Where does the time go....

In looking at my blog I realized that it has been almost two months since my last post. Yikes even for me that's bad. Sometimes I really wonder where the time goes.

Right after my last post I got busy crating for a holiday craft fair. Then I decided that I would also try selling cards and crafts at our local farmers market. That actually went really well and I am for sure going to do that again once we get past the rainy season. The prep for these events was so much fun and I finally got a chance to use all my great SB supplies on lots of cool home decor type items.

My day job has been keeping me quite busy as well. I have way less time for internet lurking than I would like....but being busy sure helps the days go quickly. Yesterday I was in the office before 7am and didn't leave until after 7pm....on my way home I realized I was starving because I skipped lunch. So being busy at work is not all bad.....but I'm sure looking forward to the break.

Chirstmas is in full swing at my house. This year is the first year ever that I will actually spend Christmas in my own house. For the past 14 years since I graduated college I have travelled over Christmas to either my mom's house or Jim's mom's. So this is a big year for me as I will finally be in my own house. We put up our first real tree two weeks ago, I have decorations all over the house, and best of all we hung lights outside. On Sunday Jim and I took a drive throught our neighborhood to see all the lights. I am amazed at how many people put up lights and how many people go totally crazy with lights everywhere. We didn't get crazy or anything, but the house holds it's own in the neighborhood.

All of my boxes and cards have gone postal and I have just one or two small items left to pick up for Jim. I plan on wrapping the rest of his gifts tonight and maybe tomorrow...then it will be time to relax and wait for the big day. While I never go shopping the day after thanksgiving, I do love to shop on the day after Christmas....so it will be up to San Francisco for us.

Just in case I don't get another update in before the holiday I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and happy New Year.

Christmas Crafts

Back in July I created several projects for a special magazine issue for Christmas:Cards and Crafts for Christmas that I have been dying to share. I just had an absolute blast with this project and crafting for Christmas in the summer was so much fun. So I thought I would share some of my favorites:

SWEET!!! My blogger seems to be back up allowing me to post pictures. So I thought I would share some recent pages I did for an assignment where I was demonstrating different techniques to frame a photo.

This is one of my DH with his guitar. I found this very cool cement wall in a grade school near by. I used the urban acid action on the photo ans was quite happy with how it turned out.

This is a photo of my niece that my brother took last fall. The entire photo shoot was fantastic and she just look so precious with her little boots and red nose

This one is pictures of me that DH took a few months ago. The page looks crooked but IRL it's straight. I just love these new Daisy Bucket papers and embellies (on both this layout and the one above)

Now that I got the ability to post pictures back I will be back soon to post more. Thanks so much for looking. -Missy

Same ole same ole

Well it's been a while since I updated and I was starting to feel guilty. I'm still having trouble with blogger not giving me the wysiwyg options in formatting my notes. So I can't format any text or attach any pictures. So at the moment I am really thinking about moving over to typepad becuase my blog seems way too dull without the ability to share pictures.

After a week of jury duty (that was actually quite interesting) I have been back at work and the status quo. I have been so busy at work I don't have much time for anything else. We are just getting started on a major project that will last until the middle of 2009. This project will be a huge resourse drain on my team from now until it is completed....so I am trying to get myself and my team ready for the new work load.

On the scrapping front I haven't been very active in the past few weeks. I struggled to get some assignments done this weekend but haven't made much progress on anything else. I still have a few more things to make for assignments and then it will be back to fun cardmaking for the craft faire I am doing next month. I have actually had a blast making cards and ornaments for the faire so I hope it goes well. Tomorrow I have to go and get a resellers permit for the faire....so keep your fingers crossed that I don't run into any issues with that.

Not much else going on. Please tell the blogger Gods that I need my wysiwyg window back - nothing on my end has changed so I don't know what the problem is.

Memory Trends and More

Time sure does go by fast when your on vacation. I got back from Memory Trends on Sunday and have been playing catch up at work ever since.

MT was very small and quiet this year. As someone who was walking the floor this was great. The booths were fairly empty and there was plenty of time to look at all the new goodies and ask questions. As a vendor I'm sure it was disappointing being so slow. There was very little that was new just for MT, but since I didn't go to CHA-S there were some things I hadn't seen yet. This will probably be my last MT, but I'm still gald I went for a little while.

