Microblogging

Yep it's a word and a fun class over at Big Picture Scrapbooking. Cathy Zielske is our instructor and what a whoot she is. She keeps us going with email, video and a fab messageboard. What's it all about? We are learning to use or Facebook status updates and Tweets of Twitter to make small albums with snippets of our lives saved thru these writings. And the backbone of it all: Digital scrapbooking using Photoshop Elements. Yeah I've wanted to try it for sometime and just wasn't brave enough. But now I've got some great ideas and lessons to get me moving.







These are just a few of the pages I've created using her template and my favorite status updates. Be on the look out for a few more.

What? More paneling?

Well we finally got all the furniture moved out and into the garage/upstairs and Rob couldn't wait to begin demo. First he ripped off the mantel and look the paneling was cut to fit around the mantel. Well who would do that?


And then as the knotty pine panels came down we found ohh more paneling. But this time the cheap stuff. Oh and it was supported by 2x4's. Come on, Really? When it all came down we found that they had built the wall out a good 4-6"s. Can you say HillBilly construction?


It's down and the dumpster comes Thursday. Next step remove our baseboard heating and then the old plaster comes off. Let the real mess begin! This project is already a bit behind schedule. OK my schedule not Rob's, he probably doesn't have one. My parents come Tuesday June 2nd and they are in for a little more work then maybe they thought. Sorry Mom. I'll cook really well that week and make it up to them. Can you say Brownies and Cake? Maybe throw some cookies in. Dad will be ok.

Right now I'm waiting for the cable guy to come and fix the box so we get all the channels and not just the ones over 99. Yes yesterday brought may strange things. Who knew.

A Walk in my Garden chipboard book

What a great way to start summer, a cute little gardening book. This book was entirely created with the "A Walk in My Garden" cricut cartridge and the Design Studio program. For the front cover we wanted the cut out so after experimentation we discovered the wheel barrow gave us the best look. We liked it so much we turned the cut piece into a decorative element. Each page has the shape welded to the squared base and then when we covered it we added the details.








This is one of the projects we are looking at introducing at the Zone. We want to start Exploring a different Cartridge every month. There are so many things you can do with the cartridges you already own. Be on the lookout for the next Scrapbook Zone Newsletter for all the details.

LOOK! Quick....

It may never happen again. My work space being this cleaned off and pristine.


Rob, being the wonderful husband that he is, installed my new shelves Sunday night. So I immediately had to clean the space up and fill the shelves. It's things I use everyday and need close at hand but not on the work surface.



I even vacuumed the floor and threw some things away. Felt good. We are participating in a city wide garage sale this Saturday and I will need my work table for display space. So I think I'm also going to put my old PC in the basement and move the Ikea desk it was on into the scrap room and make it the new work surface. It's a bit smaller but maybe that will help in keeping it cleaner.

Change is good. Right? Yes. All this goes hand in hand with the Living room remodel. More change.

Take me out to the ... ball game..take me....

out to the crowd. Buy me some Tiger tickets ($30 ea) and some hot dogs and pop (4 dogs, 4 drinks $38). I don't care if we ever get back to Garden City. What a good time we had. The Tigers took on the Athletics and won 9-1. YEAH Tigers! These two boys had such a good time. And there were fireworks after the game.



The funniest part of the evening was when this group of 20 something Canadians moved down into our section late in the game. They were just geeked to be sitting so close. And as people left they moved right down to the front row. Proceeded to take so photos to commemorate their good fortune and then they started heckling the Athletics. Giambi to be specific. Ripped on him for everything, from steroid use to not getting a hit. Then they started telling poor Kennedy to let Giambi know was a "Bum Aye!" Oh my who says Bum? Then they almost got booted for sitting on the dugout roof. Kevin the crowd management guy told them it was a $2000 fine and 90 days in jail if they did. Opps! That changed their minds quickly. They were very funny in a good natured way and kept their lauguage clean for the kids.



Brendan ate the place out of house and home. He started with a bratt then had peanuts, moved on to a pretzel and finished the night off with cotton candy. Yum. Yes he complained of a stomach ache later.



Rob and Andrew enjoyed the evening. Andrew was impressed with our seats. We sat 16 rows behind the visitor dug out. Thanks to Mrs. Moy. They were her season tickets.



