CricketPE Presents...

It's been awhile...

2010-04-09T15:53:00.002-04:00

Wow, have I ever neglected this thing. Since I started teaching in August, I've had very little time for much other than lesson plans all the time! However, I'm becoming organized enough to actually have some time for fun!

This weekend is my first big event! I am helping some high school friends host a Relay for Life Fundraiser crop in my hometown: Muskegon, MI. I'm very excited and I hope it goes really well! I'm frantically getting packed up so I can leave in about an hour!

Sauder Village Crop: Cabin Fever Retreat

2009-10-18T11:33:00.002-04:00

I attended my first Sauder Village Crop a few weeks ago and it was a blast! It was SO much fun; I really think you would enjoy yourself if you're able to make it to our next event! We will be having Cabin Fever Retreat, a weekend crop at Sauder Village in Archbold, OH on February 26-28. It's a whole weekend of scrapbooking and laughter with a lot of fun ladies! There will be giveaways, make'n takes, items for sale, and more! You can come for 1, 2, or all 3 days! Contact me if you're interested, so I can e-mail you the registration form with all the details. I am so excited and can't wait to spend such a fun weekend with everyone!

In order to guarantee your registration for the crop, you must register with me by January 8. Your payment for the hotel is due to me by January 22. If you would like to room with someone to lower the cost, but aren't sure of anyone, let me know and I will try to match you up with someone. I will likely be getting a room myself, so I can split with people as well. There are other options for places to stay listed on the flier, but it is really convenient to stay right there!

Special offer! Everyone who registers will receive a special gift for me. But if you register by January 8, I will give you a $5 Creative Memories Coupon. I will add another $5 Creative Memories coupon for every friend that you bring! You can still receive the coupon for referring a friend to this event, even if you're not able to make it!

If this is something you're interested in, but won't be able to make it to this weekend, don't fret! We will be having weekend crops 3 times a year: in the fall, winter, and summer. Be sure to let me know if you're interested, so I can add you to my e-mail/mailing list!

I can't wait to spend the weekend with everyone! Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions!

Overwhelmed!

2009-10-18T11:32:00.002-04:00

Well, clearly this blog has taken a backseat in my life. My teaching job has been totally overwhelming me! It's getting better, but I am still up to my ears in too much work. Hopefully after Christmas break I'll have more time!!

Visitors and Other Happenings

2009-08-21T23:33:00.003-04:00

My friend Amanda came down from Ann Arbor to visit today and to work on a Storybook as a gift for her brother and future sister-in-law's wedding shower. It was very nice seeing her; I have been going a little stir crazy being stuck at home every day. I think this is the longest I've gone without working since I was 15 years old. I hate being unemployed. The busier I am, the more productive I am. Soo...I am currently being incredibly unproductive. However, I am grateful that my husband has a job; the university he works at is making cuts right now, so if he makes it through August we should be good! Anyways, the point of this was to say how much fun I had working on the Storybook with Amanda. She is coming again on Monday and we will hopefully finish it up.

A friend of my husband's is moving in with us for the next 4 months. Previously, he commuted an hour each way for his classes at the University. Since this is the last semester for his engineering program, he will have a lot of big projects to work and wanted to live closer so he could spend more time at school working on them. Since it's hard to find an apartment for 4 months, we agreed to rent out our spare bedroom to him. This turned out quite well, since we made this agreement before we realized I wouldn't have a teaching job, so this helps us financially until I am able to get subbing. It also forced us to clean our spare bedroom (which has become a junk room for anything we didn't know what to do with), so if we ever decide to have children, it will be all ready! I have a feeling our house will end up being the "boy's club", as I'm sure Troy will enjoy having a buddy to hang out with at almost any hour, lol. I anticipate many board games in the coming months :)

My friend Monique is coming to visit next week as well! I am so excited to see her! She is one of my friends that I met my first semester of college, so I've known her for 9 years now. She is seriously a world traveler; I am so jealous of her sometimes! She is currently on break from a 2-year teaching assignment in Saudi Arabia. She spent the last couple of months traveling all over Europe. She always brings Troy back some liquor that can only be purchased abroad, so I know he's excited for her to come visit as well :)

Page Print

2009-08-14T15:05:00.001-04:00

I made this 12 by 12 page for one of my husband's coworkers. He shared these pictures of his son in the dinosaur pajamas and they coordinated perfectly with one of the free predesigned pages Creative Memories offers, so I just had to make it. What a cute kid!!

Wall Print

2009-08-11T10:51:00.003-04:00

I made this wall print to hang in my math classroom (well, assuming I get a job someday, for now it's in a box of stuff to be used in my classroom should I ever get hired). My sister is also a math teacher and she showed this picture of her daughter to her class when she was emphasizing Order of Operations and why it's important to do things in the correct order. I thought the idea was so great that I wanted to make a poster and my husband came up with the idea to model it after the Motivation posters. I think it turned out really well!!

Host a Get Together!

2009-08-10T11:10:00.005-04:00

If you are interested in earning Creative Memories products for free, you should consider hosting a Get Together! You can invite your friends and have a party in your home OR you can host a Virtual Get Together and you don't even have to clean! As a Virtual host, you earn all the same rewards, but instead of having me come to your home, your guests can watch videos about the products on their own time.

The perk of being a host is that you earn host rewards! If the event sales at your Get Together reach $250, you earn 15% of your total sales in free Creative Memories products! You also earn whatever the current host rewards promotion is. Currently, if your event sales reach $400, you can choose a host pack for only $29.95!

Besides the rewards that Creative Memories promotes, I personally offer promotions for hosting a Get Together through me. Just remember the magic numbers 8-4-2! 8 guests at your event - 4 outside orders (purchases from people who did not attend your party; online orders count!) - 2 Get Togethers scheduled from your event. You will receive a bonus gift for every one of these and a BIG gift if you meet all three!

Hosting a Get Together is a great way to earn free product and have a fun night with all your friends! We can talk about whatever products you or your guests are most interested in, work on a Featured Project, or do anything else you think would be fun. Contact me if you are interested!

Sauder Village Crop

2009-08-08T19:36:00.001-04:00

As many of you know, I became a Creative Memories consultant in March. I was fortunate enough to meet a wonderful person last weekend that is allowing me to offer you the opportunity to participate in a weekend crop at Sauder Village in Archbold, OH on October 2-4. I went to one of these weekend crops before and it was a TON of fun! A whole weekend of scrapbooking and laughter with a lot of fun ladies! There will be giveaways, make'n takes, items for sale, and more! You can come for 1, 2, or all 3 days! Contact me if you're interested, so I can e-mail you the registration form with all the details. I am so excited and can't wait to spend such a fun weekend with everyone!

The unfortunate thing about me just joining this event is that the registration deadline is coming up very soon! If you would like a hotel room at Heritage Inn (a hotel at Sauder Village that is extremely close to where we'll be cropping), you must register with me by August 21 to receive the discounted rate.. Your payment for the hotel is due to me by September 3. If you would like to room with someone to lower the cost, but aren't sure of anyone, let me know and I will try to match you up with someone. I will likely be getting a room myself, so I can split with people as well. If you are going to stay elsewhere (other options are on the flier), the deadline for registering is September 18.

Special offer! Everyone who registers will receive a special gift for me. But if you register by August 21, I will give you a $5 Creative Memories Coupon. I will add another $5 Creative Memories coupon for every friend that you bring! You can still receive the coupon for referring a friend to this event, even if you're not able to make it!