With the show being so slow I had a lot more time for seeing Vegas. I dragged DH with me this year and we walked to virtually every hotel on the strip. We did a lot of shopping and saw several shows but by far the most exciting night was watching the Cirque Beatles show. It was just fantastic....even picked me up a $40 T-shirt to remember the night.

Work has been kicking my butt this week. I'm trying to catch up from the days I missed last week and just got a HUGE project to lead for the next 9 months. With my work hours being so long I haven't really scrapped much of anything since getting back from Vegas. I finished a few cards I was working on and that's about all. I have 2 DT assignments that have to be mailed no later than Monday....so that will probably consume most of my weekend.

So just another day and a half for my much needed weekend...even if I have to work a bit.

Silly blogger still wont give me my wysisyg buttons for composing new posts...so I can't edit the format or attach pictures. Very strange.

Thanks so much for stopping by.

On my way to Memory Trends

Well blogger still wont let me post pictures. My formatting tool bar has vanished from my "create" new post window....so I have no way of formatting or adding pictures.

I made my reservations for Vegas several months ago to make sure I got a good airfare and hotel rate. Since that time the wind has blown out of the sails of Memory Trends. Most of the companies that I am interested in seeing will not be there. I'm sure that Making Memories, American Crafts, and May Arts will provide some good eye candy but nothing like past years.

But it's not all bad news. I just found out that Ginger is going to the show as well!!!! Woo Hoo. That will be fantastic to meet up her for a little while. We already have plans for an extra look at the Quickutz and Ameircan Crafts booths...I'm sure those of you who have been to shows know what I'm talking about. Hehehe.

I'm expecting the highlight of the trip to be the Thrusday night Cirque "love" show - beatles themed. DH and I have wanted to see this show since it came out last year. We got great tickets and are both very excited about going.

The trip also gives me 3 days away from work. Lately that have been a very very good thing.

So all-in-all it should be a fun little trip filled with some good time. The show may not be great but I'm for sure going to make the best out of my trip.

So how was your weekend?

Mine was great. DH and I had virtually nothing planned and did very little in the way of typical weekend chores. Saturday early afternoon we took a ride to Mountain View for a very cool craft faire. There were so many fantastic booths to look at. After eating some good junk food and looking around we picked up a new set of wind chimes and a very cool wind catcher decoration.

Last week I decided to rent a table at this years Christmas craft show in my local town to sell handmade greeting cards and ornaments - this is a very small annual show. I am planning to make a variety of cards focused on Christmas, Birthday, Thank You, Baby, and General Greetings. This weekend I pulled out all my Chirstmas paper and embellies (some really old stuff - like the Metal MM Charms from 4 years ago) and started on the Christmas cards. My scraproom is a total disaster but I did make 10 styles of Christmas cards with 5-6 cards in each style. It felt great to work that fast. All the cards were based on designs I had already made for DT assignments so I was basically just lifting myself. I was so much fun!!!

In other good news the special issue Cards and Crafts for Chirstmas book came out last week and my advent calendar is the main picture on the cover. I was so excited as this is the first advent calendar I have ever made.

Blogger is being unfriendly this morning so I can't post a link or any photots so I will try to come back soon and post some of my favorites from this issue.

A few more pages

Two more pages that I did recently. The first one is of my youngest niece taken a few months ago. She is just over 2 and loves to pick up and touch everything. The second page is my other niece who was posing for me during our Arizona trip. She was just adorable playing with her hat.

Last night I had a really good crafting night. I finally got started on a new assignment for some altered items and had so much fun picking out products and coming up with ideas. When I scrapbook I spend so much time picking pictures and printing....but with non-photo altered items the entire process goes by so fast. I completed one project and started on a second one with just a few hours of crafting.

On the work front, yesterday was a really fun day. Our entire department had an off-site potluck picnic for the afternoon. It was a nice break from work to enjoy each others company and play a few games. I did realize that my kickball skills have decreased over the past 25 years.

Jim and I have plans to go to San Fran this weekend just to get out and about for a while. I'll probably take my camera and try to get a few shots. Nothing else major in the way of plans. I do plan to get some more crafting done and want to rearrange my small embellishment and prima flower storage....so we'll see how that goes.

