When I was going through my pictures I discovered I had a lot of pictures of Matt when he was sleeping. He was a very light sleeper, so it was fairly rare that we could catch a picture of him sleeping and even more rare than I could actually touch him when he was sleeping. So the pictures where he is sleeping in my arms is probably the only times we could ever get him to do that. It's funny because he sleeps like the dead now and I usually have to pound on his door to wake him up in the mornings.

I just love the puzzle pieces. I think they were one of the neatest things I was able to find at the Expo. The large letters have both a positive and negative image that you can use. The big ones wouldn't fit across the page, so I had to use the small punched out ones. The small ones have rub-on letters and are double sided so you can mix and match the colors and patterns - very fun!

I love the picture of the cat in the bassinet. That's our Tigger who was my pet before we got married. I loved him to death, but I nearly freaked when I saw him in the baby's bed. It was about a week before the birth and we had lovingly washed all the bedding and gotten everything all ready for the baby-to-be and then we walk in and there is Tigger sleeping so peacefully in the baby bassinet with a big smile on his little kitty face. You could tell that he was thinking that his people were so kind to set him up such a soft and comfortable little bed. Naturally, we shooed him out of there and re-washed everything and then we had to be careful to keep the bedroom door closed so he never got in there again.

These pictures were from a very special trip. When Matt was born, we lived in So. California and my Mom and Dad lived in Utah. My Mom tipped me off that my favorite Aunt and Uncle were coming for a visit from their home in Northern CA. So, we cooked up a plan for a surprise visit for them to see the baby. We flew in and my Dad pretended that he was going to the grocery store, but really he was picking us up from the airport. When I came through the door with the baby in my arms, my uncle was in the living room. At first, it didn't register that I wasn't supposed to be there, but then he was so surprised and both of them were absolutely delighted to see Matt.

It was also a nice opportunity to visit with my sister and my nieces who both enjoyed holding the baby. Even at 12 and 14, they were both crazy about kids. It's funny to think that between them they have 5 kids of their own now!

I think this one is my favorite spread. I just love cute little baby butts! I tried to show these to Matt's girlfriend Niki, but he got all embarassed and closed the album so she couldn't see them. I guess that's the whole point of pictures like this - to show them to his friends and watch him get all red and embarassed - evil mother!!!

Here are some more pics from the retreat. As you can see, some of us are still in our jammies. I'm hiding in the back because I always hate to have my picture taken. We made for quite a group. In the back row in a purple sweater is Daisy from the on-line store Eclectic Paperie. She had to be evacuated from her home today due to those horrible fires raging in San Diego. The last report we had from her, the fire was burning right behind the houses across the street from hers. Could you just imagine? Several of our other Divas have homes in danger too, so please send them your prayers and good wishes. They must be so worried!

Look at this cute little ornament Michelle gave me. This was the craft she was teaching, but I thought it looked a bit too complicated for me, so she was sweet enough to give me hers because she was worried it would get squashed on the plane. She said to be sure to mention that she cased it from someone named Lisa Summers.






Just look at these darling little froggies Terry came up with for us. They are so cute and they are all made with different sized punches. One of the girls even made a little top hat for hers using the tab punch. I need to neaten up my ribbons a bit, but since I was going on about 3 hours sleep, I'll cut myself a break!





I have to say, I think this project was the funniest one. Everyone else got smart and used the stamp-a-ma-jig, but I just don't have the patience for it so mine came out kind of goofy! My husband looks like he is eating his shirt and his top and bottom halves don't quite line up. But I love my little kitties all stacked up, and of course Matt is wearing all black, but I couldn't find any skulls or the other creepy stuff teenagers wear these days. This one is going in my stamp room for sure!


Missi came up with these cute Christmas planners using the Winter Bright Simply Scrappin' kits and a file folder. Cute and simple, just how I like it best. There are lists for your cards, your gifts, and even a pocket for your receipts. (Yeah, like I remember to keep the receipts!). I just wish I was half this organized!




