Crafts

New classes, Toronto, a monkey and more!

August 19, 2008 by Jess Leave a Comment

A monkey? Nope we did not get another pet, lol. (Although I have always wanted a monkey…..). Last week Brent got to do something VERY cool- he got to go spend the day working on a movie set with the ambulance (just in case someone got hurt doing stunts). It was the filming of Night at the Museum 2 (staring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson). While he was there he got to hang out with a couple monkeys that were also staring in the movie – this one capuchin monkey named Crystal has stared in many movies including the first Night at the Museum, both Dr Doolittle movies, Indian Jones and others.

Crystal talking into the ambulance mic (it’s official, even a monkey can do Brent’s job! lol! j/k)

Crystal giving Brent a kiss. I am so jealous!! I wish it was me who got to hang out with the monkey all day!!

Alright moving on….. here are a couple new classes I will be teaching at Precious Memories:

I got some awesome news today….. I will be attending Ranger U in October! Yay! My first time in New Jersey too!

Here is a quick recap of my Toronto trip last week with Nicole. We went to exhibit (Tilano) at the Toronto Gift Show. The show was ginormous – we didn’t even see a quarter of it! I think the funniest thing that happened was our elevator story. Our first day there, we were just coming back to the hotel and walking towards the elevator when I asked Nicole what time the show went until the following day. She answers me just as we enter the elevator “seven” but she said it in a tone that was like ‘ugh, seven…’ cause it meant it would be a long day. So we’re standing in there and a couple other people were there as well. As the elevator starts to go up, I was like “oh we forgot to push our button” and I reach over and press the 4. The man who was standing right beside the buttons says “oh I thought I heard you say seven so I pushed that one for you”. Nicole and I both looked at each other totally confused and when we got out of the elevator and were walking towards our room, we suddenly realized he heard Nicole answer me “seven” and thought she was telling him to push seven!! Of course we laughed hysterically but also felt really bad cause now that poor guy must think we are total snobs!!! The next morning when we got to the show – guess whose booth was right beside ours? Yep – the elevator man!!! lol!! Too funny but at least we were able to apologize to him and assure him we were not snobs! He and his wife were really cool and we got to know them quite well over the duration of the show.

I love love love this chalkboard paint!! And yes that is my beautiful chalk artwork on the right there, hehe

Randy and Nicole finishing the set up

Here’s Randy (founder of Tilano) – he had just met Debbie Travis and got his picture with her and her autograph 🙂

Nicole outside the hospital with this odd moose statue (…it’s a long story)

At Jack Aster’s Restaurant – such a cool place!!

Chandeliers made of Tabasco bottles

There were various pictures like this all over the restaurant – all different but pretty funny

August 7

August 7, 2008 by Jess Leave a Comment

Happy Birthday Dad!!!

My dad is awesome! I’m so happy he is in Vancouver today cause I get to go take him out for his birthday lunch 🙂

The last couple days have been busy trying to get stuff done before I head off to Toronto tomorrow morning. (going to work at the Gift Show with Nicole). I did manage to get a couple projects done that I’ve been meaning to make for weeks now – and they only took about 45 minutes each! I made a wall hanging out of CD’s for each of my nieces and now I can take them with me to Toronto to give them to them. My sister and her family are in Toronto right now visiting my brother in law’s family and they leave first thing Saturday morning to head back to Indiana. I will get to see them all Friday night after I get to Toronto – yay!!

All the paper used is by Rose Moka

We did a quick trip to Victoria on Monday just for the night and came back first thing Tuesday morning, leaving the dogs behind with my mum. They will stay there until I get back from Toronto and they are quite happy with that 🙂 They love being at my parents house. I miss them so much already though, it’s so quiet around here without them. I keep thinking I have to go find them to take them out, or give them dinner, or I look for Zoey on the couch (where she is 90% of the time) – and no dogs!! 🙁 Last night was especially sad and quiet around here, not only were the dogs not here, but Oscar wasn’t here either. I had to take him back to the shelter yesterday cause he is being neutered this morning. We should be able to pick him up later this afternoon and then we have to fill out the official adoption papers and he will be ours! (they won’t let us adopt him until he has been neutered, all this time we were technically just fostering him). Poor Gracie was walking around the house last night looking lost as her siblings were all missing.