Have a good weekend everybody.

Layouts from our Arizona Trip

Here are a couple of layouts I made with pictures from our Arizona trip in June. The top page is my niece playing at the waterpark we went to. They had this fountain that she just loved....I have no idea how her mom got her hair in those little pig tails but it was just so cute. I took that picture of my nephew from the balcony of our room - looking at how big he was really made me think about how quick he was growing up. What's funny is how different he looks now, just 8 weeks later, after he lost his front teeth.

So far this week is going so slow for me. Things at work are fairly slow this week, but I have a big presentation on Friday that will be sure to start some fireworks. Scrapwise I just finished up an assignment for SBM issue 26 and now I will move on to some altered projects for ScrapGenie this week....I have a few new ideas that should be fun to try out.

Not much else going on this week. I'll be back soon to share a few more pages from Arizona.

All I want for Christmas.....

...is my two front teeth. Ohhhhh my just look at him. All toothless, proud and very excited. So between having lost his two front teeth and starting kindergarten in a few weeks he is one happy guy. Aunt Missy loves you!!!

Just being silly

These two had Jim and I cracking up with all those faces. I took this shot as we were getting ready to leave for the waterpark during our Arizona trip in June. Everytime I turned around the camera the faces started....this was probably the funniest shot of the bunch. I had fun playing with some of my new Magistical Memories chipboard and some old MME paper that I got in the slab from Costco. Thanks for looking.

Missing posts

It appears that a few of my recent posts have gone missing. I hope that this post will help pop them out again. Very strange.

2 posts in 1 day

So I decided to break blog tradition and just share some random non-scrapping thoughts that I've been thinking about lately:

1. Obama vs. Clinton is a tough decision....but exciting and interesting.
2. My beloved Yankees had a good streak but are still 7 1/2 games behind Boston.
3. The difference between passing judgement and having an opinion is a very fine line.
4. I have no interest in Lindsay Lohan or the Tour De France.
5. I seriouly need a new job.
6. I miss Wendy.
7. Cherry Coke Zero is now my favorite soda.
8. I wish I had a british accent!
9. It's time for a new car but I don't know what to get.
10. My new front doors that we ordered in March are still not installed and I am getting very frustrated.

My fastest Layout ever

Well maybe not ever, but it's close. I got this Imaginise rub-on several weeks ago and just loved the colors in it. It's been sitting on my desk ever since I got it. Just seems like something else always gets in the way. Last night I decided it was time to make a layout with it, but I only had 30 minutes to scrap. In that 30 minutes I selected and printed the photo, created the layout, and scanned the image. If that is not my record it's pretty close to it.

This one's for my mom

My poor mom called me because she had no idea how to use these large Technique Tuesday chipboard shapes. Since I had the same set I made this quick page to give her an idea of what to do. I just love that my mom scrapbooks - without her phone call I probably would have just goofed off in my room and got nothing done. So she is quite motivational. Her next request is to see something using the doodlebug glitter chipboard.

I'm sort bummed that I am not in Chicago right now drooling over all the new goodies....I am so grateful to lifetime moments for having such a complete sneak peek forum for us to get a look at what's to come. The better news for me is that I have made my reservations for Memory Trends this September. DH is going to go with me and we are going to see the Circ Beatles show at the Mirage. So even if the MT show is slow I'll still have a good time in Vegas.

Other than that not much is going on with me. I have a friend from work coming over again this weekend for a little scrapping fun (she is new to scrapbooking but seems like it so far).

Victoria Beckham - Ameirca gone mad!!!

So I will admit to enjoying my share of celebrity gossip, but have never seen what the obsession about Paris, Brittney, and Linsday was all about. Now all of a sudden Victoria Beckham (Posh Spice) seems to be getting the same attention. America is just going crazy over the Beckhams move to the US. I have to say I was not the least bit interested in what this family was up to until the other night when they had a 1 hours special program about her house hunting and move to the US.

There was absolutely nothing on TV that night so while I was scrapping I had this show on in the background. Before long I had totally stopped scrapping and was all involved in this show. Much much to my surprise this woman can across and funny and down-to-earth - albeit a bit high maintenance. She seemed to really love her husband and kids, have a great sense of humor (especially when in came to herself), and was friendly to those she interacted with. Some of her facial expressions were just priceless... and her comment about Brittney "running around without her nickers on" had me rolling.

