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where is fall??
Another day of 90 degree weather! Ugh! We had a lovely taste of fall the day this photo was taken >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> and I don't think it has been that nice again since! We're supposed to get a band of strong storms tonight and tomorrow morning that should cool us off for the weekend, and I am sooo ready! I felt so badly for the kids at school this week - it was summertime hot and they were stuck in class!
No school tomorrow, it's a teacher workshop. The girls are very happy! They have been saving their allowances and have decided to pool them together to get a Pet Shop toy. I need to pick up the rest of Brigid's costume components, and I want to get some corduroy for jumpers for the two of them, so I think a trip to Wal Mart is on the schedule for tomorrow. And if the weather clears by the afternoon, we'll probably head back to Applecrest to pick out our pumpkins!
Lookie what I just ordered! The new Queen and Co "Felt Fusion" self adhesive ribbon! It was one of my "wow" products at CHA-S, and I can't wait to get my hands on it!! There are two widths - 1.6 inches and 2.7 inches, as well as new brads and new felt flowers too. Love the pumpkins, the bats, and all the autumn leaves! Yippiee! In shipment this week are all the new October Afternoon stamps and the new paper collection, and also the new Daisy Bucket individual stamps. :) I can't wait for the October Afternoon goodies!
Behind the Brand with Allison Connors
We'll be chatting with Creative Imaginations artist Allison Connors tonight at Create My Keepsake at 9pm eastern - hope you will join us!
You can read more about Allison on the CI blog, and her own personal blog as well! I love Allison's flower brads! They come in great colors, and have that worn, well-loved look that works so well for so many scrapbooking styles! They are also great for non-scrapping craft projects as well. Check out this awesome bracelet that Allison made with her flower brads! She gives instructions for the project, so you could make one too!
Playing catch up today on some projects that need finishing! I've got Halloween papers and embellishments all over my scrapbook table, so I bet you can guess what Sunday's PDT Feature will be! :) Have a great day!
Coldwater Creek Catalog Challenge Week 4
It's the last week for our Coldwater Creek Catalog Color Challenges at Peek! I hope everyone has had fun with the "fashionable" color combinations and inspiration the catalog has provided us this month. My example page this week is based on a September PageMaps sketch by Becky Fleck and uses some of my favorite Daisy D's Autumn papers.
Next up for challenges at Peek is a "Use Your Stash" challenge hosted by Alicia. Our Autumn Leaves Designing With challenge continues as does the Scrapbooking an Ordinary Life challenge which is hosted by Vicki. There's always plenty of challenges to participate in at Peek!
I'll be hosting a mini-Crop to celebrate World Cardmaking Day on Saturday morning, October 6 at Peek. I'll have some games and hourly challenges from 8am to noon - or even later if there are enough people who want to keep going! I'm hoping to get a jump on my holiday card-making and this will be a perfect opportunity!
And don't forget, Create My Keepsake's "Behind the Brand" celebration of Creative Imagination's artists comes to a close this Wednesday with a live chat with artist Allison Connors at 9pm eastern. Hope you'll join us!
Fiskateer Roundup!
I am SO excited to have been invited to this first ever Fiskateer Roundup! 50 enthusiastic Fiskateers from around the country have been invited to attend this amazing event in San Antonio, TX! We'll attend training classes led by Heidi Grace, Nancy Martinez, Julie McGuffee, Suzanne Walker, and representatives from Jo-Anns and AC Moore, and by the end of the weekend, each of us will be Certified Fiskars Demonstrators and able to "spread the Fiskars love" in our communities by holding training sessions at lss and craft stores around our 50 states. So excited to be able to meet my online Fiskateer friends, and have the opportunity to chat and crop and hang out with everyone. I want to thank Fiskars for offering this great opportunity! I can't wait to meet everyone in November! Yee haw!!!
Storage Solutions to share....
I was looking for a fun and attractive way that I could keep my Making Memories pebble brads accessible on my scrapbook table and here's my simple solution. :) The tree is hot-glued to a Tinkertoy and loaded up with brads poked into the styrofoam! I think having them where I can see them and get to them easily will definitely encourage me to use them more frequently!
My other storage dilemma that I was able to solve this week was what to do to keep my Halloween / fall goodies altogether to make them easy to find as I begin scrapping a new season. I had won this desktop organizer from Making Memories at CHA and hadn't decided how to use it until now. I'll just switch out Fall to Christmas / Winter next month, and keep rotating my themed, seasonal stuff in and out of it throughout the year. Thanks so much, Making Memories!
very relieved...
...I had a biopsy done last week and got the great news that it was benign today. BIG sigh of relief!
In other news, I listed a ton of acrylic stamps on eBay today. I was taking stock of what I had and was pretty appalled at the hoard I have accumulated in the past couple of years. The sad part is that I scarcely use them, I just tend to *collect* them! lol! So I've priced them to move and hope that my housecleaning will be beneficial to someone! Most of these sets have never even been opened. *blushing* Linda'a auctions link.
I have a whole notebook full of Wendy Speciale stamps as well, but need to assess which of those I want to keep and decide upon a starting price for the ones I want to sell. I purchased many kits before I joined her Design Team, and received several more as a Muse! I'm sort of sentimental about a bunch of them, so I need to wait until I'm in a "clean sweep" frame of mind to list them, or I'll be liable to just keep them all!
I finished this cute flannel nightgown for Aileen today. It has been pretty chilly the past few evenings - perfect fall weather custom made for flannel nightgowns! :) I'll try to find some fabric to do one for Brigid tomorrow so she doesn't feel left out!