I need to take a break and take some more pictures, but I wanted to show you this technique Debi showed us. It's called Faux Cloisonne and I thought it was fascinating. What you do is look through magazines to find pictures with a lot of texture. Some of the ones we used were pancakes, fried chicken, and pictures of sand and water. Then you take a line art stamp, like In Full Bloom, Natural Beauty or something and you stamp it in Versamark and emboss it. I did several of them and they came out really pretty.

Wow, did I have a great time this weekend! My on-line group, Utah Divas International put together a wonderful retreat for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. In addition to our local group of ladies, we had members flying in from clear across the country. I took vacation days on Thur & Fri so I could relax and enjoy the fun. And we did have fun! Not a lot of sleep, but what do you expect when you've got 18 women in one big room for a whole weekend???


We rented what was essentially a church campground in Morgan, Utah. It was a bit of a drive for me, but very pretty. It had a fire place, a kitchen, bathroom and showers, fairly nice. We each brought projects of our own to work on and each of us had brought a shoebox project to share with the rest. So, we spent most of Saturday working on these various projects. There are too many to post them all, but I'll post some of the highlights.

We were each assigned a retreat "sister" and we were to bring a gift for our sister. Christine was my sister and here is the gift I made for her. 
I got the idea from Samantha Parisi who is in one of my stamping groups. Her blog is RubberStampingDiva.com. You can't see them very well, but on the outside of the jar are little bats that my son Matt made for me with my circle punches. He was pretty proud of them. The fun part is that you can eat the contents. You take and dump all the ingredients (graham cracker crumbs, brown sugar, and M&M's) into a pan, put the Peeps on top and make it for 15 minutes at 350 and it comes out like s'mores. I wanted to do it with Ghost Peeps like Samantha has on her website, but I couldn't find the darn things anywhere, so I had to manage with these Pumpkin Peeps instead. Still came out cute, I think.



Here is Christine's gift to me. Isn't this a darling little clock? She had brought another one for a door prize and made a 3rd one while she was there. I think it's a darling idea and I'm going to put it in my stamp room. I need a clock in there because I don't have one and I'm always in there until way late at night.





Stacy made these fabulous journals as a special gift for all of us - 18 of them yowzers! I think they're just wonderful. There is space for journalling, pictures, and info about your sister, all bound into these cute little books. We all took turns during the weekend, writing little messages to each other to create a fun memory. Do you like the binding? Our own Daisy from Eclectic Paperie did a little tutorial for us on these bindings - they've very popular right now. Later, I'll post a pic of the cute address book she helped us make.


Stacy also did a complete stamp camp for us. She provided the following four projects for all of us, and even gave us printouts and CD's of the forms she uses to track her workshops. What great information!



These gift tags are a great idea. I'm going to use that with some of the tag sets I've got to create tags for my Christmas Stamp-a-stack events.

Don't you love this cute little Santa bag? I think it's darling, all made out of vellum and filled with candy. This vellum is stronger than I thought and it went together very nicely.


This is a cute card with the set that was on sale last month - can't think of the name of it right now - I think Season of Thankfulness or something. I should have used the Stamp-a-ma-jig to get it a little straighter, but it still came out cute.










This card is actually a coupon book. We used that coupon set to create four pages of tear-out coupons to give to someone as a Christmas gift. Very nice.
I've got lots more to post, but I've got to get this posted so it will meet the cutoff for Feedblitz. I'll put up some more pics tomorrow.

One of the fun things we do at our church is our Supercraft Saturday event. At least once or twice a year, we get together and make some fun projects. Because I'm the Craft Coordinator for our Presbyterian Women's group, I get to put it together this year and I think it's going to be a big hit! We've got some really fun projects in mind.


I'm teaching a stamping project (of course!) I'm doing some Christmas gift wrap ideas and one of my students is doing Christmas cards, so I thought those would compliment each other nicely. Here are some of the projects I've come up with so far.






I've also got a "genie bag" that I've completed, but didn't get a picture of and I think I'm going to add a 2-4-6-8 box, some stamped tissue paper, and maybe a stationery folder. I'm just trying to think of quick and easy gift wrap ideas because I've only got 2 hours to do them in and I may be doing it with both children and adults.