I don't have any plans to watch the series but this show was actually quite entertaining. It just goes to show you that first impressions aren't always right.

Oh and her husband has one amazing body.... I imagine that soccer is going to be a very popular sport when he starts playing.

No more excuses, no more reasons, no more apologies - it's just a new norm that I blog once a month. I usually don't post unless I have time to check on all my favorite bloggers, and lately that hasn't been much and I don't expect it to change anytime soon. So I am OK with the new norm being a monthly update.

But with that said we are well into July and I'm still getting back into the swing of work after a fantastic 5 day break over the 4th.

Thanks to the wonderful and talented Diane Grimshaw I have been listening to Christmas Music and scrapping my brains out in Red, Green, and Gold. I had so much fun working on this latest assignment which should be hitting the newstands in September.

Here is a page I did based on a theme of "inspired by fashion"... it was really fun - although I am not a huge fan of being in front of the camera.

Hello, Hello, Hellllllllllooooooo....is anyone out there

Seriously, I can't believe it's been over a month since I updated this puppy.

I have complained enough about work being crazy...but it just hasn't stopped. I'm not going to whine much more other than to say I have been working 65-70 hour weeks with no exception for more than 2 months now.

On a much brighter note....I took 2 vacation days this week and spent a little time with my brother, his wife, and their 3 kiddies in Arizona this week. My brother and his family flew in from New York and we all meet in Phoenix to see my dad. I had such a wonderful time soaking up the love of my two nieces and nephew, swimming in the hot sun, and just relaxing away from work. It was a much needed break.

While in Arizona I made a few small details to some LSS. Holy cow I was just amazed at Scrapbook Etc. That has to be largest well stocked LSS I have ever been in. After a few hours and some damage to the credit cards I was one happy camper.

Scrapwise I have not done too much lately. Outside of assignments things have been really slow. I had a friend from work come over 2 weeks ago for a lesson on scrapbooking. We had so much fun. It's great to see someone who is completely new to scrapbooking look through embellishments....they just pick out what they like and give no care in the world to how old it is or who makes it.

Here is one of my more recent pages. This is a layout of DH and I on our anniversary.

Yeah, I can finally share this page

I have been waiting for what seems like forever to share this page. It's certainly not my best page in terms of design or anything....but it's me and my mom scrapbook shopping and nothing makes me happier. The LSS near my mom was having an after Christmas sale. The entire store was 25% off between the hours of 6-7am. Since the store is well over 30 minutes from my mom's house we got up before 5am to make sure we were there for the 6:00am opening. It was a little crazy but so much fun. The SB page was also fun to make as I tried to incorporate a little more whimsy than my normal look.

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I didn't do anything specifically for NSD this past weekend, but I did get some fun scrapping in. Mainly I just scrapped for me so that was a lot of fun.

I got a new boss today ...

Well it's finally official...I got a new boss today. This is part of a huge organization change for my entire department (~300 people impacted) and I am not at all happy about it. The change has been in discussion for several months now, but it became official today. So this really has me bummed right now.

On a much brighter note, I had a nice weekend and found some time for a little scrapping. I finished up a couple cool projects for the next issue of Craft Life & Home (The Scrapgenie Magazine) and started work on my next SBM article....where I got to have fun with felt goodies. I should have plenty of time to finish up the article work this weekend and then move on to some non-assignment work. I'm looking forward to playing with some new goodies I bought over the past few weeks.

In other good news - tomorrow is my 5 year anniversary to DH. We were together for many years before getting married but our actual anniversary is special to me. We are planning to take the day off work and go for a drive down the coast and have fun with our cameras. So I'm very excited about that....and it will give me some new scrapping material as well.

Here are a few things I did a while back but haven't shared yet:

Geez....who is supposed to update this blog!!!

Oh that's me......sorry!!! If anyone is still checking here's an update

I don't want to start off complaining too much but the past 4 weeks have just been insane for me at work. I lost one of my best engineers, got a new boss, and had several high impact project all due over the past few weeks. My working hours have been crazy and I have done virtually nothing but shop scrap wise.