If this is something you're interested in, but won't be able to make it to this weekend, don't fret! We will be having weekend crops 3 times a year: in the fall, winter, and summer. The winter event will be February 26-28. Be sure to let me know if you're interested, so I can add you to my e-mail/mailing list!

I can't wait to spend the weekend with everyone! Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions!

My First Storybook

2009-08-06T09:50:00.002-04:00

I thought I would share my first Storybook that I made with Creative Memories digital scrapbooking program Storybook Creator Plus. It's a TnT book, Ten Stories in Two Hours. They had 10 prompts you could use or you could use your own. I used some of theirs and some of my own. The idea is to just tell 10 stories that otherwise might not make it into a scrapbook. It was a lot of fun! If you think this is a fun album, then you HAVE to see the new Idea Book in the next catalog. It's a whole bunch of ideas for 10-story albums. I got a copy for free at Showcase, so let me know if you're interested in seeing it!

http://www.cmphotocenter.com/sbpreview/StorybookPreview.aspx?StorybookID=364358&CustomerID=452488

It's been awhile...

2009-08-06T09:44:00.003-04:00

Oh my goodness, did I ever abandon this blog for the past month. I'm making it a goal to post something at least every other day!!! I have been very busy looking for a job; I've gone on 4 interviews in the past month! I was offered a 25% position at one school, but I'm hoping to hear back on my interview yesterday before I make a decision because that was for a full-time position. We'll see!

In scrapbooking news, I went to the Creative Memories Regional Showcase in Chicago last weekend!!!! I had SO MUCH fun with all the ladies I went with! The new catalog is coming out September 1 and we got copies of them! The new stuff is SO adorable! There's a new 12.5" trimmer, adorable new bags (I got one!), new options for Storybooks, the Power Palettes are organized differently...it's just fantastic. If you want to receive a catalog, let me know and I'll send one to you as soon as I get them!

Also, I got a new phone yesterday! It's the t-mobile myTouch...the 2nd phone with the Android operating system released in the U.S. I love it. Absolutely love it.

New Products

2009-07-08T10:00:00.007-04:00

There are some great new products being released by Creative Memories! My personal favorite is the adorable punch that is included in the Featured Project. It is the Scallop Circle Maker, but with the flip of a switch, it makes an even cuter scallop! I think it's adorable!
They also added a Jumbo Circle to the Custom Cutting System. It's so large that they added a 12 x 12 Custom Cutting System Mat.They also released large pre-cut decorative cardstock. There are 2 colors: Basic Decorative Cardstock (the colors shown here) and Harvest Decorative Cardstock. They're adorable!
There are lots of other new products too! Limited Edition new colors for Album Covers, new paper sets (Diva, Grunge, 4th of July), and of course, all of this in digital. You can see my website to view all the new products. Sign up for my newsletter to find out about the new products and all the promotions.

July Featured Project

2009-07-06T14:06:00.002-04:00

Well, I just got back from camping so I can finally tell you about some of the exciting new things Creative Memories has going on this month! I'm going to try to post more often, so I'll spread out the exciting news over a few days. But I'm going to start with what I am MOST excited about! One of the Featured Projects is making cards!!! You can go to my website for more details. You get all the materials you need to make a bunch of adorable cards and tags. By purchasing the bundle, you get the flowers and paper ribbon for free! Included in the bundle is the fantastic new scallop punch; the punch makes 2 different designs with the flip of a switch. I just got the bundle and can't wait to start making the cards.

I love card making, so if you'd like to come work on your cards with me, let me know! You're welcome to hang out at my house and work on your project! You're welcome anytime, but I have set times aside specifically to work on these projects on July 16, 18, and 22. See My Calendar for more details! Don't forget to rsvp and order your bundle so you get it on time!

July Featured Project

2009-06-16T23:22:00.002-04:00

I am SO EXCITED for the Creative Memories July Featured Project!!! It gets released July 1, so I'll post more info after that, but it's an adorable project where you get to make a bunch of cards! I love making handmade cards, but not really the work of trying to design them myself. So I'm thrilled!!!!

Unfortunately, I'm going camping the week before the 4th of July, so I probably won't be able to post info about the new products until after I'm back from vacation. Who knows though; I might not be able to resist and might have to go find a local library :)

Job Search

2009-06-08T15:00:00.002-04:00

Wow, I feel like applying for jobs could be a full time job in itself! I still haven't had any interviews, but I just turned in 2 applications and am working on another one for tomorrow. My adviser is out of town, so I have this week off and I hope to get as many job applications in as possible! I'm also hoping to have my first completed digital book done by the 10th, so I will share that on here as soon as it is done!

Crop Club

2009-05-27T18:37:00.002-04:00

Another consultant and I are putting together a crop club! We are starting one in the Toledo area where we actually meet once a month, but I am also starting a virtual crop club for my friends who live too far away to meet monthly. Here's how it works:

We put together a group of 12 people who love to scrapbook. Each month you will order at least $25 worth of products and the 11 other people in your club will do the same. You can spend more, but $25 is the minimum. Order what you need and what you will use… the choice of products is up to you. You’re committing to ONE year. If you don’t have something that you really want one month, simply order yourself a gift certificate to use at a later date, or consider a StoryBook certificate that you have about a year to use.

Each Crop Club member is assigned one month, so for example, if your month is August, you will receive 15% of the total Crop Club group sales in FREE product. This means you get at least $45 in free product since the group sales will be at least $300. To maximize your free product during your month as hostess, you can purchase more that month and/or take outside orders from your friends, and/or host a traditional party that month and boost sales even further. This will increase your total sales for the month, which means your hostess credit will go up as well. In addition, the other 11 members of the club may choose to order more than $25 in your month and this will impact your sales total too. If there happens to be an additional hostess incentive in your month that the Creative Memories’ corporate office sponsors, we will submit your event totals so that you can also earn this!

We will send Crop Club members an email at the beginning of each month (before everyone else) highlighting all the new products that are just coming out, giving you first chance to order those. Your order can consist of any CM products, and you will need to place your order by the 20th of each month so I can give that month’s hostess her credit before the month closes. Crop Club members will get new catalogs mailed to them as soon as they are released. And you still get your Memory Keeper Club credits too! Remember, you are committing to at least $25 per month for 12 months which comes to $300 per year. That also earns you a Memory Keeper Club gift!

Space is limited, so please contact us today if you want to join. This first time around, as people join the club, you can pick your preferred month. After this first year, we’ll do a random draw and mix the months up so everyone has a different month. You are only committing to one year, and you will be offered first chance to join the club for the following year. Once you join you’ll get the one year contract, plus a new catalog and a wish list to compile so you’ll be ready when it is your month to earn credits. All you need to do is let us know you want to join! (Invite a friend to join and receive a free gift!) We are so excited to offer you this opportunity to earn free Creative Memories products that are usually only for hostesses. So don’t delay! Call or email us, as this is limited to 12 people.

Almost Done!!

2009-05-06T21:20:00.003-04:00

I'm almost done with student teaching!!! I'm very excited; I am mostly just observing right now. I have to stay in the classroom until next Wednesday, but I'm not teaching! It's very nice to have my evenings free from grading and lesson plans! Now the jobsearch begins!! Here's hoping I find something for the fall!

