In case I haven't mentioned it.....

I'M GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!!!!!

Exactly two months from today we will be heading to The World! Even more exciting - we were able to take advantage of their new offer - buy 4 get 3 free plus a $200 gift card at check in. This deal saved us $428 on our trip! SO AWESOME!!!!

Come onnnn January!

My fanciest cards ever!

I saw something similar to these on Ebay recently and I knew I had to try it! I am loving how fancy these look, with the inside "finished" as well as the outside. I also machine stitched inside and out and inked the edges. I used brown ink for one and black ink for the other. I'm not sure which one I like more. Now, if I was REALLY good, I would do a lot more with this, but this is all I've got - I can't think of what more should be done! LOL!

Maid of Honor

On August 23 I was the Maid of Honor at my friend's wedding. Here are a few pictures from the day.

I think he said yes!!!

I'm not positive but I think last night my husband said YES to a Disney World trip in January!!! This is HUGE as last year he swore he would NEVER go to Disney!!! I'm going to call my AAA girl and get it set up, then see if he still says yes when I ask him if we're ready to go ahead and book it! Keep your fingers crossed for me! :-)

My beautiful handmade bookmarks!

FINALLY I am able to make my beautiful handmade bookmarks again! I am so excited because I loved making these but for the past couple years I haven't had the software to do it. I previously used MS Word to do this, but it was an older version (2003 maybe?). We just installed MS office Professional Plus 2007, and I was crushed to learn that they changed the Word program so the bookmarks no longer worked. then I started playing around with some of the other programs, and to my delight, I found that the bookmarks can still be made in Microsoft Publisher! In fact, it is much EASIER to make them in there!!!

So if you have MS Publisher, or an older version of MS Word, These bookmarks are really easy to make. As you can see from the pictures, some of them are made from my own pictures, and the more professional ones, I got those pictures from a photography website. I can't sell them, of course, but I can give them away as gifts, which I do! Hopefully someday I will be able to take nice enough looking pictures of my own and I can maybe try selling them!

If you want to try this yourself, just copy and paste your first picture into Publisher (or Word), then using the ruler on top, shrink it to 1 3/4 inches across. Be sure to use the bottom right corner resizer, then it will resize it both ways and keep the dimensions right. Then you past your next picture into Publisher, line it up with the bottom of the first picture, and resize it to match. it's kind of important to line it up first, then resize it, or else you'll have trouble getting it to line up right.

I do 4 pictures for each bookmark, using a strip of 8 pictures for each row (cutting it in half of course), and I can get 8 bookmarks per page. Print it out on high quality photo paper, let dry, and trim them down. I then also run them through my Xyron 900 machine with the two-sided laminating cartridge inserted, and then cut them all apart. The laminated bookmarks last a very long time and they make a beautiful gift! They look so much more beautiful in person... it's hard to take pictures of pictures, but they look like perfect quality photos in person!

I plan to include these as a free gift with every Ebay sale from now on (see link at right). And to celebrate my joy at being able to make them again, I'm going to give away a few to some members of the Cricut Messageboard (again, see link at right)!

Jacob's gone for six weeks!

Every year at this time, I have to put my 11 year old son on a plane to spend six weeks vising his dad across the country. It is so hard, knowing he is on the plane alone, but of course he LOVES IT! It gives me a panic attack every time!!! This time, ChrisM agreed to meet me at the Mall of America and help distract me... and wow did we do some shopping! the biggest hit to our credit cards, of course, was Archiver's. I love that store to death!!! I'm so excited - I got to use my 30% off coupon on the Paper Gator! Plus I got all the extra blades. I've wanted this thing since the first time I saw it posted on the Cricut boards!

As hard as it is to have him gone for six whole weeks, I have to admit that it does give me some much needed "Me Time", time to get some crafting done! :-) Plus I'm in an exercise competition at work (more about this later!), so I can concentrate my time on that. AND I am Maid of honor in a wedding in August, so there will be lots to do to prepare for that, too!

WHEW! Looks like I'm going to be very busy this summer!

Blog Virgin

This is my very first post on my very first blog. Patting myself on the back - I didn't even need help! ROFL! I've been following the blogs of all my Cricut MB friends for long enough to know that I really needed to give this a try. Now if I can figure out how to post pictures, I'll be really happy!