Bishops & our Halloween Party

Our weekend kicked off with a trip to Bishop's Pumpkin farm in Wheatland with the whole family and I mean WHOLE family including Mom, Becky, Danny, DJ, Erik, Chris, Dan, Tori, Tyler and our cousins Michael & Crystal and their 3 kids, Sabrina, Mikey & Zachary. We had a really fun time. And belive it or not Jake & I were the first ones to arrive which is a rarity. LOL. If you'd like to see the rest of the photos from our Bishops trip, go to Bishops Pumpkin Farm

And now here it is the day after our Halloween party are we are POOPED. Today we have done NOTHING...absolutely nothing all day and we don't plan too. Just sit home relax and watch the tube perhaps. We had TONS of fun. Everyone liked our decor with the help of Andrew who had a ton of decorations to add to what we already had. Jake & I dressed up as Fred & Wilma Flintstone this year. LOL, I actually wore make-up which I rarely do. We had a Mexican food theme. Guests had a choice of tacos, burritos, double decker tacos, nachos, taco salad bowl, you name it we had it all. Jake made homemade pinto beans, the Pascoal's made pork chalupas (which were yummy) and we had ground turkey with taco seasoning. And as usual, we made too much food but we'd rather have too much than not enough.

A group of guests gathered in the garage and played the Encore board game. Everone playing seemed to have a good time. They played for several hours. I'm not sure which team won though. Hmm...

There were guests out by the fire pit, guests in the house, kids watching Ratatouille in the family room and everywhere else in between. The last of our guests departed around midnight or so and we went straight to bed. We had a ton of fun. Thank you to everyone who came to our party and hope you had as much fun as did we. See you next blog.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!!!

My business website

Hi there everyone. Just wanted to let everyone know that I changed some formatting on my retreat website and added some more photos. Check it out.

http://www.croppinaroundtheclock.com

Have a great week! See you next blog.

Little of this, little of that

What a busy few weeks we have had. We had our niece Tori and nephew Tyler last weekend. Friday night Tori & I went to Green Tangereines to scrappy hour. It was Tori’s first time scrapbooking in an actual store and she had an awesome time...or so she saw. ;) It was her first time ever in a scrapbook store for that matter. J Luckily she had a ½ cup of coffee around 8pm because she’d have been asleep by 9 instead of making it till 12am. But she was a trooper, she made till midnight! YAY TORI! J She did an awesome job for being her first time as a Scrapbooker. I think I really have an apprentice on my hands. WOO HOO. I’m sad I forgot to take pics of her pages. Maybe she’ll take some for me and email them to me. While Tori & I were scrapbooking, Jake & Tyler went and picked up my ring from The Shane Company and brought it up to me while I was sb'ing Friday night. If you haven’t read my previous blog, I lost my diamond from my wedding ring somewhere between LA & Sacramento on our way home from our FL trip. Anyway, I got the stone replaced and it is beautiful. I showed it off to anyone who was willing to see it and hear the story of why it was replaced. LOL Here's a pic of my ring with new stone. Ain't it purty???


On Saturday Jake took Tori & Tyler to Monster Golf and Spaghetti Factory for dinner. They had a pretty fun time they said. he then took the kids to The Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner. It was their first time going. They enjoyed it and ate every bite on their plates.

While Jake took the kits out for the day I made my way back to GT to attend a Cricut SWARM. OMGosh it was so much fun. A Cricut SWARM is a 12 hour scrapbooking crop. We had TONS of food, snacks, goodie bags. One gal made cookies shaped like the Cricut bug head. She put the cookies together all by hand. It was truly a LABOR OF LOVE. Thanks Rachel. They were amazing. There were so many good treats to eat. I sure did have my fill. I kick started back to finishing up my album from our cruise to the Mexican Riviera in 2006. I think its 2 years overdue. LOL but I’m almost done with it. YAY!

Cricut bug head cookies


Sunday we couldn’t figure out what we wanted to do so after much deliberation we decided to head out to Apple Hill. Of course by the time we realized it, the time was already 3 and by the time we would have gotten there it would have been 5 so we nitched that idea and took Tori & Tyler bowling instead. We had a fun time. I WON!!! After bowling the kids played some arcade games. Took the kids home, we then went home ourselves. Another busy weekend for us but we got through it.

