a ball. I did not want the cruise to end but I had to come back into reality. I hope to have pictures posted by this weekend.

I have to say if you have never been on a cruise you should definitely go for the experience even if you start out on a short cruise of 3 or 4 days. I can’t wait to start planning our next cruise and we are thinking about doing an Alaskan cruise.

Cricut Imagine

Have you guys heard the new buzz about Cricut coming out with a new machine? Well, it’s true and HSN's launch is September 14th. I can't wait to see what this machine will do the price is about $599.00 but if the deal is good I might have a new machine in my house. Like I need another one.

Well, I leave in 4 days for my cruise and I can't express how excited I am for this vacation. I can't wait to get on that boat and just relax and maybe try the drink of the day. I am most excited about is the Chocolate Molting Lava Cake dessert.

Family Reunion

I just got back from my family reunion last Sunday. This was the first reunion we have had in two years due to some damage on our homestead. Even though we were not having a reunion the last two year some family members and I were still going down to relax and enjoy some time away from the city. Our Homestead is located in a small town called Hurt, VA.

Since we still have some repairs that need to be done to the house we didn’t have all of our regular activities at the house this year like we usually do. We only had a little cook-out at the house on Friday and a banquet at a restaurant in the next town on Saturday. We had a small turn out this year but I got to see a cousin who we haven’t seen in years who decided to come from FL.

Here are some pictures of the reunion and the Family Ancestry tables we had.


My little cousins playing in the pool at the hotel:

My little cousins:

My cousin Robin and her daughter Sierra:

Homemade chocolate chip ice cream is the best

Cookout at the homesead on Friday:

My little cousin Monty seeing if he could fit in the back of our rental van:

In a week I leave for a cruise. Nothing like having vacations basically back to back. I am going to try to slip in some scrapbooking in between every thing else I have to get done this week to be ready to leave next Sunday. I am sooo ready to get on the cruise ship and get my massage and just relax. I will also have about 15 family members going with me on this cruise also and after that no more real plans except to not burn up in this heat we have been having this summer. It's supposed to be 102 today.

Happy Wednesday!

Happy Wednesday!!!! The last two weeks have been just crazy. I am preparing for my family reunion which is this weekend and I am also on the committee for my husband’s family reunion and both have needed me to do things on top of trying to finish my family reunion scrapbook to present this year at the reunion. I was able to sneak a few hours away and create this cute layout of my niece Emily. She is just so adorable and I was lucky when we had everyone over for a small 4th of July cookout they were able to come and I was able to get some cute pictures of her and my nephew.



I love reading blogs as you don’t know what neat little things people are going to share that you have just been looking for and that recently happened to me. I was reading one of the blogs I follow (Jeannette Sicilani) and she was talking about these Jo Tote Bags for cameras http://www.jototes.com/. I hate the regular bulky bags for cameras and I have been looking for just a cute bag that you would not know had a camera in it and low and behold it was my lucky day



Products Used:
My Mind's Eye- Quite Contrary "Hello Beautiful" paper
Prima Bling & flowers
MS Butterfly punch

Happy Monday!

Hope everyone has enjoyed the 4th of July holiday. I know I have enjoyed just doing nothing and who doesn’t enjoy cook-out food?

Last weekend I went to the Great American Scrapbook Convention (GASC) in Chantilly, VA. I had an absolute blast I took a card class called card tricks, I was also going to take a Quick Quotes class on chalking but ended up switching it for a photo class to take better pictures and I am SO glad I did as I learned a lot of information. I also took a Getting to know your Gypsy class so that I knew how to operate my gypsy. I learned a few things but wish I would have learned more but I did learn enough to not feel completely lost using my Gypsy.

I had family over on Saturday for a small gathering and yesterday I spent most of my day in my craft room cleaning up and creating some simple layouts as they have to go in a Creative Memories binder so didn’t do allot of embellishments.

Cards made in my Card Tricks class:


Pictures from my Photo class:



This little doosey is a peep. I fell in love with them and hopefully soon you can order them from www.letspartyhearty.com:



Here are pictures of the trip I took in Jamaica when I went in 2008: Most of the paper was used from the Swirlydoos beautiful June Antebellum Beauty Kit:






Yesterday when I ran into Walmart to pick up some quick supplies I went into the scrapbooking isle to view the cricut cartridges that are exclusive to them and had to pick up these two cartridges:


If you have today off like I do I hope you enjoy it to the fullest.

Great American Scrapbooking Convention

I really can’t believe we are basically at the end of June but I am actually excited because the end of June this year also means that it is time for the annual Great American Scrapbook Convention in Chantilly, VA.

I have been going to this for the last two years with my cousins who also scrap and let me tell you we have a blast at this thing. We usually get there early as there are so many vendors and take & makes you can do. Last year I signed up for a color class that was very informative. Well this year they are having a Gypsy class that my cousin and I have signed up for on Saturday so we know how to do the Gypsy inside and out. I also signed up for a card class tonight and my husband up for a photography class as he takes the worst pictures. I mean every one of them comes out blurry. I also signed up for a chalk it up class that Quick Quotes is doing.

But the best part of the whole thing is spending time with family and then after we spend all of our money or just run ourselves into the ground we go over to Eggspectation for something to eat.

Here are some of the pictures that I got last year at the convention.

My Cousin Robin & her daughter Sierra figuring out what to by:


Me & Sierra:


My cousin Traon:


Layout Displays:



Well off to gather the supplies I need for tonight's card class! I am so excited!

First Sketch!

I would first like to wish a Happy Father’s Day to all the dad’s out there and hope that you are enjoying your day. I saw my dad this morning after church and this afternoon we are off to celebrate with my father-in-law and my brother-in-law.

I finished my very first sketch and I am very pleased on how it turned out. I had been working on it for weeks as each time it just was not right to me and would end up changing something and working on it for an hour and then just get frustrated and go on to something else. All of a sudden the layout popped into my head one day and after working on it there was my final sketch.




Here is a copy of the layout I did with the sketch. I used papers from the Swirlydoos Park Avenue Kit:

Baby Shower!

I had the honor of hosting my cousin’s baby shower. I have been planning this event for months and it had finally arrived. She will be having twins (a boy and girl) in August. It was a great time even though it was hot outside but everyone enjoyed themselves and she got some nice things for the babies and still has one more baby shower to get through that will be thrown by her sorority sisters.

Here are some of the pictures from her baby shower:

The invite:

I created the invite using creative memories storybook creator 3.0

Here are the favors:



The beautiful cake:


Pictures of the guests and opening of gifts:





I can't wait until these bundle of joys join our family and we get to spoil them. I know my cousin is ready for them to come as she is now on bed rest and is not really sure what to do with her time. I don't think I would enjoy being on bed rest much either but I could absoutley try it out for a couple of days LOL!!!