And me you ask? Well I got to see my favorite player. Curtis Granderson. Love his class and style. Yes...it has everything to do with how he wears his pants and socks...just love the look.



Thanks for a wonderful evening, compliments of the Detroit Tigers.

And it begins....

I want to give everyone the full picture of how Desperate our living room is. Brendan thought we should mess up the house a little more and then call "Clean House". God I love my kid. "Um NO!" We'll just clean it up ourselves. And while were at it lets "REMODEL"! Yeah. I've been waiting a long time, 7 years to be exact. And we started today. Had to move a bunch of stuff around and throw a lot of junk out. But we did manage to get a good start on emptying out our living room.

We got side tracked by hockey games and Free Tiger tickets. So tomorrow we'll finish and just maybe Rob will get to start his "Demo".




The look on Rob's face we priceless when I said, "We MUST empty everything out of this room before we knock down any walls!" His response "Oh". Yes we will empty it and hang plastic over the doorways to prevent dust scattering everywhere. I can't wait. We have 3 weeks to get the plaster down and the drywall up and painted. My folks will be here to do the fireplace in 3 weeks. That's good, we have a deadline.

Tomorrow I'll post the empty room shots. Now that will be entertaining.

(Don't ya just love the paneling and the deer head? And please don't forget about the dingy red brick on the fireplace. Makes my skin crawl just looking at the photo.)

SPOTS anyone?

Journaling spots that is. The latest swap over on AMR was for journaling spots. We had to create 20. Well I just couldn't decide which stamp I wanted to use, so I did both. The lucky girls in the swap are going to get 2 from me.



It's a set from Hampton Arts. Had some really cute images on it. The "10 things I love about you" stamp will have so many uses. I just can't wait to use it. The "I will always remember this" image was stamped on kraft colored cardstock and mounted on bazzill red, cut with a scallop nestibility. They will enhance any layout.

Just a little crafiness today. Who know what tomorrow will bring. (pssst: I think it's bring the start of a living room remodel. But who knows for sure.)

Slow Day

Well today was one of those days. I just couldn't seem to get moving. So I sat here on the couch playing on the internet. I did sign up for Cathy Zielski's class on Big Picture Scrapbooking and it started today! Now that's exciting! So I sat and watched her welcome video. Cathy's pretty funny and so is the video. It better be, it was 54 minutes long. She wasn't kidding when she told ya to get a cold drink and a snack before you started. But it was good and I can't wait to getting rolling. Maybe I'll actually learn to be a better writer. You all will have to let me know.

On a whole other train of thought...I was quite the bargain shopper yesterday. I picked up all the items in the pick below for just.......



65 cents! YEP!!65 cents. Let me tell you how. We get 50% off our store purchases a couple times a year. One of them being in May (celebrating the stores b-day). So after I used my 50% off my total was $50.65. I then used a $50 gift card from the Michigan Ice Dogs and the total out of pocket cost to me 65 cents! Now thats what I call savvy shopping.

Todays project.

There are some really wonderful resources on the internet and I have taught a couple Cricut Classes at the Zone. So upon reflecting on the needs of our customers, I've decided to present to Kelly this idea. I found it on the Cricut message board. It's a class binder with the handouts inside. And every time they take a class they get the class notes and the cartridge handbooks. So say they take Cricut Basic, they'll get an 8-10 page handout to use as a reference guide and the handbook for "George and Basic Shapes" inside a BUG ZONE binder.. The handbook shows all the key pad functions for each individual key. Makes it really nice when your trying to find a shape/letter or title to use.

I've modeled it after Tammy Skinner's class. She lives in Frisco Texas, so I don't think she'll be coming to Michigan anytime soon to teach a class at the Zone. She calls hers the Creative Critters Cricut Club. I can't take credit for the idea, it was Tammy's but the content of our classes is mine and Katie's. I thought our book title was kind of catchy "The Bug Zone". We are the Scrapbook Zone after all. Kelly loved the idea and it's a go. So very soon if you take a Cricut class at the Zone you'll receive a "Bug Zone" binder and handouts.

We've discussed the need to make this binder available to our previous class attendees. So be on the lookout for a SALE on these beauties. I just love the Purple-Green colors on the cover. And you'll be able to personalize it with tabs marking your favorite sections. Or redo the cover to suit your own needs.

