Blogging In Denver International Airport

So first things first, The winner for my little giveaway according to the random number generator is #18, which would happen to be Beth Perry. So beth, I will be dropping you a comment on your blog, but in case yoee this first, email me your address and I will get your goodies out to you as soon as I get home on tuesday! Thanks so much for all the congrats gs, I hope you will all be hopping over to scrapgal.com to check me out.

Ok, so next item of business, I am at DIA waiting for my flight to Shreveport airport to spend a few days with Luke in Texas/Louisiana. The kids are with my Dad here at a friends house. I got to go do a very small amount of shopping last night, headed up to Sephora for my free birthday lip gloss (if you aren't a beauty insider yet, head to www.sephora.com and sign up. You get free stuffor your birthday!) I also picked up one of their scent books. It has 10 testers in it and an atomizer. it's $50, but you get a certificate for a free bottle of perfume (one of the 10) when you decide which one you want. Since Luke is SOOOO picky, I am tired of spending $40-$60 for a bottle of perfume he hates! So this way, he can decide what HE likes and then I will get that!

Next item of business... I am NOT looking forward to hot. Man alive, hot in Denver, hot in Louisiana, and hot in texas. Anyone who knows me, knows that I HATE anything over about 75 degrees! I am a cold weather girl. So ts going to be a big fat change for me. I will try not to whine too much, but just know that I am already uncomfortable!

Ok, I think that's about it. Yesterday was a VERY long drive, I misestimated the amount of time it would take me by almost an hour. The kids did really well considering, and the weather was good. first time I have drive by myself east and had it not be snowing! Thank GOD for Nintendo DS. They never would have made it if it weren't for that.

well, I suppose that's it for now. Since I am in the airport and was traveling yesterday too, I don't have anything nto post. But next week, I promise I will! Have a great weekend!

I made design team at scrapgal!

OK, so this is my big announcement! I made the design team! This is most likely the best thing that has happened all year! I am so excited. This group of girls is SOOOOOO freaking fun. They are mostly like me. Loud, crazy, and loads of fun. Very talented to. The store has some awesome stuff, some of which I haven't seen anywhere else! I have made some really great friends over there and hope you will check us out here. We have a lot of really cool stuff going on this month, a summer picnic contest and a Pink Pailsey contest. Lots of goodies to give away.

In honor or making the design team, I thought I would to a little RAK. You don't get to know what it is, but I promise it won't be cast offs of old stash I am trying to offload. Lets just say I just did some scrappy shopping! So leave me a comment by Wednesday (tomorrow) at 6 am. I will need the winner's address before I leave for Denver so I can get your package in the mail. This is a quick one, but I am leaving for vacation and wanted to do something!

Here is a layout I did about making the DT. I used all kinds of Sassafrass Hog Heaven. Have a great day!

I think I should crawl back in bed...

SO today it has really hit me. I only have 4 days left in my house. Ever. This weekend, we signed a lease for it. A great couple in the same situation as us- getting transferred, unable to sell their house, needs a place to live until they get it sold cause they can't afford 2 mortgages- is going to be living here, hopefully starting the 1st of July, assuming the movers can get organized.

I will be leaving for Texas/Louisiana to see Luke and look at houses on Wednesday. I am going down a day early to get some stuff taken care of in Denver. My folks will be keeping the kids for me there are my mom's friend is graduating from college. My parents planned to come down anyway so it just worked for them to keep my midgets there.

When I get back next Tuesday, I will have Wednesday at home, then Thursday I have to leave for Salt Lake. The kids and I fly out friday morning at 6am, so we have to stay overnight there. I still don't know how I am getting to the airport. I need someone to drive me, but finding someone to drive you 3 hours just to turn around and come home isn't easy. I will figure it out I am sure.

At that point, I will never be back here again. We will spend a month in Hawaii with Lindsey. My folks are coming out the last 4 days we are there, so we will get some time altogether (minus Luke) for the first time in 2 years. I miss my sissy and even Alisa, though she torments me so with her feet!

When we leave Hawaii, we will head straight for Dallas, TX and on to wherever it is Luke has found for us to live. I will no longer be a Wyoming resident, which isn't all that sad. I hate GR and pretty much everything here! This is the ugliest part of the whole state. I will be happy to put it in my rearview mirror. But TX brings new challenges, a new way of life. A new climate, new people, new customs. And MORE republicans!!!! AHHHHHHH! Not that I am opposed to republicans, I even share some of their views. I just have a hard time with conservatives sometimes. I am, afterall, DEBATE! And that makes me prone to arguements. And that makes me prone to disliking people because they have no EVIDENCE for their arguements. They believe stuff and they don't know why and don't have any logical evidence, much less set prescedence to back it up. And that infuriates me! OK, enough about that.

Ok, I need to go switch over laundry so I can start packing today. Just what I always wanted to do. I cleaned out all the leftovers so when Traeger comes to house sit, he doesn't have any funky science experiments growing in the back of the fridge! I will have an update tomorrow... something good!

