More is More

Oh Yeah! –
He’s a Keeper!!

Thanks to everyone who sent anniversary wishes to us today.

Wishing you an early

I have a little gift project to share and some links and info you’ll definitley want to know about!  First the project – I made these little gift packets for my SU Club Members.

Included is a container of Cosmo Fine Glitter, a little rubber stamp, a wrapped Ghiradelli Peppermint Bark Square and on the back a little sale special just for them.  I used Holiday Treasure dp and Chocolate Chip cardstock to create an insert and a topper for cello bags.   Here’s a close up.

I love my Club girls and feel very blessed to have them!  I hope they’ll enjoy these little gifts and feel the love!  🙂

And now all the news you need to know….

****Stampin’ Up! is having a fantastic Bundles sale today through Monday – it’s a Holiday Extravaganza for you to shop for yourself or for Christmas gifts.  The product bundles are up to 50% off and are in limited quantities so you’ll want to do your shopping ASAP!  Here’s a listing of what’s on sale su-nov-08-holiday-extravaganza.pdf  You can shop with me 24/7 in my on-line store by going through my Stampin’ Up! website https://www.stampinup.net/esuite/home/jamisibley/promotions and don’t forget the Rub on promotion is on through Sunday as well.  If you don’t have another Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator you normally do business with, please bookmark my SU site and feel free to shop with me any time!

****Taylored Expressions has a big sale and some new products starting tomorrow (the 27th) morning.  Be sure you are signed up to receive the TE newsletter to get all the deets!

****My sweet friends Sharon Harnist and Lori Craig have a wonderful blog give-away running that includes SASI stamps AND Copic markers!  I’m sure you’ll want to register so check out their blogs Paperfections and Make a Difference.  Even if you don’t want to sign up for some crazy reason (which I can’t imagine) you’ll still want to hop over and see the cute projects they’ve posted!

****On a very serious note – please take a few minutes to read the blog post *Just Say No* by Julie Ebersole (the highly venerated JulieHRR) on the subject of image harvesting – click here – it’s becoming more and more prevelent and we need to make sure people are aware of this issue before it forces  some talented stampers to stop sharing their creations on the internet!  I already know of some people who refuse to share SU creations because of a few thoughtless harvesters.  Thanks Julie for addressing this issue like only you can!

****In this season of thanks and this season of sharing and giving would you like to send a card out to brighten someone’s day?  To offer encouragement?  I have a couple of opportunities for you.

1.  Holly (Toy on SCS) has posted a request for prayers and cards for her Aunt Marci who is battling cancer for the fifth time!  See her post here.  Please send a card to Marci if you can.

2. Laurie (Lauraly on SCS) has a 12 year old daughter dealing with a brain tumor.  Laurie’s friend Tosh has posted this thread on SCS asking for prayers and cards for little Ali.

If possible please take a minute out of the busy-ness of this holiday season to do something small like sending out a card to these 2 families to say that you are praying for them.  I know from personal experience what an incredible blessing that small act of kindness will be!

Wow!  That was a lot of info!  Is your brain fried yet?  I’ll be back Friday with Taylor’s Cupcake Challenge.  In the meantime I hope you get plenty of pumpkin pie and have lots of blessings to be thankful for! 

We’re packing up to go home and I’m ready to be there.  Six nights is longer than I’ve been away for many years.  While I love to take trips, I prefer them to be short – usually 3 or 4 nights.  I actually have a little project to share today.  I brought these little gifts to the girls who stayed at Sharon’s (all except Taylor – that’s what you get for keeping secrets!  *wink*)

I ordered these tiny tins from Specialty Bottle.  I’m not very good at picturing the size of things so I *thought* they would be the perfect size for the soft fuzzy bootie socks I had purchased.  As it turned out I had to roll up the socks and STUFF them in these little tins.  LOL!  The tags are from TE and the dp is Imaginesce from eP.  The yummy velvet ribbon is from TexasJodyLynn and the sentiment is from a SU hostess set.

The past couple of days we’ve been total tourists visiting Dealy Plaza and the School Book Depository in Dallas and the Stockyards in Fort Worth.  For me visiting Dealy Plaza was the experience of a lifetime.  I wasn’t even 2 years old when President Kennedy was shot, so I don’t know why I have always been so interested in him, his Presidency and the assasination, but it has always completely fascinated me.  Yesterday at Dealey Plaza we met a man who claims to be an eye-witness.  He says he was 13 years old and there with his family and he even carries a photo that shows him in the background.  I don’t know if it’s true or not, but we found him completely captivating.  We talked with him (along with a few other tourists) for over half an hour.  He whole-heartedly believes that Oswald was not the actual assasin.  I’ve never wanted to be a conspiracy nut, but I’ve also never really bought the Warren Commission explanation.  Even my completely logical and scientific skeptic husband had his doubts by the time we were done there!