In between planning my first retreat next month, planning a Halloween party I managed to clean my scrappy room. I feel much better organized now that it’s clean. YAY!

Today kicks off the yearly Scrapbook Expo in Sacramento. Tomorrow I, Maria & Holly are going to Scrapbook Addict in West Sac to scrap for a few hours then we’re all carpooling over to the expo and scrapping from 5 to 11:30. Did I mention there will be shopping opportunities??? LOL It’s a HUGE event. There are vendors from all sorts of SB companies selling their products and demonstrations, make-n-takes…all kinds of goodies.

While we ladies are at the expo tomorrow, Andrew (Maria’s DH) is going to be over @ our house helping Jake put up Halloween decorations. I hope we can get things done in time for our party next weekend. It’s very unusual that we haven’t even started decorating; we usually start it the beginning of October. But we have gotten lazy this year. L But hopefully we can finish up things on Sunday if it’s not finished Saturday. NO PRESSURE GUYS!!!

The last couple weeks have been busy for me with planning the retreat next month. I have been purchasing goodies for the door bags, raffle prizes. I got my website up and running. I’ve actually been having fun planning everything. I have lots of interest for this retreat and even more interest from my fellow scrapbookers for the Napa Valley in March ‘09 retreat I’m trying to arrange. I’m hoping to have something booked by next month so that I can make the announcement. Wish me luck. I did work on a mini project today. It's called a Gift-to-Go Mini Album but after I finished it I thought it looked more like a Christmas card instead. Check it out. See you next blog.

Diamond stone...costly mistake

Well here it is, a whole month since we got back from WDW and we miss it a lot. I don’t think I mentioned before about my diamond in my wedding band. Well somewhere between Florida & Sacramento I lost the stone. I hadn’t noticed it missing till the day after we got home. We were sitting in the Waffle Barn having breakfast the next morning and I folded my hands under the table and rubbed my right finger over my ring finger and found myself being scratched by what I thought was a sharp prong but NOPE my diamond was missing. Oh I was terribly upset. We looked in the cushion, the floor, we even moved the table to see if it was there and it wasn’t. I was sitting at the table crying. We got home, Jake and I looked everywhere thinking maybe I lost it in the bed or shower or anywhere but it was nowhere to be found. In the meantime Jake called the Sacramento police, the TSA & the Florida airport just to report it missing just in case anyone turned in a diamond. No such luck. At least we know we did everything possible to find it. Jake then called the insurance company to report it lost. Luckily we have renters insurance and luckily when we were in last year to see our agent he suggested getting insurance on the ring, good thing we did or else we would have been out of luck. Well, we got the insurance check so we could buy a new one. Tonight we went to a jewelry store to find a new stone. So far we’ve only visited 1 store but we’ll be going to other stores to compare prices. We went to Jared and they showed us a really beautiful stone, it’s called the Radiant-cut diamond. It looks so pretty in my setting. I think they have the highest price on it though so we’re going to continue to shop around. We never heard of the Radiant before. It was GORGEOUS and it’s a nice change of pace from an original round cut. When we go to other jewelers we’ll ask to see this cut. GOSH, I really MISS my ring. I want to start wearing it again. I feel so ‘naked’ without it.

So a word of caution to all Homeowners & Renters is to be sure to get insurance on your wedding bands or for that matter any jewelry you have. Or it can be pretty costly mistake in the future. See you next blog.

<-- this is what a Radiant Diamond cut looks like. Isn't it gorgeous???
Trimmed corners are the signature of this diamond, and they help make the radiant-cut a popular and versatile choice for jewelry. A radiant-cut looks equally beautiful set with either baguette or round side-diamonds. Radiant-cut diamonds can vary in their degree of rectangularity. To find the dimension of radiant you want, look for the length-to-width ratio in our interactive diamond search and on each diamond's detail page. The lenght-to-width ratio will determine the diamond's outline, or what it will look like when viewed from the top. For a radiant diamond shape that is square, look for length-to-width ratios between 1 and 1.05. If you prefer more of a rectangular shape, look for length-to-width ratios greater than 1.10.

Croppin' Around the Clock Website

It took me awhile to figure out all the html lingo, but I finally did it, I finally got my website up. Check it out

http://www.croppinaroundtheclock.com

WOO HOO!!! Now I'm in business officially! I'm very excited.