I will leave you with something I did Saturday night.

Hasta Los Crotches.

The WEINER!!!

OK, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get the stupid thing from Random.org in here to show the winning number, but it was 1! I gave the parameters of 1-8 because I got 8 entries. So the order you submitted your entry is the number you get! If you want to see the random.org thing, I was able to save it in a word document and if someone tells me how, I will post it here! so the first entry was......
MANDY! PM me your addy over on scrapgal and I will get your goodies out today!

Thanks to all you girls for playing! I am thinking I am going to make this a fairly regular thing. I will post a new challenge later in the month with more goodies, so be sure to check back then. And tell a friend! While you're at it, check out the challenges over on scrapgal, there are some cool prizes up for grabs. Hope to see you there! Congrats Mandy!!

Challenge and Giveaway time...

OK, so I am inspired. Luke got a new dog a couple weeks ago and since he is out of state, I didn't get to meet him until last week when they came home for a visit. I am in love with him. I can't wait to snuggle in bed with him when Luke leaves in the mornings!

So here is the challenge part. I want you to create a layout about your fur baby. But, I want it to be a new one. So here's the catch. There are specifics! You need to use only 2 colors on the whole layout, not including black or white which count as neutrals and everyone can use! Yeah, i know. But i know you can do it. And I will make it worth it.

I have, in my posession, this....

Yep, I am giving away a WHOLE Mr. Campy crafting kit! Sounds like a pretty good giveaway to me! This was bestowed upon my by the wonderful folks over on the Cosmo Blog to share the wealth with. So I am going to hook you up. You will have until the 10th to do this, that's just over a week. Link it up, I will do the old random number generator thing to figure out which of you will have your summer camping trips squared away! I am going to try to do more challenges and giveaways, so keep an eye out! Add me to your blog roll, cause lets face it... You know you want to!

Here's my layout for some inspiration!

How Do I Love Thee?

I was lucky enough to win a Wee Bundle of Sunshine Lollipop from the Sass blog and have just absolutely been itching to play with it. So for the last 2 days, I have been working on this! It's for my sister. I took the kids out recently for a photo shoot and these are from then. Of course I had to include 1 of myself too, but mostly they are of the kids.

I used a ton of stash on this, flowers from all kinds of places, rubons from mostly BG, the new paper whimsy (card sticking up in the back) from Sass, and so much ribbon I can't even tell you! I have also fallen in love with Kaiser bling. So there is some of that here too. And Maya Road cupcake rubons and chip wing. They are the cutest! Thanks to the girls over at scrapgal.com, I am not infatuated with thickers. The blue puffy ones are so fun and I had to use them here. wow, I could keep going forever. There is so much great stuff in here that I love. But I will let you look now!

The album is a 5x10 Pageframes album. I am cheap and acrylic is on the spendy side. So i put it in my purple cow rotary trimmer and cut the sucker in half! it was actually much easier than I thought, 3 or 4 passes through the rotary was enough to cut right through the acrylic. So now I have 2- 3 ring 5x5 albums instead of 1 5x10 6 ring album! Aren't I so clever!!Enjoy, hope it brings you some magical inspiration today! I just can't stop touching it, it's so much fun!

Homage to Anthem

So as you may know, I recently won a super fab prize pack from Sassafrass. I was chosen as their blog blinky winner for last week. YEEHAW! And I felt like I owed it to them to create something fitting of the line. I do believe this qualifies as fitting. Can I just say that I am in love? The gret bright colors just scream happiness! How can you look at this house and not smile? It's a bit 50's, a bit Skittles, and a bit Wizard of Oz.

So some technical issues/advice/what I did...

1. To make the flowers in the window box, I punched some scraps of the anthem paper using my EK binding punch. I folded the long skinny stip on the bottom to a 90 degree angle. i ran a couple little spots of adhesive and stuck them down in rows of different colors. No one wants bland flowers!

2. The balloons posed a bit of a problem. I knew I wanted them to float above the house, but figured wire would look cheesy. So I took a 12 inch MME THICK transparancy strip and cut an 1/8 inch strip off the side. I then cut that to varying lengths so the balloons could be different heights. For the front and back balloon, I pt a glue dot on the bottom and top of the transpapracy and on the bottom, I wrapped it all the way around (for better adhesion). Stick the balloon on the top, cut a small square of matching paper and stick it on to cover the glue dot and end of the transparancy. On the bottom, I sandwiched the transparancy between the paper edge and the chipboard roof.

3. When you use the doodlebug houses, you HAVE to use glue. The adhesive they put on is completely useless. They even added a sticker to say to use hot glue. I don't have a hot glue gun, I broke mine... So I used a metal glue. So far so good.