I'm so proud of myself. Yesterday, I completed my first 5 mile walk for breast cancer! This is actually my third time walking. I did the Susan G. Komen walk a couple of years ago and made it about 3 miles and last year I did this same walk, but only managed 2 laps of the park, so this year I was determined to make all 3 laps. Of course my legs are KILLING me today, but that's to be expected.

I walked with my friend Max, from our Utah Divas group. She lost her Aunt Ruthie a few years back to breast cancer and she was walking with Ruthie's daughters and grandchildren. I was walking for several people - my husband lost his Aunt Gerrie to breast cancer and his cousin Evelyn (Cissy) to lung cancer. His aunt Lorrene is a survivor and we have a dear friend at church who is also a survivor. We've had a lot of cancer in our family tree and it's so difficult to watch those you love suffer like that. I think anything we can do to find a cure is a must-do operation.

OK, I only got one response on this, so I guess we've got an automatic winner - Rita of L8dybugStamper. Yay Rita! I'll be gone on a scrapbooking weekend for the next couple of days and I wanted to post the answers before I go because I know you've been waiting for them. I think you got 8 of them right.

Here are a few little brain teasers to sharpen your brain on a Friday. Some are easy and some are devilishly hard. See how many you can guess:

1.   MOVDRIVEIES

2.
WARNED = ARMED
WARNED = ARMED
WARNED = ARMED
WARNED = ARMED

3.
A
L
U
C
H A D E S
R
D


4.  SHMADE


5.
PENNYYYY
+
#FOOLISH


6.
2GETFREE


7.
HABIRDND = BU2SH


8.
WHAT WHAT
WATCH WATCH
WATCH WATCH


9.  PBLUESAISNUERSES


10.

N S
U - 2 U
S N

11.   HOROBOD


Here are the answers, so don't look if you don't want to see them:



1. Drive-in movies 2. Forewarned is forearmed 3. A bat out of hell 4. Made in the shade 5. Penny wise, pound foolish 6. Buy two get one free 7. Bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush 8. What to watch for 9. Mixing business with pleasure 10. Sun up to sun down 11. Robin Hood

Thanks for playing!

Yesterday was my birthday and on Friday, it will be my 4th Anniversary as a Stampin' Up! demonstrator. My how time flies - in both cases. Of course, after a certain age, you pretty much stop counting, but they do seem to come around with surprising regularlity.

It's hard to celebrate a birthday in the middle of the workweek, but we managed to find time for a lovely dinner at my favorite Red Lobster - yum! They have a fabulous all-you-can eat shrimp special that's pretty delicious. We had a few presents and some phone calls from the grandkids and some really nice cards from some of my stampin' friends. All in all, a pretty great birthday.

I actually had to sit down and count to figure my SU anniversary. It really doesn't seem like it could possibly be four years already. It's been quite an adventure! I've had a lot of fun, I've made a whole lot of great friends, learned a lot about stamping and paper crafting, and learned a lot about running a home business. It's had it's ups and downs at times, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. In fact, it's hard to imagine how different my life would have been if I hadn't gone to a friend's workshop four years ago. I made a card and I was so pleased with it, I booked a workshop on the spot and then changed my mind and decided to sign up the next morning. It's just that easy sometimes and four years later there, here we are.

Speaking of anniversaries, I've got an even bigger one coming up. Next February will be our 25th wedding anniversary. Yikes, I can't believe that one either. But since it's a special anniversary, we decided it deserved a special celebration. So we have booked a cruise - we're headed to the Caribbean, baby! Whoohoo! No kids even - just the two of us, 7 days on a fabulous cruise ship. We are SO looking forward to it.

I know you guys are probably tired of seeing pictures of our kitties, but this one was SO cute, I just had to share it with you. Sassy is very stand-offish most of the time, but every once in a while she just surprises us by wanting to snuggle. She particularly likes Blake for some reason and follows him all around. The other night she found her perfect spot. Blake was lying on the floor watching Survivor with me and she found her perfect spot! She slept like this for about an hour.