Here’s a photo of Curt (yellow shirt and jeans) on the grassy knoll.

To the far left you can see a wooden picket fence and that’s where there were supposedly one or two additional shooters.  There are paint marks on the back side of the fence to indicate their positions.  There is a white “X” in the street marking the spot of the President’s car when the last fatal shot hit him.

Curt went out int he middle of the street and stood on the “X” to take this photo of the Book Depository.

It’s the building closest to us and the window the shots came from is on the 6th floor (2nd down from the top) on the far right.  The museum inside is very interesting as well and we spent almost 2 hours there.  It really brought home the deep emotion of the nation at the time of the assasination.  This weekend will be the 45th anniversary and apparantly a lot of the living eye witnesses will come to the grassy knoll.  I wish we could be here for that, but I’m very gald we got to come when it’s relatively uncrowded.

Yesterday we hung out with Meg and her friend Cyndie at the Stockyards.

At 4:00 everyday they have a cattle drive.  It was fun to see some longhorns up close.

And here’s Curt as a cowboy!

Texas has been a blast, but this California city-girl is ready to get home.  Thanks for coming along with me.  I might have a few more pics to share after I get home.  And I’m seriously dying to do some stamping!

The first part of my trip to Texas was all GIRL time!  Left to right in this photo are Tex, me, Jess, Taylor, Lori, Jenn and Sharon.  This trip was the serendipity of intersecting vacations!  It went something like this – Curt and I were wanting to plan a vacation for October or November.  One of our options was a trip to DFW to visit Megan and Gary – we’ve been talking about doing this for 3 or 4 years.  At one point I had hoped to go to the Copic training in KC back in October to meet up with Lori and Sharon, but then that just wasn’t working out.  One day Lori mentioned that she might go visit Sharon in November and a little light went off over my head.  I asked Curt if he’d like to go to Texas and he said “SURE!” so I called Lori to see if she was really headed to Sharon’s.  WooHoo!  Then I remembered that Jess had been talking about visiting her parents in Dallas, so I called to see if she might be able to make her trip coincide with ours.  About that same time Lori talked to Jenn who said she’d either drive over or maybe hop a plane.  From there it took a little finagling around hunting season, a marathon, the SASI holiday release, a DH birthday, a wedding, and several other things, but we were finally able to make things coordinate.  Sharon was so gracious to invite us all to stay at her lovely home.  She truly was the hostess with the mostess!  And since Tex was just about 45 minutes away she was able to hang out with us as well.

Now the whole Taylor thing…well let me just say that’s just about the most surprised and dumbfounded I have EVER been!  I had mentioned the trip to Taylor at one point and said “you should come”, but she never really seemed interested and I knew full well how busy she was with TE/SASI so I didn’t push.  When she jumped out from behind a pillar at the DFW Airport you could have pushed me over with a feather!  That little sneak!  Oh and she actually brought cupcakes in adorable handmade boxes – how cool is that?!  No one knew about her coming except Sharon.

If you were reading my blog back in the Spring when I first got my perm you know how much I love Curls Rock products.  Well it was Lori and Jess that got me started on them.  Since Taylor has naturally curly hair we made her try them too so we could take a “Get Kinky at Sharon’s” photo.

Unfortunately my perm is getting a little worn out so it’s no match at the moment for my naturally curly friends! LOL!  I’ve already scheduled a root perm to fix that!

I got to spend Wednesday night through Friday night with the girls.  Friday afternoon Tex took us out to see her FAB studio (my pic there is blurry unfortunately) and to Hobby Lobby (my first time there) before going out to dinner where Curt met us when he got off his flight.  I’ll be back late with more about the *me and Curt* part of the trip – I need to take some more pictures.  Thanks for stopping by and sharing in my travels.  I really need to make myself a travel journal!

Just a very quick late night post to say “Howdy y’all” from Texas.  🙂

I’ll have more to share later – so much fun here – but I couldn’t wait to share a couple of photos from today.  We spent the day with Megan (Curt’s cousin) and her hubby Gary at their farm in Weatherford.  Chickens, horses, miniature horses, ducks, dogs, canaries and a Lorikeet – this city-girl was in heaven.  Even better than all that is that Megan is a professional photographer (see www.meganparks.com ) and she offered to take our portraits on the farm.  It was cold and very windy today, so after taking great care to pick out outfits for our pictures we ended up wearing Megan and Gary’s coats in most of the shots.  LOL!

Megan was super sweet to very quickly pick out a couple of her favorite shots and give them to me with minimal editing so I could share here right away.  Here I am with Drifter, an adorable miniature stallion wearing a bejeweled bridle.  I had so much fun with him for these shots.

And here’s one of Curt and me. 