One last photo to share:

this is what we had for dessert last night….mmmmmm

Valentine’s Day quick gift idea

February 14, 2008 by Jess Leave a Comment

I should have posted this up sooner, but to be honest, I haven’t been on the computer much lately, things are just really busy around here right now.

I did a class on these at Precious Memories last month – if you need a quick gift to give to your sweetie – try making these coupons, they are lots of fun 🙂

All you need is one 12 x 12 piece of plain cardstock – (I used black bazzill), and some patterned paper and stickers/embellishments. I used the fun new Loveland line by Scenic Route – both their patterned paper and their cardstock stickers – I just love them!

Start by cutting your cardstock in half, so you have 2 pieces measuring 6 x 12, then cut each of those pieces in 4 equal pieces – you will end up with 8 pieces measuring 6 x 3. Cover them with patterned paper leaving a small border around the edge and embellish with stickers, ribbon and doodles. Add your own coupon write ups (ie: good for one dinner out; good for one movie, etc), or if you’d like to use the ones I made, please feel free to do so. I have both the black and white version and the colored one.

Download the black and white here

Download the color here

Lots going on

December 2, 2007 by Jess Leave a Comment

24 days left until Christmas – oh my goodness!!!!! It’s going to be here before we know it!! So much for my brilliant plan of getting the Christmas shopping done EARLY this year. Still not done, don’t see it happening anytime soon either. I will be one of those shoppers battling the parking lot for a spot the week before Christmas. Then all the long lines, the crazy rush and the jam packed stores. What joy, I can’t wait….

I have been getting quite a bit of scrapping done lately though. Had to prepare for a couple new classes for January for Precious Memories, also prepared for 4 classes for CKC Portland – woohoo!!! I’ll be going down with Nicole (from Tilano) as we’re each teaching 4 classes there – can’t wait -we’ll have a blast (and we’ll make sure we put gas in the car this time – lol!!)

Chocolate Kisses Class @ Precious Memories

I also just finished up a few Christmas gifts – I made my Grandma and my Aunt each a mini book. I had to send them off today as my Grandma leaves next week – she is going to Africa (Nairobi) with my Aunt and Uncle for Christmas. I’m so envious, how much fun would that be?? My Uncle is working and living in Nairobi right now and Brent and I are dying to go visit. We will one day.

I also made a flip style advent calendar for my other Grandma. She lives in a care home now (this is her first Christmas away from the house she lived in for 52 years). Everyday she will be able to flip the page to a new one and some have pockets on them, which I placed a little note for her in. I also have a bunch of little gifts for her which will correspond with the dates on the calendar so she has something little to open each day. I don’t see her very often anymore cause I’m not living in the same city, so I wanted her to know I am still thinking about her everyday. It makes me sad to see how things change so quickly. Just a few years ago my Grandma was living in her own house still, managing pretty well on her own with a little bit of outside help, and I worked only a few minutes away (by car). She used to look after Angus everyday while I was at work when he was a puppy, so I was at her house 3 times a day. I would go over there on my lunch break and have lunch with her. I miss those days.

A couple other projects I finished up last week: a Merry Christmas banner and some Christmas tags.

Now onto a non scrapping subject:

Who else is addicted to LOST??? I never thought I would be, but since my mum lent me the first 2 seasons of the show on DVD, I have been watching them while I’ve been scrapping, and I’m done both now. Perfect timing though as Season 3 is going to be released on December 11!!! Woohoo!!!! I am SO addicted to it now – I find myself thinking about it all the time! LOL!!!

Another thing I am looking forward to – seeing that new Will Smith movie “I am Legend” – it looks really good from the previews. The next movie outing will for sure be to that one. I don’t even remember when the last movie outing was, its been so long…..