This week I am finally able to come up for air....even if it's for just a few days. Over the weekend I actually got some crafting done for some DT assignments, and for the first time in what seems like forever I felt creative again. Don't you just hate it when the mojo is not flowing.

In other good news, Susanne is coming into town to visit Danea so we are all going to get together tomorrow after I get out of work. That should be fun

Here are a couple pages I did before my work insanity started....I just love the one of my nephew with the floppy hair and my niece in her tap dance uniform.

March Maddness!!!

Some of you already know that I am a die hard sports fan. I actually love a lot of sports but my all time favorite is the NCAA basketball tournament. Oh my this is absolutely the best sport ever. There is so much excitement that goes along with these games. Although there are clear favorites it really is anyones game. Every team has hope and a possibility to win. Between last Thursday and yesterday (Sunday) we went from 64 to only 16 teams. Jim and I virtually had the TV on in every room just to make sure we kept up with the action. As always there were some upsets and great surprises. Each game will be played with a greater and greater intensity until we have a single winner. Oh yes, this is the best 3 weeks of the year (sports wise anyway).

Given that I was distracted with the BB games I couldn't concentrate on much SB wise. So I decided to continue on the ultimate organization that I started a few months ago. Taking a tip from Wendy I decided take all my chipboard letters and get rid of the outside (shadows) and only keep the inside letter itself. I ended up with a quite embarrassing amount of outsides that were so heavy I needed to double bag. I also dumped all of my precious primas out of the cute little bottles and packaging into a big sterlite bucket and chucked the packaging. Just between those two tasks I freed up a ton of premium space (within arms reach of my desk). Then I conquered the task of re-organizing my paper. Over the past two years my paper stash has simply gotten out of control. So I went through the majority of paper and thinned out the older stuff that I no longer use (although doing this I came across so many wonderful older papers that I had forgotten about) and also sorted my cardstock by color again. I still have several tasks left before I am finished but have cleaned up the area enough to allow for some crafting this week.

I keep telling myself that I need to get moving on the Heidi Swapp BPS class but then I never make the time for it. I am not going to beat myself up about it....but it's still bugging me. Especially since I have the pictures printed for the 1st two layouts anyway.

Since I didn't get much done this weekend I decided to share a couple pages from last weekend:

Wireless wonders

My internet PC finally crapped out on me. He has been on the fritz for months and I was keeping him alive on life support....but made the decision this weekend to pull the plug. So now we are sporting a core two duo (for all my Intel friends) with 2G RAM more HD space than I will even need and he's running windows Vista. DH and I have several computers in the house but this one is designated for internet surfing only. I used this opportunity to get the wireless router we bought months ago up and running.....so now I can carry my laptop all over the house and surf.

Now for the best part. We also got a new copier/scanner/printer all-in-one thingy when we got the PC. Since it was bluetooth ready we got that bad boy hooked up wireless as well. It works out perfect to put the pinter across the room (so that it doesn't hog up my desk) without any wires. It's totally like magic.


Technology is great.....for this gadget girl!!!

I thought I would share a layout of my nephew daring me to get his picture without the cup in the way. That little stinker can be so funny sometimes. I really wish I could see him more often.

A productive Weekend

Happy Monday everyone!!

Wow, DH and I had quite a productive weekend. After a couple month hiatus we are finally back on the house remodel kick. This weekend we bought new patio furniture and some wicker furniture for the sunroom....it will be great to finally put something in this room other than our exercise equipment. In addition we meet with the handyman who is going to start work later this week on the living room and dining room areas. We are so excited to start seeing progress again on bringing our house fashion back into the 21st century.

In addition to the house progress I also got a lot done on the scrapbooking front. This weekend I cranked out 7 new layouts. A few of them were very simple pages but I still got 7 done. Woo Hoo.

Last Thursday I got a great surprise by finding out that one of my layouts made the cover of the current issue of Scrapbook Magazine I was really excited about that since I had no idea about the cover. Here is the layout:

Thanks so much for checking in. I'll be back soon with more pages to share.

I'm BACK!!!!

Whew, for the 2nd weekend in a row I had a good scrap mojo flowing. This weekend I scrapped just for me. No assignments or worries about insturctions and materials lists. I ended up making 7 layouts. That is a good pace for me. I tried to scrap some everyday photos - what's funny is that some of the best memories I have are captured in everyday candid shots. My goal this weekend was to work on my Heidi Swapp BPS layouts. I ended up getting distracted with other pages but did get sketches done and printed my pictures....so I hope to finish those during the week.

Here are two of my favorite layouts.....I will share the others over the next couple days.

This is my DH playing the guitar. I took these shots weeks ago for my HS BPS goal page (so you will see them again), but ended up getting side tracked and made this page instead. Please don't tell him I used crate paper Cowgirl collection on him....ooooohhh.

This page is me playing a game with my niece and nephew at Christmas time. Poor Aunt Missy had to remind both of them (but especially my 3 year old niece) not to cheat. Oh my their parents have some work to do....but I couldn't help but laugh. They were so cute. This layout made me so happy to remember that day.

Email Woes

With the amount of junk email that I get I should have known something was wrong earlier when I wasn't getting any emails. When I logged on this morning to find not a single email in my inbox I knew something was wrong. uuugghhh that is so annoying. I was able to get the problem fixed but will not be able to recover any undelivered emails....now I probably didn't get anything important....but I'm sort of obsessing over what I might have missed.

On a brighter front, Jim and I had a really great 3 day weekend. Saturday was errand day and lawn care day. We got so much done and we were both really happy with our progress. Sunday and Monday were a bit lazy. I did manage to get some good scrapping time in and for the first time since Christmas actually felt creative. I made 3 new layouts and 4 cards.....whew, it felt so good to be productive again.

This is not a layout I did this weekend, but it is one of my favorites that I haven't shared. It was part of an article on chipboard.

Happy Valentines Day!!!

One year ago today Jim and I had been in our house less than a week and were living on the dining room floor as our bedroom was being remodeled. For valentines day we had TV dinners and opened a bottle of wine. We were having trouble with our cable reception, his guitars were still packed, and my scrap stuff would still be boxed up for weeks, so we just sat together enjoyed each others company all night.

With the exception of sleeping on the dining room floor I think we are going to do the same thing this year. No TV, no scrapping, and no guitar....just good ole fashion quality time.

We have never really done much on Valentines day. Jim's birthday was just a few days ago and we went out to a very nice dinner last weekend. So this year we are exchanging cards and kisses....and knowing Jim I'll probably get a little Godiva (because he can't help himself).

So I hope everyone has a wonderful night!!!!

I did it again

Once again I have neglected my blog. Sometimes I really wonder where the time goes.

It has been over a week since I got back from CHA and I am still digesting all that I saw and going through the mountain of catalogs that I picked up. It's amazing how much stuff I missed. Overall I was impressed by the new releases and the show seemed to have a nice buzz but it wasn't crazy. There was a lot of talk about the fate of Memory Trends so it will be real interesting who decides to pull out.

Since I haven't been up to much the past few weeks I thought I would share the layouts I did for Technique Tuesday's booth. I had so much fun playing with these stamps....

On a side note my nephew turned 5 on monday. Oh my, I just can't believe he is alreayd 5. I called him and had a full on conversation with him about his birthday party. It literally seems like yesterday when I got the call telling me I was an Aunt....now he is 5!!!

Oh my I am so sorry

....for not blogging since before Christmas. I honestly don't know where the time went. Jim and I spent a wonderful week in New York doing everything we planned plus a little extra. Then we were able to spend New Years week at home. We both minimized our internet time and focused on getting stuff done around the house. That was a great week and we got a bunch of stuff done that had been lingering on our to-do list for months.

Scrapwise I have been focused on a magazine assignment and some CHA work. I was overly excited to get an opportunity to make 2 layouts for the Technique Tuesday CHA booth. Now that I have a little break before my next assignment is due I am hoping to get caught up on the Heidi Swapp BPS class as well as on my mission to make Christmas ornaments and decorations for myself (LOL...yes, I am really going to start this early so I have a chance of finishing by December). My goal is to hand make all the ornaments on my main tree. So wish me luck on those tasks.

I will be heading down to Anaheim in 2 weeks for CHA. I am very excited to see the new products and companies. Not to mention I will get to see several of my SoCal friends at the show. I also get to see Becks (from the UK) again so that is cool.

Well I am still trying to catch up after being off work for over two weeks. So I am going to sign off for now, but hope to be back soon with some new pictures.