Megan is a wonderfully talented photographer and so great to work with.  Wow – maybe it was just the *diva* in me coming out, but I loved the photo shoot.  Curt could hardly believe that prissy-me just plopped down in the field wherever Meg told me to!  (Oh, and she’s an awesome cook too!)  If you’re in the DFW area and would like to schedule a photo shoot I can highly recommend her!!!

Bedtime for me – way past actually.  Thanks for stopping by.  I’ll have more soon.

A week without stamping???  AAACCCKKKKKK!  I can’t remember the last time I went a whole week without stamping!  I even missed Taylor’s Sketch Challenge today (my apologies to the Cupcake Crew!)  And I have a good sized box from Stampin’ Up! (all MINE) that’s been sitting untouched the whole week!  Tomorrow is World Card Making Day and I promise to be back to post a card tomorrow!

It’s been a long week for sure, but lots of good things have come of it.  I will share photos of the bedroom make-over as soon as I can get some taken.  We’re about 80% done in there and it’s already gorgeous!  Curtains are the only major thing we’re missing and I’m crossing my fingers I might find some tomorrow.  Then there’s a whole list of little details to be completed.

Yesterday I helped at church with a western themed dinner for the Seniors.  My friend Denise was in charge of table decorations and I helped her.  They turned out really cute!

It’s a little hard to see in the picture, but we took mini hay bales (from Michael’s) and stuck in a bouquet of silk sunflowers wrapped with a bandana and then added a small cowboy hat.  Peanuts were scattered all over the table and lemonade was served in mason jars.  The menu was BBQ beef sandwiches, cole slaw, baked beans and apple or pumpkin pie.  After decorating I moved to the kitchen and helped with the food service.  Tickets were only available to folks 70 and better.  We had about 60 people and everyone seemed to enjoy it.  I loved being involved, but I was certainly exhausted when it was over.  I’ll definitley help again at the next one in the Spring.

There’s lots of Stampin’ Up! excitement for October!  The new Holiday Mini Catalog is now available AND in celebration of SU’s 20th birthday we have a Birthday Sale!  Spend $20 on regular priced mechandise and you may add as many of the sale sets to you order as you like.

You can never have enough birthday sets!  Be sure to check them out!  Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you get to stamp tomorrow.  If you need some inspiration check out the SCS home page – there’s a link there to their WCD Challenge thread.  There will be a bunch of challenges to play.  Enjoy!

So the last time I posted was last Friday as we were getting ready to begin our bedroom make-over.  We had a deadline of Sunday night to complete the painting since carpet was to be installed first thing Monday morning.  We worked non-stop Friday through Sunday – even missing the concert we planned to attend on Friday night AND church on Sunday morning.  All of our hanging clothes are out in the motorhome covering all 3 beds and a chair.  Our bed is set up in the dining room/office (in fact I’m sitting on it to type up this post).  The living room and kitchen are full of everything else from the bedroom – drawers stacked up, side tables, etc etc.  The large furniture pieces are in the hallway so there is now just a narrow passage way to walk.  The house feels like that “I Love Lucy” episode where Lucy and Ricky had all their stuff at Fred and Ethel’s and all the boxes formed a maze.  It’s not fun.

We went and picked up our antique bed (carved Walnut headboard and footboard) and it is in the hallway as well.  We had a friend all lined up to help us get everything put back on Monday night.  Ahhhh but no such luck.  At 8:30 Monday morning the carept guys called to say the warehouse didn’t have our carpet!  After a lot of back-and-forth at mid-day Monday the carpet was promised for Tuesday morning.  Low and behold I got a call on Tuesday morning – nope – wrong carpet at the warehouse.  Those of you who know me can probably imagine the fit I pitched at that point.  I had to cancel my housekeepers from coming this morning (after a month long vacation) and I had to reschedule the SU Class I was going to teach this Friday.  Eventually I was promised carpet this morning at 8:00 am.  The guy finally arrived at 9:30 and is working on the install right now!  *PHEW*  I’m hopeful that we will find a friend available tonight to help move all the big furniture back in tonight and get our antique bed set up!!!

We painted the walls a mossy green with a lighter shade on the ceiling and white trim.  Curt hung up the chandelier he got me for my birthday and it is gorgeous – a dream come true!  The carpet will be cranberry.  I have yet to find curtains (brought some home but don’t like the way they go with the comforter) and I still need to get a matress pad (who knew they were so expensive and fancy?  Why do I need 500 thread count on a mattress pad that will be covered with 300 thread count sheets???)  I have waited 17 years to have a decorated bedroom and I am excited beyond belief at this point!  Plus I can’t take the topsy-turvy condition of my house much longer!

I promise to share pictures as soon as I can.  And I hope to be back with something stamped in a day or two.  I just haven’t had the time or creative energy to even sit down at my stamp table or to even take photos of a couple of things I had previously made but not photographed.  So that’s my update.  I hope you are having a fantastic week.  Mine seems to be looking up.  😉  Thanks for stopping by.  I’m off to work as soon as the carpet is in and done!