The other thing I worked on today was my plan for the journaling tag swap I'm in over at AMR. I decided to purchase this stamp set from Hampton Arts. They have some wonderful products and I really like this set. It will work out perfectly for what I have in mind. I need to get these done and in the mail by Thursday. Shouldn't take long I just need to sit down and do it.



As busy as last week was this week looks to be nice and slow. Just Brendan's sporting events and 2 nights at the Zone. Yeah! One shift down, one to go. I'll post the journaling tags when I finish them.

Fun Finds

Mega Meet weekend is CRAZZZZZY! I helped set up our booth on Wednesday. Spent 6 hours unpacking boxes and merchandising. My feet and hands hurt by the end of the day. Then Thursday the mayhem began. We were so busy from them time I walked into the store at 1 till I left at 9. The worst part of it was we were open till midnight. Poor Katie closed and then opened with me Friday morning.

We found 3 opened Slice cartridge boxes dumped in the clearance zone late Thursday evening. At $39.99 each that's quite a hit for us. Then on Friday we found 6 Copic marker Nib replacement pkgs. At $5.99 each that's another 30 bucks. Then Saturday we found a couple more things. It's so sad that people who are preserving their family memories feel the need to steal from us. If that's what we found imagine what we didn't. We really needed more people manning the store but alas we didn't have the man power.

On Saturday I did manage a couple hours to browse the meet for some scrappy deals. Here's what I found.

These wonderful stamps from Stamps by Judith. I fell in love with the bear in the trash can. I've seen this a few times, always entertaining.



Some Basic Gray paper I didn't own. I haven't been in love with it for very long and needed to pick up these to fill in the collection.



And finally a line we don't carry by a company called Jillibean. LOVE it! Even bought some embellishments to go with it.



Over all a bit disappointed in Mega Meet once again. Lots of premade page kits. Like isn't that why we scrapbook, to create our own pages? I don't know. Not thrilled with crappy looking page kits, I can tell you that much. So glad it only cost me to park and not get in. Over all I think I spent less then $120 and that includes $86 on the stamps. I've spent why more in the past. But I must say I love the stamps.

I'm glad it's over and won't happen again for at least a year. My feet and brain were dead by Saturday night. We won't even talk about how short my patience was by late Saturday night. But I will tip my hat to my co-worker Sue. She's awesome and I hope her Sunday went well.

Happy Mothers Day!

Well I haven't posted in over a week so here goes. We had Mega Meet this past weekend and that consumed so much time it's unreal. Then Brendan had many days in a row of athletic events and I worked like crazy. Jimmy and Angie got married in the middle of it all and I worked like crazy. I had breakfast cooked by my wonderful husband today and I didn't work at all. Yeah! We did a little yard work and watched a little hockey today. Yeah no Scrapbook Zone, I so needed a break. Here's a few pics from my weekend.







I don't have any pictures from working this weekend or the Mega Meet. I did buy some lovely items that I will post about tomorrow. I'll have to take a few pics first. This week is almost as crazy as last week. B has baseball Monday and Wednesday, hockey Tuesday, Friday, Saturday and hopefully Sunday. We are going to the Tigers game on Saturday with great seats. Can't wait.

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY to all the mom's out there.

Long day......

My really long day actually started yesterday. I worked at the store last night till midnight and then couldn't go to sleep last. So I think I might have gotten 4 hours and had to head right back in to open today. I got lucky and only had to stay till 2. But it's National Scrapbook Day and we had a 50% off coupon so we were swamped. And did I mention it was only Katie and I? Busy, busy, busy, no breaks today. We really could have used another body, but we made it. Then it was off to pick up Brendan and head to his first baseball game as a bronco level player. He got drafted by the Athletics and is playing for Coach Widmer. Game time 4:30, actual start time 5:20. Yep almost an hour behind schedule. Oh well.



B says "put me in Coach I'm ready to play!" He was a little nervous when we got in the car to go to the game. Worried about batting, fielding no problem. He knows if he can just get on base he's all set.



His first at bat and he walked.



Didn't spend much time at first and he was off to second with a stolen base.



He would go 0 for 1 today with 2 walks, 2 runs and 3 stolen bases. He also made two great plays while playing second base. The other team didn't hit the ball really well so our fielding was minimal but when B needed to make a play he can through with shinning colors.

"Here catch Mom, coach made me player of the game. I get the game ball."



Final score Athletics 12 - Mets 3.