A Day of Gifts!

Check out this gorgeous ornament that my traveling buddy, Kim, sent me to remember our trip! How cute is this!! Thank you so much, Kim!

And, I've been waiting not so patiently for my gift to arrive from Close To My Heart. As a director each year we receive a gorgeous gift and a handmade card. A fellow director had posted a spoiler but I resisted looking. Then, upon visiting my upline's blog...there it was. UGH! I closed out her blog without really checking it out but I did know we were receiving bracelets. Here's the cute wrapping.



Look what was inside! How pretty!



And...my handmade card!

CTMH Sneak Peek!

The Spring Idea Book has arrived! With all the craziness here I haven't had a chance to wear the ink off the pages yet, but it looks fantastic! What do you think? I'll be putting them in the mail soon.

Lookie, lookie! Here's a sneak peek of the new National Papercrafting Month special! It begins December 16th, and you have the opportunity to get it for FREE!! Be sure to email me to find out how!

Cute Holiday gifts

Check these out! I had so much fun making these and you can also! I'll be giving this My Acrylix Album to my niece for Christmas, as it will be the 1st Christmas for my grand-niece. I think my niece will have fun filling it with Christmas photos of her children, Brooke and Hunter.




















My Sister-in-Law will be getting this cute family recipe album. I'll fill it half full with old family photos and favorite recipes from each member of the family. The other pages I'll leave empty so that Nan can fill it with family favorites from her side of the family.

Both projects are made with all Close To My Heart products. If you'd like to create these cute gifts and see all of the pages, check out my From My Heart Kit.

Craft Fair

Last Saturday I was a vendor at a huge craft fair. It's a local fair that benefits a local children's charity. This was my 5th year as a vendor. With the economy as it is, myself and other vendors did not know what to expect. It turns out that we worried for nothing! Over 2400 people came through the doors to shop! It appears that people in this area have chosen to spend their hard earned money at local shops and through local crafters this year (something that I plan on doing also). It turned out to be a very successful show! Now I need to get busy and paint the special orders that I came home with. It really was a lot of fun as I see many of the same vendors and shoppers from year to year. This year the organizer told me that one woman almost knocked him down after asking where my booth was :) She came flying over and picked out a mailbox and was back out the door in record time. LOL! I also made another lady's day as she'd been looking for a horse mailbox for over a year (evidently she hasn't stopped by Crafter's Gallery *smile*). She kept coming back after placing her order to tell me how excited she was. Sure feels good to make somebody's day!*wink*

Well, I better go get busy...so much to do...so little time!

Phew!!

I'm pooped! LOL!! I hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving yesterday! We did! What a wonderful day to give thanks for family and friends.

I had big plans for getting up in the middle of the night last night to shop online at Walmart.com so that I wouldn't have to brave the crowds today. So, I set the alarm for 2:45. Unfortunately, nothing that I wanted was a "ship to store" item so they wanted an arm and a leg for shipping! I had the $7 USB Flash Drive in my cart and they wanted $5.97 to ship it! YIKES! So, I shut the computer off and went back to bed. LOL! Got back up at 5 and headed out by 5:45 for Walmart. It was a madhouse and they were already sold out of the digital photo frames that I wanted for my brother for Christmas and the $8 mens jeans, so we left and headed to Staples and got the photo frames there. YEA! Sure hope Santa was able to pick one up for me also, as that's what I'm looking for to put my trip photos on.

I hit Bon-Ton to grab a couple more things and was home by 8:30. No time to dawdle today as I still needed to finish a few items for the craft fair tomorrow. Those are done, the car is packed and I'm ready for left-overs for dinner! LOL!

After dinner I need to get busy and start packing my Stamp a Stack & Cherish Clubs so they can get mailed out first thing Monday morning. I'm hoping I can get a few out tomorrow but that might be pushing it.

Hope you had a great day of Black Friday shopping!

Busy, busy, busy!

It's that time of the year! Are you as crazy busy as I am right now? One would think that this time of year comes as a surprise to me each year. LOL!! As usual....I'm the PRO of PROcrastination. *wink* I painted 5 mailboxes each on both Friday and Saturday, plus sewed 6 of the skating outfits that I make for the dolls. I needed to make sure there were plenty in the store with Black Friday this week. I had huge plans to get a lot done today, but that didn't happen. I headed out to do errands as they're saying we could get some snow tonight and it will be rainy tomorrow, so I figured I'd much rather do the errands while it was dry.

I spent about 1/2 hr on the phone on hold today. :( I've been working on my daughter's website and, for the life of me, I could not get it to upload to her domain name. I've done a number of websites so I was totally baffled and finally had to give in and call. It's just a basic site right now but I'll dress it up more after the holidays when I have more time to play. That's my husband driving the horse in the photo on the home page. I have more of those types of photos to upload into a slide show. Check it out if you get a chance. Kaleidoscope Farms

So, what are your plans for Black Friday? I've been checking out the ads online, but there's nothing like sitting down on Thanksgiving and actually seeing the flyers. I have a couple of things in mind that I definitely want to get. I want a digital photo frame for my brother and sister in law. Both Staples and Walmart have them on sale. So....now to decide which store to go to! LOL!! I usually try to avoid Walmart as that parking lot is just an accident waiting to happen on Black Friday. But, the chances are probably better that they'll have more in stock than Staples will, right? Plus, Staples has a rebate on theirs and I might want to buy more than one. I'm going to be asking Santa for one for myself also. I think it would be fantastic to have a ton of my Europe photos on it so that I can see them all the time. You know how it is...you put photos in the scrapbook and you don't look at them as often. I think it will be great to have them on the digital frame so that I can relive my trip every day.

Well, better finish for today. I have mailboxes lined all around my kitchen counters with their first coats of poly on them. Time to move them and make some dinner :)

My Latest Creation

I'm usually pretty critical of my own work, but I'm really liking this one. I was asked to create a mailbox with a mare and foal on it, so here's the finished product. I will be adding this one to my line of mailboxes that I sell. So...what do you think?

Talking about Close To My Heart!

Yea! It's just been announced that we can now talk about our Close To My Heart Business on our blogs! I have been dying to share my artwork with you. :)

Here are the layouts we will be doing in the November Cherish Club.

These cards for our Stamp a Stack Club were made using the new Festive Frills My Acrylix stamp set.

If you'd like more information on my Cherish and Stamp a Stack Clubs, shoot me an email. I'd love to have you join us!

Be sure to check out the great new Art & Soul video tutorials hosted by Close To My Heart.

Check back often for more artwork!

CC is Safe!!

She's had quite the adventure! I called around to the neighbors today and one neighbor said that a kitten had followed her kids about 1/2 mile up the road to the next farm. So, I jumped in the car and drove up there. They said there was a cute, well taken care of kitten at their house yesterday but because they had dogs, they'd sent her home with somebody else. They called that person and left word that the owner had been found. He just delivered her back to us! She was a little scared but it didn't hurt her appetite! LOL!
Thank goodness she's ok! Now I can sleep tonight!

My Kitten is Missing :(

I'm so upset! I've looked all over the property, but no sign of her. CC (Cute Cat or Crazy Cat) is only 5 months old. She's a cutie plus a little wild (thus the crazy cat tag) LOL!! She was in the barn with my husband Saturday night sitting on his shoulder like a parrot....one of her favorite things to do. She'd been playing with the bandages over night as they were scattered around, but she was nowhere to be found yesterday morning when I went to feed the horses. She usually sleeps on some bandages on the anvil stand and is always there when I go into the barn in the morning. She wasn't there yesterday morning. :( I looked all over yesterday but couldn't find her. My husband said he didn't see her in the morning yesterday either. I had hoped she would be in her bed this morning when I went to feed, but she wasn't there.

Due to my allergies & asthma, all of our kitties have to be barn kitties. She's been so good about staying in the barn except to follow us when we go down to feed horses. She loves to ride the golf cart with our grandson. Please keep good thoughts for CC and that we find her......

Getting into the Groove

Wow! Did I have a hard time getting back into the groove after returning from our fabulous trip! I could sit and daydream all day about the fabulous places that we saw!

But, the time has come to get my rear in gear and get going! LOL! I can't believe that Thanksgiving as fast approaching. With Thanksgiving comes the Holiday Craft Fair that I participate in the Saturday after Turkey Day. I've been doing it now for at least 5 years. I need to get busy and paint some mailboxes and other small items to sell. Hopefully, there will be a good turnout. Usually around 2500-3000 people come as it benefits a local child's charity.

I've also been busy creating lots of great Holiday gift workshops. Many of those items will be gifts for my nieces and Sister in Law as it's hard to know what to get them since they live so far away.

And, finally, I need to be sewing American Girl and Bitty Baby doll clothes for Crafter's Gallery as November 22nd is their 15th anniversary so there will be a huge celebration in the store and the first weekend in December will be the Victorian Streetwalk, so I need to make sure my shelves are well stocked!

One would think that the holidays are a surprise to me every year! LOL! Seems like all of a sudden they're here and I'm running around like a mad woman! LOL!

Well, better go hang some wash. I can't believe it's still in the 50's and 60's in upstate NY this time of the year. Loving it!

Have a wonderful day!

Photos!

Boy...did I take a ton of photos!! I've spent the better part of the last two days going through all of my photo cards and uploading the best ones to Winkflash. You'll find 700+ at http://www.suzastampin.winkflash.com Enjoy!

We're home!

What an amazing adventure! I still can't believe the number of famous places that we visited. We left the ship at 5:30 am to catch our shuttle to the airport. There was a bike race in Barcelona yesterday morning, so, the roads were going to be closed making us need to get to the airport early. Our flight left Barcelona around noon and we arrived 9 hrs later in Philadelphia at 3:15 pm US time. We had a 3 hr layover in Philly before boarding our flight into Albany. It was a short flight and I dozed on and off most of the way. By the time we arrived home, we had been up for about 20 hrs. I couldn't wait to see my husband and then hit the bed! I got about 5 hrs sleep but was awake about 4 am. Finally, after tossing and turning for awhile, I decided to just get up and start the laundry. Our weather in NY is supposed to be nice today and tomorrow, so, that should help me get caught up as there's 12 days worth here, plus all of my clothes. I love to hang the wash on the line, so, I was hoping for good weather!

I'll be working my way through emails today and trying to get caught up on things. As I get caught up, I'll start going through the thousands of photos to post the best in some slide shows. I know there are some that can be deleted as many were taken as we flew by things on a bus. Needless to say, I have some fleeting tree pictures! LOL!

Can't wait to get time to post a good long post with lots of details and pics!

Nice & Monte Carlo

Changing of tbe Guard

Prince Andrew's Palace

Cathedral


Monte Carlo Casino

Tender

I can't believe this fabulous trip has come to an end. Nice is a tender port, which means we had to take small boats from the ship to port. Once we reached the port, we drove through Nice on our way to Monaco and Monte Carlo. They certainly aren't lacking for money in Monte Carlo. We posed for pictures in front of a black Lamborgini, plus saw a yellow and a silver one. We also spotted Bentleys and Mazarattis. I'm not sure if I spelled Mazaratti correctly, as it's the first time I've seen one. LOL!
After seeing Monte Carlo, we drove on to Monaco. We visited the Cathedral where Princess Grace and Prince Andrew are entombed. After the Cathedral, we went on to the palace to view the changing of the guard. After some time for shopping, we boarded our bus to get back to the port. Once at the port, we tendered back to our ship and set sail at 3 pm. We'll arrive in Barcelona around 5 am. Our plane leaves around noon, so, we'll be catching a shuttle to the airport a little after 6 am. Since Barcelona is a port city, there are many ships disembarking on Sunday, so the airport could be a bit crazy.
While it's been a great vacation with lots to see, I'm looking forward to getting home. Over the next week, I'll go through the 2500-3000 photos that I've taken and pick out the best to post a slideshow for viewing.
See you in the states!