Tonight, Create My Keepsake will be hosting Renae Lindgren for a fun chat at 9pm eastern. I've enjoyed working with Renae's lines for CI, and am looking forward to a chance to get to know her better at this chat! There is still a little time to get your entry in for the Creative Imaginations Contest - deadline for this is September 29.
Time to figure out what to have for dinner. *sigh* I feel like we're in a food rut! We seem to have the same things over and over again and it is getting boring! I wish that Aileen was as adventurous as Brigid is in trying new things and accepting "blended" food. She likes her food very, very plain and isn't into sauces, dips or anything like that. I have just recently gotten her to actually allow spaghetti sauce on her pasta, and that was a major breakthrough! You know how most kids will eat *anything* if it is smothered in ketchup? Not Aileen; she won't touch it!
Check out the auctions - you might be happy you did, especially if you have been looking for some older / discontinued designs from TT, Fontwerks & KI!
Coldwater Creek Catalog Color Challenge Week 3
The C5 Challenge is up for the week! I can't belive we're almost at the end of another month! I've got some fun challenge stuff in the works for October and November at Peek, and I know that some of the other PDT's have some challenges in development too - lots of great fall / holiday scrapping challenges to come!
We did get to the Harvest Festival yesterday - it was so much fun! It will be running right through the month, so we may go back in a week or two to pick out our pumpkins. It is being held at historic Applecrest Farm, an orchard that I have been visiting ever since I was a little kid! My girls were astonished to hear that when I was in elementary school, we used to have field trips to the orchard to see how cider is made, and each got to pick our own bag of apples. :) I remember going with my class, and a couple times going back a second time with my Girl Scout troop. Love that place, and and so thrilled that after 53 years it is still going strong and is very successful! The only thing I wish we had done was wear sweatshirts, because when the sun hid behind the clouds, it was quite chilly! Perfect apple-picking weather, though, and that warm apple pie with ice cream really hit the spot! I'd love to know how many people were there, because the farmstand area was packed! And I'm very glad that we arrived when we did, because when we returned on the wagon to where they were picking up folks to head down to the orchard, the line was really long! Can't wait to do some layouts with the photos I took, and some gorgeous new fall papers!
There are two fun chats coming up this week - I am really looking forward to the Fiskars Live Chat tonight with Mel and Suzanne from Fiskars. The topic will be Home Décor. Here's the link if you'd like to join us at 9pm eastern this evening! And then on Wednesday at 9pm eastern, there will be a chat with Renae Lindgren (loooove her stuff!) at Create My Keepsake. The DT at CMK have been doing some amazing work with some of the new lines from CI!
Happy Monday, everyone!
apple picking is on hold....
We woke up to rain today. It's going to clear out, but probably not in time for us to be able to get to the orchard before I have to go to work this afternoon. Tomorrow is supposed to be nice, though, so we'll try again tomorrow!
As for today, it is upload day at Peek! Our theme this time was Quotes, and I couldn't resist using Rhonna Farrer's rub on quotes from Autumn Leaves for 2 of my 4 layouts. They are such great quotes, are so easy to use, and so elegant. Love 'em!
This second one is photos from our friend Andy's wedding last year (happy anniversary, Andy!) Rub on heaven on that one - Lil Davis, Cloud 9 and Hambly rub ons. And the new Sorbet Villa collection pp from Cloud 9 - love the soft green and blue shades in that collection!
You can see the rest of the layouts for this feature in the PDT gallery at Peek! While you're there, check out all the new goodies in the store. Pat got the new collection from Imaginisce, Candy Cane Lane, in this week and it is sooooo cute! It is one of my favorite seasonal collections released at CHA-S. Also new this week and going fast is Brenda Walton's holiday collection, Peppermint Twist from K and Co.
I've been seeing sneak peeks of new holiday collections being released for Memory Trends next week too. LOVE the new Basic Grey Figgy Pudding collection - so cool that it will coordinate so well with the previous winter collections too! Scenic Route has 3 new collections coming out, and the Halloween one, Salem, is awesome! I'm surprised that there haven't been more sneak peeks for MT, but I think it is going to be a much smaller show than it has been in years past, and so many manufacturers had staggered releases of their CHA-S collections that they really don't *need* to debut anything else this month.
Keeping my fingers crossed for a cool sunny morning tomorrow, so we can go pick apples! Enjoy your day today!
have you heard?
...about Craft TV Weekly? This week they are featuring some fun BE projects and the episode is hosted by Jami Peterson (this week's guest blogger over at the CI blog!) and has some really creative uses for the Sonia Purse and the Rick Wine Box from Creative Imaginations. There's even a link that will take you to stores that carry the kit she works with in the Webisode! Check it out!
and....while we're talking about CI, check out the Design Team reveal at A Cherry On Top - they were working with some of my favorite cardstock for this feature - Pizzazzill! Absolutely gorgeous work! I need to get back to the gallery and go through all of them. They have a really talented team, and there is lots of eye candy to be found there!
Had time for a little scrapping this morning, and made this portrait page for my scrapbook room. I try to rotate my pages with the seasons, and this one replaces Aileen's summer page. Love, love, love that big frame transparency from Narratives!
Now I need to do a new one to replace Brigid's! I have two awesome PageFrame 12x12 frames which makes it a cinch to change out the pages when I have new ones to display. I have a dream of turning one whole wall into a "gallery" with different size PageFrames for my pages - I need to get rid of this honkin' big armoire desk first, though. I'm working on it! ;)
Cool emails today - all kinds of fun stuff coming up! I am so excited!! :) Have a happy, happy Friday!