4. I wanted to use a different paper on each side of the house, so I had white spots on the corners. I added ribbon and felt "gutters" to cover those spots. I used the edges of the paper (which by the way, is the smartest thing Sass has ever done, I use those just as much if not more than anything else!) I also cut curtains out of scraps for the windows. I wanted the inside to be interesting too, so I covered the inside with more of the paper so that when you look through the front door, you get something other than white. the back of the house was plain so I used a paper whimsy, doodled in purple around it, cut a flower paper whimsy in half, and put it and the center on pop dots.

Ok, enjoy! And go buy some Anthem now!

Giving some shout outs

Ok, so i am all about hooking people up who hook me up. So that's what this is all about. Three places that have hooked a girl UP recently.

1. Sassafrass. Ok, besides the fact that they freaking rock and you can tell by 1/2 the layouts on my blog that I am a tiny bit obsessed, I was chosen for their blinky blog person thingy for the week! Isn't that awesome?? It's totally random and has nothing to do with my amazing scrappy skillz :( but nonethe less, they are hooking me up with a package of Sassafrass goodies! I have no idea what yet, but I was told I would be pleasantly surprised... It's Sass, of course it's going to be pleasant!

ETA my motherload! Holy cow, it was way fast shipping! And i sure was PLEASANTLY SURPRISED! Anthem kit (with cs sticker 12x12, cs alphas, and the 6x12 cs stickers), Hog Heaven kit (same as anthem), wee sunshine lollipop pad, and 2 packs of paper whimsies (1 is the ATC card style and one is flowers!!!!) If I didn't love Sass enough before, I really love them now!

2. Ebay find of the month. Dora's Scrapbooking Outlet. OMG! serious hookup. Ok, lets start with the fact that she has ALL the new MME Break free collection in kits and HALF OFF (only for like 2 days, so go FAST!)! I bought almost all of it. Second, she was out of the rubons and offered to run out and get them TOMORROW for me so i could have them! Seriously? That's customer service! And LASTLY, but certainly not least, she offers FREE SHIPPING over $50, which isn't hard to do. Well, actually at half off it took more than I thought! So go check her out, tell her I told you about her. My ebay name is shep_9! I just want her to know that I really appreciate her! (This post is not sponsored by or bribed or blackmailed by anyone, just some honest to goodness lovin!)

3. Scrap gal. Now i don't want you to think they are the least cause they are last, in fact they are the best, so I was saving them for last! They are having a DT call, don't bother applying, I intend to earn a spot so you have no chance! j/k! But seriously, they are having a Pink Paisley contest (all creations must be 75% PP products to enter) and you don't even have to be good! this isn't a "Only Ali Edwards need apply" kind of place. They are equal opportunity lovers! So you enter a project, your name goes into the hat. At the end of the month, they draw a random winner! Voila! I won the Glitz contest over there in April and HOLY Motherload Batman! i got the entire Rebel line, half of the Hot Mama, a bunch of the one with cars and road signs (the name escapes me), and a stack of rubons, cs alphas, and cs stickers. probably close to $100 of goodies. I was FLOORED. I have been using the heck out of it!

Ok, second. They are having a summer picnic challenge, with weekly challenges. No idea what the prize is, if there even is one! But the challenge this week is really fun. You pick a menu and you get specific things you have to have on a layout that you enter. It's so much fun.

And third, pretty much everything over there rocks. The ladies are AWESOME, talented, funny, supportive girls. The gallery is always rocking! The store has the latest October Afternoon release!!! And it would be a lot more fun if you came and hung out. Seriously. It is so much fun i can't even tell you.

It's really late, like almost midnight. Insomnia strikes again. Hey, I could make my own Star Wars-esque trilogy about my lack of sleep! That would be so cool! but I think I would be the only one awake to watch it. Alas, no scrapping today. I spent the day loading 25 listings onto ebay. it was time to clear out the kids' closets and get rid of all of Trent's Thomas the train stuff. So if you're looking, go check it out! Hope to see lots of entries for my challenge! If this goes well, it may become a regular thing ;) So tell a friend and get busy!

My favorite mini book

This is quite possibly my favorite mini ever. It's a bunch of little lessons I learned college. The dorms sure were informative! Little gems like "don't dump a bowl of top ramen in your garbage can when your dorm has a mouse problem. The proverb about the mouse falling in a bucket of cream doesn't translate to salty aasian noodles." and "That boy may be cute, but VD is forever". Every lesson in this mini is something either I personally or a friend of fellow dormer learned the first semester.

All the paper is from Crate Paper, Crush collection. Most of the ribbons are, and some of the rubons too. The rest is all stuff from my stash, everything from Making Memories, My Minds Eye, you name it! The big green flower on the front is actually a SHOE CLIP from Old Navy! I saw it, bought a pair in green and a pair in burgendy knowing they would never see shoes!

Ok, that's about it for now. Maybe back tomorrow with something new. We'll see how the mojo is! All kinds of rain and thunderstorms today and it got chilly so I snuggled up with Trent on the sofa and played Super Mario Brothers vs. battles on the kids' Nintendo DS.