Last thing for tonight…. it snowed again today!!! It actually snowed about 4 days ago. Brent LOVES the snow (I hate it, well I hate driving in it), so he got real excited when it started snowing and he dragged me to Canadian Tire to buy a snow shovel. Yeah us and about 30 other people – the snow shovels were flying off the shelves! We even bought an ergonomically correct one – didn’t even know such a thing existed! We also bought one of those plastic dish things that you sit in and tobaggon down the hills. That got me a little excited about the snow. So we get home, wait for some more snow to settle on the ground, then we got all bundled up, got the dogs ready, found some rope and attached it to the sled thingy and ventured out into the…. wet sloppy slush. ugh. It was melting already and was just gray mushy slop. We turned around and went home. The next morning when we got up (to my delight!) there was no trace of any snow on the ground! So there our brand new fancy snow shovel sits, unused. But it looks like it will get used tomorrow. It snowed quite a bit today and so far it has stuck around. We took the dogs out in it tonight and they had a blast!! It’s a very dry powdery snow, which we don’t normally get here. We took the sled out and took the dogs to their favorite fenced in park (well its a baseball field actually) and they ran and played – they were so hyper!! Angus and I got into the sled on the way home and Brent pulled us all the way home! There’s not too much point in taking a sled out around here, this is the flattest area – no hills anywhere! We found a small hill on the walk home – yeah small, like 3 feet high maybe. So not really a hill, more like a mound. We forgot to take the camera with us tonight, but if the snow is still around tomorrow, I’m taking some photos of my crazy snow dogs. 🙂

Christmas Projects

November 22, 2007 by Jess Leave a Comment

Just over a week until December!! How did it creep up on us so fast? I have been getting into the Christmas spirit though lately and managed to get a couple Christmas projects done this week.

The first one is an Advent Calendar using the Noel line from Love, Elsie. There is a tag in each pocket, and each day we will take turns pulling a tag out. Each tag has some sort of activity on it that we have to do that day, such as “bake Christmas cookies and decorate together” “Movie night – you pick the DVD”, “Game night – You pick the Game”, “Do a Random Act of Kindness today”, etc. Something different on every 25 tags, and I tailored them all towards us (as in a couples thing) since we don’t have kids. This was a really fun project to make.

October is here!

October 1, 2007 by Jess Leave a Comment

I really love October – the trees are changing colour, leaves are falling, pumpkin fields are looking more orange by the day. I just hope we get some lovely Fall days where the sun is shining, the air is crisp, and we can get out with the dogs for some long walks. So far, the start of Fall has not been so great over here, its been raining almost everyday for the past week.

When we left for Las Vegas it was technically still summer – the weather was still warm, we were still wearing shorts and tshirts, and we had to keep the windows open in the house to cool it down. We returned from Vegas a week later to find that Autumn had swept right in. Leaves were already covering the lawn around the house, there was a crispness to the air, and we had to turn the heat on in the house (after having it off since April). Welcome Fall.

A quick recap on Vegas: it was fun but its nice to be home. I miss the warm weather and the yummy food from the Bellagio. I don’t miss having to do so much walking each day – and the worst of it was that on our 2nd day there I pulled a ligament or something in my foot and it was incredibly painful to walk. I hobbled around for the rest of the week with a swollen foot. So much for shoe shopping like I planned, as I couldn’t even get my foot in any shoes! lol

Some of our favorite things about Vegas: The casinos at The Wynn and MGM; the cheesecake from Bellagio; Best food was at CraftSteak Restaurant, Bellagio Hotel and Spice Market @ Planet Hollywood. Entertainer Matt Newbold at Planet Hollywood. Warm weather. Shopping at the Fashion Show Mall and Forum Shops @ Caesars Palace. The shops at the Paris. Bellagio Fountains.

October is going to be a busy but exciting month . I’ve been busy working on my latest project as I have a deadline fast approaching, and also getting ready for some upcoming classes. This month I am teaching every Wednesday night at Precious Memories, and I’m also going to be teaching a couple classes at Canada’s Crop for Kids on Oct 12. One of the new classes I’ll be doing at PM is on Christmas Gift Tags. Something I really enjoy doing is personalizing gift tags for Christmas gifts. Something I say I will do each year and then I never have time to do it is making Christmas cards. This year I am really going to MAKE myself do it! Card making is something I just never have done a lot of, I love the idea of it, but just never really do it.

These are some tags I made for fun – they are so easy to make. I used a lot of scraps, doodling, and I brought out some of my old punches.

the tags that we will make in my class – 2 of each design for a total of 30 tags.

Here’s a layout I did about a month ago: