South Lake Tahoe Retreat

I've been slacking on my blog but wanted to post a picture from the scrapbook retreat in South Lake Tahoe on April 17 - 20, 2009. We had an AWESOME time. I know I did and I'm pretty sure the girls did too. The rest of the photos are on my website April Retreat

Scrapbook projects

So lately I've been on a scrapbook project kick. Here is a 2-page layout I've done recently.I decided that instead of buying Easter window clings and only being able to use them once like we do every year I felt inspired to make my own and be able to use them year after year. These will go on the front window this weekend. I think they turned out really cute!!!

Donating for a cause...

I am a member of a message board on Cricut.com. One of the member has a daughter Lindsey who was ill with cancer. At her last appt., she received a clean bill of health, which is an amazing feet. So now as of 2/14/09 she will have been in remission for 2 years. Kristen, Lindsey's mother has requested that if we have extra stickers in our scrapbook stash and if we would be willing to donate them to the children's hospital her daughter had been in. Anyway, my long story short, I'm mailing mine today!!! And I have TONS of extra ones. LOL. It makes me feel good that I can send her a full box of stickers for the children to use to make crafts. I'm sure they will love all the stickers that are donated. Kristen will be collecting until the day before Valentine's day and will then take them to the children. It's going to be a special Valentine's Day for children in Knoxville, TN for sure. See you next blog.

Halloween Layout

I know it's a little late to be posting about Halloween but I wanted to post a picture of my Halloween layout. I'll be posting more as I get some more done. LOL. I used my Cricut Expressions to do my layout in 12x12. I used colored paper to back the letters, stars, moon & fence. See you next blog.

Our Christmas Tree & Village

YAY, we finally got our tree finished as well as the village. I have collected houses over the years. My first ones I did I painted myself. Since some of the ones of the village in the dark didn't come out well, I took pics with the flash and w/o the flash.

Tree stand

See you next blog.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Tony N' Tina's Wedding ~ 11/29/08

Last weekend we took Andrew & Maria to SF to see a show called Tony n' Tina's Wedding in San Francisco. We headed down to SF just after 1 in the afternoon. We checked into the Westin hotel, changed clothes and made our way down to Fisherman's Wharf for the show at Castagnola's Restaurant. We had such a good time. There was drinking, dinner and a show of epic proporations. It was absolutely hilarious.

About the Show
Get yourself invited to TONY N' TINA'S WEDDING, now celebrating its 19th Hilarious Year in New York! At TONY N' TINA'S WEDDING you don't just watch the show...you are the show. It's an all-inclusive event where you're treated like one of the family.

The event begins with the side-splitting ceremony where anything can happen (and usually does!). Then, it's time for the most hilarious wedding reception you'll ever attend! You'll enjoy a full Italian meal, raise a champagne toast, eat the wedding cake and dance the night away at the party you and your friends will be laughing about for years to come. The show stars "Tina," the headstrong 20-something party girl bride with an attitude – and "Tony," the rowdy, handsome, yet charming groom-to-be.

Other hilarious characters emerge from this quirky cast, which includes an entire wedding party of guests ranging from "Connie," the pregnant maid of honor, to "Father Mark," a priest who thinks he's hip. As the evening unfolds, the only guarantee is that there will be plenty of drama all around. Then, it's off to the Tony n' Tina's Wedding reception where wedding singers entertain guests and encourage everyone to dance to standard wedding fare like the infamous chicken dance, the dollar dance and "YMCA."

The New York City/ Broadway production of Tony 'n' Tina's Wedding, which has been a hit since the mid-1980s, is produced by Raphael Berko, who is also the producer of the shows in Las Vegas and San Francisco. He also produced the show at the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort and Spa from 2002-2004, the award winning Orlando production from 2007 – 2008, as well as multiple productions on Norwegian Cruise Lines in Hawaii and the Mediterranean.

There was a young guy who sat at the end of our table (a cast member)...anyway he mentioned that he was an ex-boyfriend of TINA. Ahh, the jealousy of an ex at your wedding. He put on quite an act, acting like the typical jealous ex-boyfriend. We thought for sure he was going to object when the Minister asked for objections but the minister went on too quickly for anyone to object. I'm not telling the story very well. I guess it's one of those things where you'd have to be there to appreciate it. After we got out of the show, Jake hailed a limo for us to take back to our hotel. I had worn heals and my feet were killing me, there was no way I was going to make it walking back up to our hotel.

On our way to Fisherman's Wharf on the trolley car

Waiting in the lobby to get inside

Us just as we got in and seated

The limo

Tony & Tina

The Jilted ex-lover of Tina

Father of the Groom with his 1/2 his age g/f

9mo. pregnant MOH

Maria really got to know the jilted ex

Maria being sernaded by the Wedding Singer

Maria & her Wedding Singer

Did you know that nuns dance...with Jake too??? Who knew?

The once sober jilted ex-lover went back to his old ways and was a drunken soul by the end of the night. :o(

Anyway, we had an awesome time. These pics are going to make great pages for my Scrapbook!!! :o) If you want to see more pics from our weekend, go to my Webshots. See you next blog.

My 1st Scrapbook Retreat 11.15.08

After many months of planning a scrapbook retreat, it has come and gone so quickly. I was very tired my dogs (feet) were barking from walking around so much, visiting, and getting things taken care of. We had snacks, food, goodie bags, a page layout contest, raffles oh and more food!!! I had such a great time and I think everyone else did too. The space I thought was going to be big enough but I under estimated the # of bags everyone would have and how much space everyone was going to need. Boy was I wrong. LOL. But I learned my lesson and the next venue will be bigger. I’m so thrilled that I was given the chance to meet so many new friends. I hope they all had a good time. They seemed to have fun aside from the cramped space. But you live and learn and believe me I learned get a BIGGER SPACE. LOL!

My next big weekend retreat is in April ‘09. It’s going to be a 3-night stay in a Mountain Home in South Lake Tahoe. I will be able to accommodate up to 38. Feeding 38…including me is going to be a big job and Jake has volunteered to cook all the meals for us. He’s even spoken up that he’s going to make cookies too so that the house will smell of cookies. :o) He’s so handy to have around. I think I’ll keep him. Ha-ha.

I'd like to send a special Thank You to Monique G. for teaching the Fall & Winter cricut classes. I know the ladies really enjoyed learning new techniques and creating beautiful layouts. They both were gorgeous.

Here is what they looked like.

Fall

Winter class

I'd also like to send another special Thank You to Holly B for your work on the Card make-n-takes you handed out to the ladies. They really enjoyed all 3 cards. They turned out really, really cute. I'll post pics as soon as I put mine together.

For the time being, I also have in the works another day retreat sometime in January in Roseville but not at the same place as the other one I had. To see all the retreat photos, go to my Webshots or Croppin' Around the Clock. See you next blog.

Unfortunately by the time I got around to taking a group photo we had already lost 3 ladies who had to leave earlier in the day.

Family Photos

We had family photos taken while our niece Jenni and her husband Dillon were in town visiting from Alaska. We had the whole family with the exception of our BIL Dan. He was still working so he wasn't available but at least we got everyone except 1.

The whole family

Hmm...who could this be????

SIL Becky, her hubby Dan, their 2, Erik & DJ

Mother and daughter (Chris, Jake's sister & niece Jenni)

Mom & her Grandchildren. Top L-R ~ Tyler, Jenni, Tori & DJ.

Erik sitting on Mom's lap

Dillon (Jen's DH), Jenni & Mom

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.