To get serious for a minute, here are some facts I didn't know and I'll bet you didn't either.

- Modern-day human slavery is a 32 Billion dollar a year business

- Today there are 27 million people living in slavery, more than twice the number taken from Africa during the entire slave trade period

- Of those enslaved 80% are women and 50% are children.

- Even though slavery has been outlawed in every country, it still exists in every country including the US. It is estimated that 200,000 people are enslaved in the US today.

- The average cost to purchase a slave is only $90. In contrast, African slaves used to sell for $1,000 to $1,800. This does not create any incentive for slave owners to protect their investment by caring for their slaves properly.

- One MILLION children are forced into the sex industry every day, primarily in Asia. Many of them do not survive due to abuse and sexually transmitted disease.

- There are several types of slavery - bonded labor, forced labor, sexual exploitation, forced marriage and childbearing. It is particularly prevalent in India, Africa and in Asia where there is a large population of indigent people with no one to speak for them or protect them.

How did I come up with these facts? Our church is sponsoring a 30 hour fast next weekend to help break the chains of slavery. These teenagers and adults will be going without four meals and conducting fund raisers and other activities aimed at raising money for this important cause. The money they would have spent on those meals will be donated to the International Justice Mission that helps free slaves. To get more information, go to the following websites:

http://www.ijm.org/
http://www.freetheslaves.net/
http://www.love136.org/

Or if you'd like to contribute directly to our fast, please contact me for information on how to send your donation to the 30 Hour Fast directly.

Dancing with the Stars has hit the halfway point, which is good because they’ve cleared up some of the “deadwood” (Adam Carolla, for instance) and they are getting to the serious dancers. This week was interesting.

Am I the only one who thinks Edyta dresses like a hoochie Mama??? Oh…my…gosh! This week was the most revealing costume ever. It was basically a micro-mini bikini with a little fluff of fabric covering up her arm and shoulder and a bit of hip. I know they are supposed to be costumes, but if you’ll notice, she dresses like this week after week.

Even in their practice sessions, she is wearing about as little as you can go out in public with. I think she’s got an exhibitionist streak or something. I’m mean, she does have a great body and I don’t want to see them dressing like Amish girls or anything, but she’s amazingly consistent. I’d love to be a fly on the wall during some of their costuming meetings. “OK, who gets the skimpiest costume this week” Edyta – “Me, me, me!” “But you had the skimpiest costume last week, and the week before” Edyta “Yes, I know. Aren’t I gorgeous in them???” Oh well, I think she’ll be voted off soon. Her partner, Jason whathisname is terrible!

I thought Marlee was wonderful and the judges are being really hard on her. I’ve seen so many guys go out there and stumble around looking like idiots and the judges cut them all sorts of breaks (like Jason whathisname), but the women have to be 10 times better and it seems like the judges still find something to nitpick. You feel really sorry for them sometimes. And I think they were kind of condescending to Marlee too. It isn’t just about her being deaf. She’s a 40ish mother of four and hearing or not, it’s darn hard to get out there and do all these fabulous moves and they never give her any credit for just being a good dancer.

I thought Cheryl and Christian were gorgeous and very light and frothy. He’s almost a little too pretty for an army guy and he looks amazingly comfortable in the pink shirt and tie but he’s got a cute personality and is a decent dancer.

I think the girl who is dancing with Derek is going to be the next one to go. Can’t think of her name, but she just doesn’t stand out in the group and she always looks like she is afraid someone is going to hit her or something. She’s a competent dancer, but not as good as the others.

As for Marissa, I really like her. I think she’s darling, although her bubbliness and giggliness could get stale after a while. It’s really heartening to see that big girls like us can have fun like the skinny minis do I think her dance this week had a lot more actual dance content to it than many of the other ones I’ve seen and it was nice to see that the judges gave her credit for that.

As for Kristie Yamaguchi, I think she’s wonderful. I even got to do a photo shoot with her during the Olympics. There I was in my six foot bunny costume out there on the ice sliding around and posting for pictures with her. What a memorable moment. I was very surprised to find out that she had been born with clubbed feet. I don’t remember them ever mentioning that during the Olympics. I do think she has a considerable advantage over the other dancers because a figure skater IS basically a dancer, just on ice. It’s not like Apolo who was a speed skater with no dance background. So I think that’s kind of an unfair advantage and I think she is likely to win, which takes a lot of the suspense out of it.

Len is funny tonight! He can be quite cranky at times and there have been weeks when I thought he was going to punch Bruno, but this week he’s hilarious! I wonder what is going to happen if he ends up having to bare his tushy in a supermarket??? Stay tuned….

Karina and Mario – I have to say they go look gorgeous, but she was using that ponytail like some kind of a dangerous ninja weapon. Gosh! You could put someone’s eye out with that thing. They had a little segment with his little brother, that was really sweet and cute. I like him a lot more now. He’s just always been a bit cocky for me.

The group dance – it was just a little frantic to me. I don’t know if the music was too fast or what, but with all the lifts and the cartwheels and stuff, it was just a little crazy. What did you think? Who do you think is going to win??

Oh...My....Gosh ladies! You are going to be SO jealous! I spent most of the day at the Scrapbook Expo today and as usual, I got the COOLEST stuff and the best deals. We are lucky enough to have these shows twice a year here in Salt Lake and they are the bomb!

I usually manage to keep my shopaholic tendencies under control (well, mostly!), but this is the one time I loosen the purse strings a little and let myself have some fun. The first couple of years I went a little crazy, but I didn't much like that "Oh Crap!" feeling I had when I walked out the door knowing I'd spent money I shouldn't have.

Last time I set an amount of money, took it out in cash and decided that when the money was gone, I had to leave. That worked pretty well and I stuck within $5 of my budget. So I tried that strategy again this year and it worked pretty well, but there were some deals I just couldn't pass up even if they weren't in my budget. So I spent my budget plus a bit more, but I still think I kept it well under $100, including admission and food, which I'm sure was a lot better than most of those ladies did. You'll flip when you look down further and see how much stuff I came home with!

It can get pretty crazy there. It's a big Convention Center but they fill it up pretty well. There are vendor booths all around the edges and down the middle of the center, and all the rest of the space is filled with tables for the Scrapbookers who come down there in droves and do their scrapbooking. Then there are about a million women, all of them lugging big packages, many of them pushing strollers or trying to chase small children around. There are make and takes and contests and even a DJ to play music and run the contests and give-aways. Every once in a while, they announce a special sale and the women just go nuts and cram into some little booth trying to get in on it. I got caught in the middle of one of those and it was pretty crazy for a while. Kind of like those Day After Thanksgiving sales - ugh! But it was worth it because I came out with four of these wall signs that were going for between $2.50 and $5.00 a piece. Yes, that is NOT a typo. I just saw some signs just like these for about $20 at Roberts last week.

The Sweet Dreams on will go in our bedroom. That will look nice on our leaf green wall. The Family one will go either in the living room or the hallway. The green one will look pretty on the white wall in our bedroom. It says something about "Do not go where the path may lead. Go where there is no path and leave a trail." That's about me to a tee, so I liked it. My other favorite is "Be a Voice, Not an Echo". I'm never one to go with the crowd, that's for sure. The top one you can't see very well, but it's the start of the Pledge of Allegiance. I'm thinking that should either go in the kitchen or the family room.

They were also selling these vinyl wall sayings - 2 for $5. Boy, did that cause a stampede! You should have seen these women. They were scooping these up by the handful along with the metal signs. I can't blame them. I saw these last week at Roberts for about $30 a pop! I ended up with 3 of them, but I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with them. I couldn't find the one I wanted which was "Enter as guests, leave as friends". I thought that would be cute for the kitchen. Instead I ended up with "You are the HERO of your own story", "Family - One of God's Masterpieces", and I forget what the other one says - something about dreams and clouds. We'll see.



This is one of the coolest things I found. I had gotten some last time and I liked them so much, I had to get some more. These boxes contain chipboard puzzle pieces that are in coordinated patterns and colors. They either come with punch out alphabets or rub-on letters that you can add to your puzzle pieces. You can interlock them or place them separately and the best part is that they were selling for $1 a box. I got the whole coordinated set for $4 and the Halloween one with the sparkly chipboard shapes and plastic cutouts for $6. Very cool.

I'm going to have to create a slide show to show you the rest of it because there is so much stuff. I spent the rest of my money on lots and gobs and tons of stickers, rub-ons, and decorated chipboard. I loved it because each sheet had about a dozen different images and sayings to use for just about every occasion. I also found a very cool new hand-held cutter system. It's sort of like a Coluzzle blade, but it's smaller and more manueverable. It came with two different shape templates for about $7.

Now I just have to find a way to use all this stuff. I think I will. I've used a lot of the stuff I've gotten at past shows and Lord knows I have a lot of scrapbooking to catch up on. Matt is in college now and I've just finished doing his first year of baby pictures - ugh! Looks like I'll have some long nights coming up in my stamp room soon....

OK, last one from the Retreat. I did promise you to post the door prizes. We had everyone bring a hand-stamped, wrapped prize, and then we played that game where you select presents and then "steal" them back and forth from each other before you finally get to pick one and open it. It was really fun.

I did manage to find the creators of most of the projects - yay! I also found some pictures of the very cute gifts that Stacy and Kristine made for all of us. Neat stuff!

The main reason behind the Retreat was to celebrate my friend Max's 40th birthday. Max is the head of our Utah Diva's on-line group and she also works for Stampin' Up! in the Demo Support area. She's probably my closest friend and we sort of act as "foster uplines" for each other. Neither of us have active uplines so in the beginning before Utah Divas got started, we were pretty much the only business support each of us had. Of course, now that we do have Utah Diva's, we have about 100 other demos who are available 24X7 to answer any questions or provide any support we need to run our businesses.

By the by, Utah Divas is always looking for new members. Membership is by invitation only, but I would be available to sponsor you if you are one of my blog readers and meet the requirements. The requirements are that you must be an active Stampin' Up! demonstrator and you must be willing to share and participate actively in the group. In addition to fun retreats like this, we also do swaps, business discussions, photo galleries, contests, prayer lists for personal support, chats, and just about every thing you can think of. The nice thing is that Max and the other moderators watch the list pretty closely and the grouchiness and fussiness that goes on in some of these on-line groups is simply not allowed. So, that helps to make it a close, supportive, and friendly group. Let me know if you are interested in joining and I'll be happy to provide more info.

I know you've been waiting to see the projects we worked on at the retreat. These are the shoebox swaps everyone put together. I have a hard time remembering who did what, so I put my finished card next to each person's name tag so I could keep track. We also had a name tag contest - aren't they cute?

I'm missing a couple. You've seen mine already, I didn't get Max's finished, and we weren't able to do Jennifer's because she had forgotten her stamp set. Max's was a folded mini scrapbook made from Ginger Blossom designer paper that had four areas to display pictures. Christine R's used a crayon resist technique with sponging on glossy. I didn't use enough crayon so mine didn't come out very well.

Karen's had the white background done with the Cuttlebug on white glossy cardstock using the Swiss Dot folder. I didn't even know you could use the glossy cardstock in the Cuttlebug, but it came out pretty well.

This is Gina's swap. She wasn't able to be with us because her son was ill, but she sent this darling card for us to do.

Maria's was a cute little candy box using the vellum cardstock. I ran mine through the Cuttlebug just for giggles. I think it came out very nice, although I did it upside down and accidentally glued the top flap down. It still came out very cute.

Kristine M's card had this cute little owl on it. You can't see the background, but it's done with the tree from Embrace Life set in Versamark and the owl is watercolored. Very cute!

Pat's card used the baby wipe technique with black embossing. Since we no longer carry the spectrum pads, this is a great way to replace them. Just take your reinkers and put stripes of whatever color combo you like and apply them with a brayer. Makes a nice effect with the black embossing. I had to put a bottle of essential oils with her nametag because that's SO Pat. She's a massage therapist and any time someone isn't feeling well, she whips out her little box of oils and things and usually makes you feel a lot better. I had a headache at one point and she gave me some nice smelling oil on a tissue and had me sit quietly for a minute while she put her hands on me and voila! No more headache. What a sweetie!

Here's Terry's project. I loved the scalloped edge on the top. I hadn't made scallops before with the corner rounder. I've always done it with the slit punch, so mine came out looking pretty lame. You can't see the white stitching along the edge of the scallops. I didn't get a picture of the inside. It has a cute little section where you could put a note or a picture and it's got corners done by punching out a piece of designer paper with the scallop punch and cutting it in quarters. Very sweet and I love these pretty pastel colors.

This is Stacy's card. She took about a 12" piece of paper and folded it together so the triangles meet in the middle. I wish I'd gotten a picture of it open. There's space for a message or a couple of small pictures. The little baroque design in the center is covered in teal glitter and it looks much better in person.