I'm especially excited because this gives me more time to work on my Creative Memories albums! I'm more than halfway done with my honeymoon digital album...I'm telling you, I adore digital scrapbooking!! It's so easy and there's no cleanup! I'm going on another crop this weekend at my in-law's church and I might even teach people how to do digital scrapbooking. I'm also going to introduce them to Faithbooking, a type of scrapbooking that Rhonda Anderson (the creator of Creative Memories) promotes to tell your faith story. It seemed appropriate since this is a church crop event :)

I'm also excited because another consultant and I are trying to plan an evening of scrapbooking. I'm hoping to organize a card class; showing people there are more options with their scrapbooking supplies and especially that the Power Sort Mini Boxes are perfect to store cards in!! I think it will be fun times :)

Webinar reminder

2009-04-27T22:26:00.001-04:00

Just in case anyone planned on listening in on the Creative Memories' Got Photos webinar, I wanted to remind you that the webinar I will be listening in on is tomorrow night (Tuesday) at 10pm EST (Michigan/Ohio time!). If you want to send me an aol IM to cricketpe before, during, or after the webinar, I will invite you to a chat room so you can ask any questions or just chit chat about how fun it looks!

If you're not able to make the webinar tomorrow night, be sure to let me know which webinar you do plan on listening to; I might try to listen in on that one as well! There's also the possibility that we can do a phone conference sometime in the future.

Don't forget, if you decide to make a purchase on my personal website (www.mycmsite.com/pattydowd) within 2 weeks of your web class, your friend that sent you this message (and you!) will be rewarded! Or, if you’d like to earn free Creative Memories products, just invite your friends and e-mail me their names! You’ll earn free product when they place an order from my personal website. Also, make sure to let me know if you listen to a webinar, you will start earning points for my Memory Keepers Club to earn a free prize!

My first event...

2009-04-19T10:23:00.000-04:00

is a virtual event!

Since most of my friends who would be interested in Creative Memories don't live near me, I decided to host a virtual event to introduce you to some of Creative Memories' products and to give you the opportunity to see one type of event you could host if you wanted to earn free product through host rewards.

Creative Memories hosts live 30-minute Got Photos webinars almost every day of the week. You register for the webinar ahead of time (note that the times are listed in PST; you can change it to remind you for your own time zone when you register), then click the link to join your webinar a few minutes before it starts, listen and watch on your computer, and ask questions in an Instant Messenger style to get immediate feedback. Or you can save any questions you have for me!

I will be participating in the webinar on Tuesday, April 28 at 7pm PST (10pm EST). If you send me an AOL Instant Message (cricketpe) before, during, or after the webinar, I will invite you to join a chat room with others who are participating in this webinar.

Best of all, if you decide to make a purchase on my personal website (www.mycmsite.com/pattydowd) within 2 weeks of your web class, your friend that sent you this message will be rewarded! Or, if you’d like to earn free Creative Memories products, just invite your friends and e-mail me their names! You’ll earn free product when they place an order from my personal website. Also, make sure to let me know if you listen to a webinar, you will start earning points for my Memory Keepers Club to earn a free prize!

Register for a class today!

Monday, April 20
5:00 PM - 5:30 PM PDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/830774629

Tuesday, April 21
8:00 AM - 8:30 AM PDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/288718606

Wednesday, April 22
7:00 PM - 7:30 PM PDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/815193075

Thursday, April 23
10:00 AM - 10:30 AM PDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/440613886

Monday, April 27
10:00 AM - 10:30 AM PDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/676638845

Tuesday, April 28
7:00 PM - 7:30 PM PDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/269234818

Wednesday, April 29
5:00 PM - 5:30 PM PDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/929314580

Thursday, April 30
8:00 AM - 8:30 AM PDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/111369633

Monday, May 4
5:00 PM - 5:30 PM PDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/394797762

Tuesday, May 5
8:00 AM - 8:30 AM PDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/860565969

Wednesday, May 6
7:00 PM - 7:30 PM PDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/990188593

Thursday, May 7
10:00 AM - 10:30 AM PDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/432622047

Memory Keepers Club

2009-04-13T10:39:00.005-04:00

As an incentive to reward those who purchase Creative Memories products from me, I'm going to have a Memory Keepers Club. You can earn points for purchasing products, attending events, etc., and after you have reached 250 points, you will earn a reward! The rewards change throughout the year based on availability, but the current rewards are a cardstock sampler, card kit, and the So Chic digital kit. These products are not available to be purchased on the website; they are only available through your consultant. If none of these products interest you, we can also find another gift you might like even more.

Ways you can earn points:

Purchase (1 point for every dollar spent)
Host a Get Together (25 points + 10 points for every person who makes a purchase)
Scheduled events from your Get Together (10 points per event + 25 points when event is held)
Attend a Workshop/Event (5 points)
Bring a new person to Workshop/Event (5 points)
Referrals (1 point for every name received)

I'm a Creative Memories Consultant!

2009-04-06T20:02:00.005-04:00

Well, I took the plunge. I've been having so much fun with scrapbooking and paper crafts, I decided to become a Creative Memories Consultant. I'm so excited; there's a really fun group of girls about my age who are all consultants and I really enjoy working with them. Personally, I'm especially a fan of digital scrapbooking, but I am enjoying traditional as well!

So, if you happen to be interested in scrapbooking or other paper crafts, let me know! We're planning some casual gatherings, as well as scrapbooking and non-scrapbooking workshops, so let me know if you'd like us to let you know the dates! If you'd like to host a get together or workshop to get host rewards, let me know! You can even have virtual get togethers and get rewards without having to clean your house :) Or if you have a ton of pictures you need to organize (digital or traditional), they have some fantastic organization systems. I think those might be my favorite products :)

Here is a link to my Creative Memories website (still slightly in construction, but most of it is good by now I think).

http://www.mycmsite.com/sites/pattydowd

2009-03-21T16:04:00.002-04:00

Wow, I've been ultra MIA lately! Student teaching has taken over my life. I feel like all I do are grading and lesson planning. I have been very exhausted lately!

However, I have found one new crafty love: digital scrapbooking. I am totally in love with Creative Memories' Memory Manager and Storybook Creator Plus. I managed to convince my husband to get it for me for my birthday (although, my birthday is tomorrow and I convinced him to get it for me over a month ago, lol). I think I might even become a CM consultant, I'm so obsessed with it. It is totally me, I am way more of a computer person than a true crafty person. And I love the fact that there's no clean up! And I really like everything else that CM has also; I've just been really enjoying it all :)

Well, that's it for now; I'm actually at work right now waiting for something to download. I just realized it had been awhile since I posted, so I thought I'd let people know that I am still alive :)

PTI It's In The Bag Challenge

2009-02-05T22:32:00.002-05:00

Papertrey Ink is celebrating their 2nd anniversary and are hosting a challenge to alter a bag. You can win an embroidered bag and a $100 gift card!! The picture isn't great, but I altered a regular Kraft bag to a bag that could be used for a baby boy.

I don't know who the cardstock is from. The ink are all Palette. The stamps are all from Papertrey Ink: Borders & Corners Circles, Faux Ribbon, and Bitty Baby Blessings. The handles are made from some scraps I took off one of our wedding presents (I think it was wrapped around some towels someone got us).

The last week of Cards for a Cause

2009-01-31T20:01:00.003-05:00

I made this card for Week 4 (the final week!) of Punkydoodle Papers Cards for a Cause. She posted some pictures from an ice storm for us to use as inspiration for the cards this week. These past 4 weeks were the first challenges I've ever done and I got more cards done than I ever have! I'm going to have to find some other weekly challenge to motivate myself or something.

All the cardstock was leftover from making our wedding invitations. I have a LOT of navy and light blue cardstock, lol. The ink is all Palette or Versamark (you can barely see it behind the white). The snowflake stamps are from Papertrey Ink and the sentiment stamp is from H&M Stamps.

In other news, we got a new stove today!! My husband (I still squeal a little every time I say that word, lol) is driving to New Mexico with our friend Dan right now (Dan is moving out there :(, so this gives them one last time to hang out!), so he asked me to post a picture for him to see it! I really wish I had taken a picture of our old stove; it was seriously at least twice as old as we are! And it was a harvest gold color. The oven didn't work at all and only 3 of the burners worked, lol. So we splurged and got ourselves a nice new stove :) Check out those awesome yellow countertops and curtains :) We're slowly making this house our own and we're definitely hoping to get rid of those yellow countertops someday, lol. Now that the wedding is over, we're working on projects with the house!

Making Memories Contests

2009-01-25T14:36:00.002-05:00

Apparently CHA is a big crafting convention thing going on in California right now; I've seen it talked about on almost all the different craft blogs I read. Well Making Memories is doing a whole bunch of giveaways and they're broadcasting live from CHA, so check it out! You can have a chance to win too!

The 3rd Card for a Cause

2009-01-24T22:48:00.003-05:00

This card was made for the 3rd week of Punkydoodle Papers Cards for a Cause in celebration of her blog anniversary. Her challenge this week was to create a get well card for kids at a children's hospital.
The main image is from H&M Stamps Sea Life. The sentiment is from PaperTrey Ink's Faux Ribbon. I used a Cuttlebug folder for the embossed background. And I used pop dots for the first time!! I just got some last week and I was pretty excited to make something pop off the page :)

Wedding Recap: Invitations

2009-01-22T20:17:00.011-05:00

I had been wanting to recap some parts of our wedding/planning process and I saw a post on a forum asking for wedding invitation inspiration, so I thought I'd finally post ours. We made these ourselves. Even the pocketfolds; it took forever. Start early if you're going to do this!!! We ordered cardstock in bulk from The Paper Mill Store. They have these wedding paper sample packs with different 'themes', which was really nice because we had pretty specific blues in mind that we were looking for. We ordered their Winter pack; it cost $5 for the sample and we got a coupon for $5 off our order, so it ended up being free. And I got a few pieces of pretty cardstock :) We ordered matching envelopes (the same brand as our navy cardstock) from envelopemall. We made square invitations, which increases the postage by quite a bit. With the extra weight, they ended up costing 79 cents each to mail. We ended up getting the 80 cent Mount McKinley stamps, which looked really nice against the navy envelopes and it had snow on it, which was perfect :) We did all our printing on a laser printer in Troy's work so we could print in navy ink without using a gazillion color cartridges.

This is the outside of our pocketfold. We bought the white snowflake ribbon in HUGE rolls (50 yards!) at Costco for really cheap. We ended up using the same ribbon to make pew bows (Troy's mom has a book about how to make big pretty ribbons) and for some bows on the Christmas tree Troy's mom decorated at the reception. The fonts we used were Champignon and Optimus Princeps, both were downloaded for free from somewhere (maybe dafont.com or something?)

This is the inside of the invitation fully assembled. That's my husband in the background :) We cut each of the pocketfolds to size from an 8.5 by 11 inch piece of paper, then cut down the pockets, scored them, and glued them. It was a pain.

A picture of our inserts all laid out while we were assembling the invitations. We wanted to alternate blue and white, but we had designed the invitations so all the inserts would print on one sheet of 8.5 by 11 inch piece of cardstock. So half ended up with blue in the front and half with white in the front. It worked out really well.

The other half of our inserts lined up for assembly with the rsvp envelopes ready to go.

The Directions insert.

I didn't take a picture of our map, but it was printed on the back of our Directions insert. Troy made this in Illustrator. He took images of Google Maps and traced over them. I thought these were AMAZING, I was so impressed!! He even put in the lighthouse and the submarine that's docked by our reception venue. Since we had a winter wedding, that's an iceberg floating out in Lake Michigan.The Accommodations insert.

The Reception insert.

The RSVP card. We never had an issue with needing this, but I've heard that it's smart to number each one on the back of it in pencil and keep track of who got what number in case someone forgets to write their name. I think that's more important if you go with the more tradition M.________; by actually writing out Names, people got the idea.

So there you go! I LOVED them and we got a ton of compliments from people. If you are thinking about making your own and want any more detailed info about ours, please don't hesitate to ask!!

My 2nd Card for a Cause!

2009-01-17T17:40:00.004-05:00

I made this card for week 2 of Punkydoodle Papers Cards for a Cause. The challenge was to make a birthday card for a child under age 13. They will be given to her local children's shelter!

It's a pretty simple card, but I'm still new and don't have much style yet :) I used H&M Stamps A Dino Day for the sentiment and dinosaur. The circles were cut with my nestabilities.

My First Card for a Cause!

2009-01-10T19:47:00.007-05:00

sNow that the wedding is over, I decided to make another attempt at this whole card making thing. I've been blog-stalking for almost a year, but haven't actually made very many cards at all. So, when I saw that one of the blogs I stalked (Punkydoodle Papers) was offering a challenge to make a card for a cause every week, I thought I'd give it a try (and she's offering some fanTASTIC blog candy because it's her blog birthday/anniversary; nothing like that for fantastic motivation to make some cards!). This is my first ever card for anything other than my own friends/family! I hope it suffices; strangers don't love me enough to like them no matter what!

So this card was made for the Week 1 Challenge at Punkydoodle Papers; Valentine Cards for the Elderly.Please forgive my poor camera taking skills. And also my poor creativity skills; I feel like the card needs something more, but I don't know what. I don't have a single Valentine's stamp/sticker or anything except for this Love stamp embossing folder that came with my Cuttlebug. The stamp image is cut out of some shiny white cardstock that was the front of a thank you card I messed up on (gotta love recycling!). I put some stickles on it to make it a little more interesting. The sentiment is a Studio G stamp. The line next to the sentiment and the canceled stamp squiggly lines are from PTI's Faux Ribbon stamp set (I just bent the stamp on my block to make it curvy for the cancellation and then stamped it 3 times, so there were a total of 6 lines). Apparently I didn't ink the stamp well enough (twice!), but I decided that makes it look more like it was really canceled maybe.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On an unrelated note, look where we found our cat earlier this week. Yep, that's right, she is balancing on top of our bathroom door as if it's a balance beam. You might ask, how did she get there?! We suspect she jumped into the bathroom closet (you can see the doors to the right) and from there up to the top of the door. I heard a loud bang as she jumped up there and when I saw where she was immediately grabbed my camera. It was hilarious. She actually walked around up there for quite awhile. I don't think she knew how to get down, so Troy ended up getting her down.

Honeymoon Day 11: Destination #6 to my mom's house

2008-12-27T01:19:00.003-05:00

On Thursday morning (Christmas!!!) we woke up early so we could get checked out and go to mass. The hotel had a full hot breakfast, so went and ate some of that before finishing up our packing and checking out. We intended on going to the 10am mass at Notre Dame, but we ended up not making it. We could not for the life of us figure out how to get ONTO campus. I spent a summer doing research there, but I parked in student parking and just walked everywhere on campus. I didn't know where visitor parking was and since it's a gated campus, it's a little difficult figuring out where you can get it. We drove around the entire campus and took at least 1 road that ended in a closed gate before we found an entrance with a person who could let us in. By the time we got parked, mass was more than halfway over :(. The doors to the Basilica were all closed and I wasn't sure which ones went to the back and which to the sides on the front and I didn't want to be 'that person' who comes at the end of mass. So we decided to walk around campus instead. I showed Troy all the places I remembered from living there and then we went back to the car to warm up. It was FREEZING.

That was the end of our honeymoon! We drove back to Muskegon to spend Christmas with my mom. We had a ton of fun, but I think we're both pretty excited to get home and see Pudge (our cat). It will be another week until we get to do that though; we're spending a few days with my family, going up to Traverse City to be with Troy's family for a couple days, and then going to spend New Year's Eve with friends in Port Sanilac. Whew! I'll have been gone for at least 3 weeks by the time I get to go home again. I'm sure we'll have a good time with family though!

Honeymoon Day 10: Destination #5 to #6

2008-12-25T19:23:00.003-05:00

Yesterday morning, we had to be dressed, had breakfast and checked out by 10:30am. We've been pretty lazy in the morning, so we were running a little behind. We ordered room service for breakfast so that we could finish getting packed and such. Holy cow, room service breakfast was way better than going to the restaurant! I ordered the exact same thing for the same price, but we got an extra fruit plate and a little plate with 4 separate jams in nice glass containers. After we got checked out, we went across the street from the hotel and had a couple's massage. For someone who has never been to a spa in my life, I sure was pampered on my honeymoon! I liked the spa better at Boyne, but I liked the massage better in Milwaukee. After our massage, we had lunch at Cousin's (a sub shop) before going back to the hotel to get our car and luggage (we left our luggage with valet).

Did you figure out where we were going next? I had a pretty tough time, but you might recognize when Troy said "Play like a Champion" and if you listen really closely, when it sounded like he said "I wish" he actually said "I rish". We were going to South Bend, IN, home of the University of Notre Dame (we're both big Notre Dame fans). So we left Milwaukee to head south. We got stuck in traffic in Chicago, but we finally made it to South Bend. Our hotel was very close to campus. This was probably the cheapest hotel cost-wise, but actually one of the nicer ones! There wasn't a jacuzzi or fireplace, but we had a big bedroom and also a big living room area with a table and everything.

After we got checked in, we drove around to find someplace to eat. We stopped at TGI Friday's; we barely got in there because they were closing early since it was Christmas Eve. After dinner we just went back and relaxed in the hotel all evening. We watched the Notre Dame bowl game (yay, they won!!!). We planned on going to Midnight Mass on campus, but it was really cold and we were both really tired and didn't want to stay up that late, so we decided to go in the morning instead.

Here's the clue I got from Troy when we arrived in South Bend. It's the last clue of the honeymoon! http://tr.im/26w3.

Honeymoon Day 9: Destination #5

2008-12-24T10:33:00.003-05:00

For the most part, yesterday was another pretty lazy day. I slept in pretty late this time, while Troy woke up and kept on reading his book about shipwrecks. We got up and went to breakfast at the hotel and looked through brochures for things to do. The weather was really crappy outside; it was snowing like crazy, so we didn't really want to walk very far. While our hotel is downtown, it seems there isn't much near here except for restaurants. We tried to schedule another couples massage, but they only had 1 massage therapist working, so we got that scheduled for Wednesday morning instead. We called the Miller Brewing Company, but their tours were cancelled due to the weather. So, we decided to order room service for lunch (neither of us had ever ordered room service before, so we thought it would be fun, lol) and rented a movie through our tv. We watched Pineapple Express; granted the movie is about drug dealers and has a lot of killing in it, but it is absolutely hilarious. The dialogue is just amazing. Hilarious.

By the time the movie was over, it was just about time to get ready for dinner. We had reservations at the Caberet Restaurant at The Rep, which was where we were going to see The Christmas Carol. It was still snowing a lot, so I wore long underwear under my dress pants, lol. So we walked down to the restaurant and had a delicious dinner. It turns out, the restaurant is actually a theater too, so a lot of people were showing up for the theater at the restaurant. After that, we left and went to The Pabst Theater, where The Christmas Carol was playing. It was really good. Much better than the NMU production. There was lots of fun music too :)

After the play, we walked back to the hotel and had drinks at the bar. The special was 1/2 price bottle of wine with a gourmet cheese plate. I don't really like cheese very much, so Troy ate that while I munched on crackers. We watched the Wisconsin vs Texas basketball game; we figured we should cheer for Wisconsin since we are in the state. It was a very exciting game, but Texas won. After that we headed back to our room and went to bed.

This morning I got my next clue. Can you figure out where we're going: http://tr.im/26w5?

Honeymoon Day 8: Destination #4 to #5

2008-12-23T17:11:00.003-05:00

If you watched the video in the previous clue, you saw that we were going to the Door County Maritime Museum. Troy sponsored them for part of the day, so we got our names on their board and we got a personal tour (with our own docent, which is apparently a fancy name for 'tour guide') in the tugboat they restored. So, after having breakfast and checking out(which was HUGE and AMAZING; seriously, you have to go to this place, it's fantastic), we headed to the museum. We met up with Bob, our tour guide at the tugboat. The tour was really cool. Apparently they spent 5.5 years restoring this tug and just opened up to the public in August. Bob actually worked on the tug for 20-some years when he was younger. He knew everything about it and told us a lot of stories about working on it. Troy could probably give more information about it, but it was really neat.

After the tug tour, we walked through the rest of the museum. My favorite part was the exhibit about the huge storm in November 1913 that sank a ton of ships in the Great Lakes. Troy and I scuba dive and one of the ships our friend John took us to, the Regina, sunk in this storm. They had a ton of things from the Regina on display. It was really neat learning so much about the history of this storm.

After that, we had lunch at a local pizza place before heading to our next destination. Before we left for the maritime museum, Troy had given me my next clue: http://tr.im/26w0. We were going to Milwaukee! My friend Rosie made this clue, she grew up in Milwaukee. The place she described that I needed to take Troy to was Kopp's. It's this FANTASTIC burger and custard place on the north side of Milwaukee. When I was in college, every time we drove through Milwaukee we would stop at Kopp's; Rosie introduced me to it. Their cheeseburgers are HUGE and amazing. And the custard is just wonderful, way better than Culver's.

After Kopp's, we headed to our hotel: Hotel Metro. It's in downtown Milwaukee. We pulled up to the hotel and asked about parking, but apparently they do valet. Neither of us have ever had valet before, and I was quite hesitant for Troy to hand over the keys: we have 2 Wii fits in our car!!!!!!!!!!! I'm sure they're safe though :) We checked in and went to our room, which is fantastic. It has a fireplace and jacuzzi :) Unfortunately, the fireplace went out not long after Troy turned it on, so they were going to move us, but weren't able to find another room. They fixed it once, but then it went out again. We decided we didn't want to move, so they took $20 off our room each night. We went to the bar and had some dinner (we'd only shared 1 cheeseburger and some custard at Kopp's, so we were both a little hungry) and drinks. Margaritas were on special, so I got a Melonrita; it was delicious.

After that we just went up to our room and Troy gave me my 'arrived at my destination' clue: http://tr.im/26w1. Included in the envelope were tickets for The Christmas Carol on Tuesday night. We're staying in Milwaukee until Wednesday morning, when we'll head to our final destination. After watching the clue, we both read a little bit before going to sleep. Another pretty relaxing day!

Honeymoon Day 7: Destination #3 to #4

2008-12-23T17:00:00.003-05:00

On Sunday, we woke up early so we could meet my friend Paulie for breakfast at the hotel at 8:30am. It had snowed a ton overnight, so everything was beautiful and white. We had a great time talking with Paulie and then we got all packed up so we could hit the road. Did you figure out where we were going? Sturgeon Bay, WI in Door County. So we left Marquette and drove through some pretty bad blowing snow. The drive wasn't so bad except between Marquette and Escanaba. We couldn't see a thing at times, which also wasn't so bad except when the car in front of us decided it would be a good idea to slam on their brakes and pull off the road. Fortunately, we were able to stop in time.

When we got into Sturgeon Bay, we stopped at Target to use the restroom and give our legs a break from sitting for so long. While we were walking around the store, we thought we'd glance just to see if maybe they had a Wii fit. They did!!!!! Two of them!!!!! So we got one for ourselves and picked one up for my friend Dusti too. So exciting! After that we headed into town and checked into the bed and breakfast we were staying in: Inn at Cedar Crossing. After we got there Troy gave me my 'arrived at my destination clue'. Troy made this video and he tried to be all artsy with it, lol. You can see it at http://tr.im/26vz.

The bed and breakfast was right downtown, so we walked around to see the shops. Unfortunately, it was already 4pm, so everything but a bookstore and Hallmark store were already closed. It was still really cold and snowy, so we just went back to the bed and breakfast for dinner. After dinner, we watched 2 movies up in our room: Breakup and Night at the Museum. Both were pretty funny; nothing super fantastic, but I enjoyed them. We had a jacuzzi in our room, so we relaxed in that during part of the 2nd movie. Troy liked this one better because he actually fit in it, but I didn't like it as much because it was so big that I was too short to brace myself in it. I kept slipping down into the water, lol.

The bed and breakfast was fantastic. They make popcorn for the guests every night at 7pm. I saw them making it as we were coming in from dinner and was really excited because I love air popped popcorn, so the lady made us our own huge bowl. Seriously, if you're even in Door County, we really recommend this place, they were so wonderful.

Honeymoon Day 6: Destination #3

2008-12-20T23:16:00.003-05:00

Today was another pretty relaxing day. I realized that when I lived in Marquette, I didn't really do anything...I just hung out with friends, lol. So I had a hard time thinking of things we should do. We woke up early (well, for us, 8:30am) and ate breakfast at the hotel (it was included in the package Troy booked). Then we got all bundled up and walked around downtown Marquette, going in the shops. Troy bought a book about shipwrecks (he's obsessed now that we dive them with John). Then we met my physics professor for lunch at the Vierling. We chatted with him for about an hour, then came back to our hotel and relaxed for a few hours. We met up with our friend Matt H. for dinner at Border Grill and chit chatted with him for about an hour. Then we went to the hockey game! They were playing Michigan Tech. They lost 1-0 and they deserved to lose, they didn't play very well. Oh well, I guess they're having a rough year, they're 2-10 now :(. I got to see Leela while I was at the game, she was a physics major with me. Now we're just relaxing in our room. There's a Winter Storm Warming from 1am Sunday-7am Monday...not good considering we're traveling tomorrow. It seems they're going to get a TON of snow, like 5-10 inches by Monday morning. We're meeting our friend Paulie for breakfast and then leaving asap, hoping we beat the worst of the storm.

I just got another clue about where we're going tomorrow. I figured it out pretty quickly, can you tell where we're heading? http://tr.im/26w6

Honeymoon Day 5: Destination #2 to #3

2008-12-19T21:33:00.003-05:00

Troy slept in big time this morning! Or I just woke up early :) I had showered and was ready to go by the time he woke up! We were getting all our stuff packed to leave when the power went out at the hotel. It wasn't too big of a deal, but I was just about to go blow dry my hair when it went out; and it is awfully cold up here to go outside with wet hair! However, on my way to the bathroom I found another clue in there! It had been there for awhile before the power went out, so I was pretty bummed I didn't have the internet to watch the clue when I did find it. However, Troy has a t-mobile G1, so he had access to youtube, although it was pretty dang slow getting to it. I was finally able to watch the clue on his phone. My friend Dusti made this clue; she used her camera, so she could only take 15 second clips, so it's a little hard to catch it all! Here's the url: http://tr.im/26w9.

I guessed pretty quickly that we were heading to Marquette, MI!! I lived there for 5 years when I was in college at Northern Michigan University. I even guessed what hotel we were staying in; the Landmark Inn, one of the nicest hotels in Marquette. I've never even been inside this hotel, let alone stayed here. So we finished packing our stuff up and on our way out to drop off our suitcases we saw a freighter pull into the Locks. We quickly grabbed the rest of our stuff and checked out so we could watch it go through the Locks. It takes awhile and it was rather cold, thankfully they have viewing towers that block most of the wind. By the time the freighter finally went through, my legs were FREEZING. So we went into an Irish Pub across from the hotel for hot chocolate and lunch.

We finally hit the road and drove to Marquette. It was a relatively uneventful drive. We stopped in Christmas, MI just because I had driven by it a gazillion times on my way to school, but never stopped. We got a cute little Christmas ornament (the only souvenir of our honeymoon so far!). As we got closer to Marquette, it started snowing pretty badly and a semi tried driving us into oncoming traffic, but we made it safely. We checked into the Landmark and found out that our room was on the top floor!! Unfortunately, it doesn't look over Lake Superior, but we do have a cute view looking up Front St. The hotel is beautiful! Troy booked a Bed and Breakfast Package, so we get 2 breakfasts and a dinner included in our stay. So tonight we had dinner at Caper's, one of the restaurants here. It was amazingly delicious, my favorite meal of our honeymoon so far (although Troy still liked one of our meals at Boyne better). We didn't realize it, but even our dessert was included...we would have each gotten our own dessert if we had known that!

Now we're just relaxing in our room for the rest of the evening and watching Friday night stand-up on Comedy Central. I called Dr. Donovan, my adviser and physics professor from when I went to NMU, and we are meeting up with him for lunch tomorrow.

Also, here was my clue for figuring out where we were going: http://tr.im/26vy. Included with the clue were hockey tickets to the NMU game tomorrow night :) Troy made this clue because Dusti never sent him one, but after he made this he found 2 that she made on youtube, so we think maybe one of these were supposed to be the clue. Here's the url to those if you'd like to check them out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHsspcHaqKQ&feature=channel_page and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTOGRPr2Bcs&feature=channel_page.

Honeymoon Day 4: Destination #1 to #2

2008-12-18T21:03:00.003-05:00

If you didn't figure it out from the video clue, I couldn't either. Boats?! Dan, that did not help me narrow it down much! Troy told me that there was a reason he picked every person to do their specific clue, so I guessed Dan's family's cabin up north and Troy said I was getting warmer! So I finally figured it out: Sault Ste. Marie, MI!

So we left this morning after lunch at Pierson's at Boyne Mtn. A half hour later we stopped for gas in Petoskey, when I realized I left my purse at lunch :(. Good thing we noticed before we got all the way up to the Soo! So we had to drive back and get it. It added an hour to our trip, but it could have been worse. It was only about 2 hours (not taking into account the extra time to get my purse) to get to Sault Ste. Marie. It was the first time I've been to the U.P. since February 2006; driving over the bridge reminded me of allll the drives up to Marquette for school :) I just love it up here so much!

We got to our hotel, it's the closest one to the Soo Locks that is open this time of year. Unfortunatley, most of the cool stuff is closed for the season. We did go for a walk down by the Locks; Troy had never been here before, so I'm glad he got to see them! Then we walked through a couple shops and Troy got me an adorable Vera Bradley purse with a pattern that has owls on it! It's so cute!! Hopefully I don't lose this one.

After we got back to our room we got dressed up for dinner, they have a nice restaurant called Freighters at the hotel. You have a view of the Locks from the restaurant. Troy told me I should bring my new purse to dinner, so when I opened it to move stuff into it from my old purse I found another clue!! Our friend Dan is hilarious, this was his video for when we reached our destination: http://tr.im/26vx.

We had a delicious dinner at Freighters and now we're just relaxing in our room watching tv! We're only staying here for one night, so tomorrow we're heading somewhere else, but I haven't gotten the clue for that yet!

Honeymoon Day 3: Destination #1

2008-12-17T22:34:00.005-05:00

Today was WONDERFULLY relaxing. We started the morning with a couples massage at the Spa Solace here at Boyne. I've never been to a spa before...it was fantastic! The women's locker room has everything you could possibly need: styling products, hair brushes, hair dryers and curlers, etc, mouthwash, lotion, nail polish remover (which I definitely used...my french tips were chipping like crazy), and so much more. I got my own locker with a soft robe and some sandals to wear. The locker room also had a huge hot tub and sauna. After I got my robe on, we went to the relaxation room to wait for our massage to start. They had tea, coffee, water, fruit, etc. It smelled wonderful everywhere at the spa. Then the ladies came and took us for our 50 minute massage. I've never had a massage before, so I really didn't know what to expect. It was very nice though. Incredibly relaxing. After the massage they gave us some strawberries and we went back to the relaxation room.

We had access to the spa all day, so we changed into our swimsuits and went swimming in the indoor/outdoor pool and outdoor hot tub. Mind you, there is snow EVERYWHERE right now, but we were still sitting in the outdoor hot tub! It was pretty neat relaxing in the hot tub, watching the skiers, with snowflakes falling on our head. I was getting pretty hungry, so eventually we went back to our locker rooms, got changed, and went to lunch. After lunch we went to see the indoor water park at the hotel. We thought about going there from 4-8pm (it's cheaper for a half day and we didn't think we would use it enough to go for a whole day), but after we got back to the room Troy fell asleep for 2 hours, lol. We were both still pretty relaxed from the morning. I spent the time reading a book that I brought.

It's been quite the lazy day. After Troy woke up, we had dinner and have just been watching tv and relaxing in bed all night. We relaxed in the jacuzzi tub again...I could totally handle having one of those at our house :). Then tonight, I was given another clue for our next destination!! Our friend Dan (who was the best man in our wedding and also how we met each other) gave me my next clue. See if you can figure it out! http://tr.im/26wa.

Honeymoon Day 2: Destination #1

2008-12-17T22:26:00.003-05:00

On Tuesday we slept in and it was wonderful. We got breakfast at the restaurant and then got dressed for skiing. My snow pants didn't fit very well and Troy didn't have any at all. So we went to the ski shop to look for some new ones. Unfortunately, the only pants they carried in short were not in my size. And I wasn't willing to pay a ton of money for snow pants that didn't really fit well. So we decided to scrap skiing for the day and go up to Boyne City to deposit the money we got for the wedding. While there, we walked around their cute little town, got some chocolates at Kilwins, and had lunch at Thick-N-Juicy, a burger place. Since our room had wine glasses and a wine opener, we stopped a store and got a bottle of wine and a bottle of mead. I didn't know this, but apparently mead was traditionally drank on the honeymoon...I don't know all the details (wikipedia it), but we had some last night and it was not fantastic. I think I had one sip. Maybe it was just a bad brand, I don't know, but neither of us liked it at all.

After that, we drove up to Petoskey and went to M.C. Sports to look for snowpants. I found some that fit, though they were still pretty long on me (darn being so short!). They were relatively cheap (and on sale!), so I decided to buy them anyways, just in case we end up needing snowpants for any other fun things.

After that, we drove back to Boyne Mountain and just relaxed in our room all evening. We watched a movie (Terminator 2...I played on the computer while Troy watched it, lol) and went to dinner at the pizza place here. Just a lazy, relaxing day! It was wonderful!

Honeymoon Day 1: Destination #1

2008-12-17T22:14:00.004-05:00

Not long after I got my first clue explaining the honeymoon, I went in the bathroom to brush my hair. When I came out, there was another clue on my computer! Inside the envelope was another url: http://tr.im/26wb. I was allowed to watch the first half with this clue and the 2nd half was the clue I got after we received our destination. The video was made by my good friend John and his wife Kelly. Troy got my friends to give me video clues!!!! John and Kelly were also the musicians for our wedding (and they were AMAZING!!!). Based on the clues in the video, I was able to figure out that we were going to a ski resort in Michigan with a triple chair lift. Unfortunately, there are a lot of ski resorts with triple chair lifts, so I just went down a list until Troy told me I was right :)

So we were off to Boyne Mountain!!! Troy also kept telling me that I had to figure out how to get there. I thought that seemed silly, he must know how to get there. He kept emphasizing it though because after we got into the car to take off, he had a gps that his boss let him borrow for our road trip! We left Muskegon on Monday morning and Troy drove to Boyne Falls in quite the snowstorm. When we were driving through the resort, it was blowing so much, we kept thinking we were driving by flat land, we couldn't see the mountain at all! We made it to the resort, checked in and went to our room.

We've heard from a ton of people how amazing Boyne is, so we were pretty disappointed when we got to our room in the Edelweiss building. It was terrible, but it sure wasn't what we were expecting, especially not for the price. The heater was ridiculously loud, there was a group of 4 LOUD college guys next door that we could hear their every word...it just didn't seem that great. Like a motel, almost. Considering the room cost more than what we had just paid in Muskegon for a very, very nice room, we were pretty disappointed. So Troy went to the front desk and said, we're on our honeymoon and that room isn't quite what we were expecting. The guy immediately gave us a bunch of options and showed us a fantastic room in the Mountain Grand Resort building for only $50 more. This room had a jacuzzi tub, fireplace, huge widescreen tv. FANTASTIC! Above our expectations! This room was more like what we were expecting in the first room, only without jacuzzi and fireplace. We didn't find out until today why it was only $50 more...he had only quoted us for 2 nights, when our initial reservation was for 3. We talked to them this morning about this when we saw our checkout info under our door, and it seems they may give us the 3rd night for free since it was his fault that he quoted us wrong...we probably would have gone with a more middle of the road room if we had known it was actually going to be more than $200 more than our original room. We'll find out for sure tomorrow.

So we moved all our stuff, ate dinner at one of the restaurants, and relaxed in our jacuzzi that night. Despite the disappointing start to the day, it ended fantastic. So unless you're a poor college student who plans on skiing a lot and not relaxing in your room at all, we definitely do not recommend the Edelweiss building at Boyne Mountain. Not so great...I'll share pictures later.

Honeymoon Description

2008-12-17T22:07:00.004-05:00

Many people were asking about our honeymoon, so we thought maybe we should update this so that people can see what we're up to and where we're going. As many of you know, Troy planned our honeymoon on his own as a surprise for me. What I didn't know until the day after the wedding was that he planned it as a bit of a treasure hunt! When I got out of the shower the day after the wedding, there was an envelope labeled 1 in the bathroom. Inside the envelope was a url that took me to a youtube video. The url I was given was: http://tr.im/26vv if you'd like to see it yourself.

Basically, he planned it somewhat Amazing Race style. I will be given clues and have to figure out our destination! So much fun! The clue said that I would get another clue later that day.

Wedding Countdown: 11 days left!

2008-12-03T00:46:00.006-05:00

Wow, it's been awhile since I've posted! We've been very busy with wedding stuff! Things are coming along though! We decided to use words that started with snow instead of table numbers. We thought it was pretty fun!

In other news, we found out this week that our kitty is sick. She has had diarrhea on and off since September. The vet thought she just had a stomach bug or had gotten into something. She had also thrown up a few times, but we thought she either ate too fast or it was a hairball. When she got diarrhea AGAIN last week, the vet decided to do some bloodwork on her. Apparently she was underweight as well (but her poofy fur hides it so well!) It turns out that she has a hyperactive thyroid, so she will likely be on medication for the rest of her life. I actually have 2 friends who have had thyroid problems, so while I'm sure there are differences between human and feline thyroid problems, at least I had some idea about it already! Once we get her dosage right, the thyroid problem shouldn't cause her any major health problems. The biggest problem for Troy and I is that it makes weekend trips a little more difficult. We used to just be able to leave out a big bowl of food and water and she would be fine. Now that she needs a pill every day, we'll for sure have to get pet sitters anytime we leave. Fortunately, our friend John has 3 cats and has had to give them medication before, so he was kind enough to watch her when we left for Thanksgiving. He will also be cat/house-sitting while we are gone on our honeymoon.

The picture below is of me attempting to give Pudge an antibiotic. Excuse the poor quality, it was taken with Troy's phone. The vet put her on the antibiotic before we got the thyroid diagnosis. I don't really know how to give cats liquid medication, so I tried to just put a little in her mouth in the hopes that she would lick it up. Instead she managed to push it out with her tongue so that all the medicine frothed up so she looked like she was foaming at the mouth. She looked hilarious, but it was very frustrating! I was trying to hold her mouth closed so she swallowed it, but I was failing miserably. I felt so mean; it's a good thing cats have short memories because she was still cuddling with me later. John taught me a better method of giving it to her, so now we've got it all worked out. Fortunately, her thyroid medication is a pill, which is much easier to give her. The tricky part is catching her...she's starting to know when we're trying to get her for medicine...

Wedding Craziness: 27 days left!

2008-11-16T02:02:00.005-05:00

I'm having another late night because I keep thinking about all the things I need to do for the wedding. I have always had a hard time sleeping at night because I can't turn my brain off (thanks dad, that was definitely from your genes) and planning something as huge as a wedding definitely doesn't help me sleep! Oh well, I did get quite a few things done tonight, which makes me feel a little better. I updated our wedding website with instructions on how to upload photos to our smugmug site. Since a lot of people have digital cameras, we're hoping that people will share any photos they take at the wedding on our smugmug site so that we get copies of them all! I sent an e-mail to some family members with various level of computer literacy to see if my directions make sense to them before I print these up to give to people at the wedding. I also sent my future mother-in-law the list of people for the rehearsal dinner. A few things I can check off as done! Hooray!

I can't believe how close the wedding is. It's only 4 weeks away! I tried to add a countdown (as suggested by lauri), but the blogger countdown seems to be broken. Oh well, I'll countdown in the title from now on.

Here are some pictures of the samples we received of our favors. I'm so excited for them! They're winter themed cookies! Everyone likes cookies, so hopefully we won't end up with 100 of them left behind, and it gives people a snack at some point, and they're cute :)

We're only going to use a few of these designs, but aren't they adorable?! And they are absolutely delicious. I was very excited to find a local bakery (The Cookie Lady) that made these within our budget...my future mother-in-law had been suggesting we make the cookies ourselves and I was slightly overwhelmed at that thought. I'm much happier paying people to do things for me at this point. Also, this bakery is so wonderful, they win the award for kindest wedding vendor. We were trying to decide which ones to use and they told us that the mittens were $1 more per dozen because they wouldn't already be making those (they will be making more Christmasy designs to sell in the shop). So being the practical bride that I try to be, I said no mittens. The next day I got a phone call from them saying that she talked to her boss and they just think the mittens are so cute, so they will give them to us at the same cost as everything else. I thought that was the nicest thing ever! It was so thoughtful of them, it just made my week!

Correction

2008-11-06T10:19:00.000-05:00

After reading my last post, Troy corrected me. At his cousins wedding, we parked by camels, not llamas. I apologize...they were funny looking either way. I was afraid they might spit on my car. It was pretty neat though :)

wedding card

2008-11-06T09:08:00.003-05:00

c
I made this card for Troy's cousins wedding back in October. They had a beautiful wedding and the reception was outside on a farm; it was so neat! We parked right by some llamas on the farm. They really lucked out with the weather; you never know in Michigan, but it was a beautiful day! The cake is from a scrapbook set (I only have a few stamp sets at this point, so I substitute with scrapbooking stickers when I need to). The background was embossed with my cuttlebug and the cuttlebug D'vine Swirls folder. I cut the square and scalloped square with my rectangle nestabilities.

A giant pile of thank you cards

2008-11-03T15:01:00.004-05:00

This is what my weekend consisted of:

Writing 45+ thank you cards for ONE bridal shower. I love my huge family, but wow that was a lot of writing! Our wedding is going to be like 5 times this number....good thing Troy will be helping write those cards! Back in the early wedding planning stages I thought I was going to make all our thank you cards. Ha! I'm glad I changed my mind on that early; I think I would have lost all interest in card making for the rest of my life. I found some $1 pack of 10 thank you cards at Michaels (which were only $0.80 with a 20% off coupon!). The shower thank you cards are just simple ones, but for the wedding, we are using reindeer thank you cards. Got to throw a little Christmas/Winter in there somehow :).

Hoping for Snow!

2008-10-28T12:12:00.004-04:00

My hometown's newspaper (where our wedding is) had an article about how it may be a snowy winter. It said this: The Farmers' Almanac said: "With below-normal winter temperatures and an above-normal precipitation forecast, the Great Lakes and Midwest will see above-normal snowfalls, especially during January and February."Well, let's hope that goes back to December...we'd really like some snow for our wedding :) How fun would the pictures be! I'd like a big dumping of snow sometime the week before the wedding, then for it to clear up enough for safe travel but still be cold enough that none of the snow melts, and then a light dusting the day of the wedding to cover up any dirt or yuckiness. One can hope!

Showers

2008-10-26T22:26:00.010-04:00

I made this card about a month ago for Troy's cousin's wedding shower. I used a bathtub scrapbooking sticker set and added a showerhead that I made out of paper. I used a paperclip as my curtain rod and make a curtain out of scrapbook paper. I was having a hard time with the curtain/rod combination, so Troy helped me out with that. He's actually a lot better at creative things than I am; I get his help a lot.

This is an envelope/box I made to hold the card because it was too thick to put in a regular envelope. I altered this template I found on the Mirkwood Designs blog. I clearly haven't ever made any envelopes or boxes before because I had a lot of trouble getting it to work Troy fixed it all though! My first problem was that I punched holes right on top of each other in the flap and the envelope. This made it impossible to tie it shut...so Troy found a way to wrap it around so it didn't look totally awkward. My second problem was that I altered the width of the sides properly, but forgot to adjust the lid and bottom. Oh well...I made it fit :)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I decided to share this card today because yesterday I had my first bridal shower! It was a lot of fun...but I have at least 40 thank you cards I need to write now! I originally thought I would make all my thank you cards by hand...but after I realized how many gifts we would end up getting between 2 showers and the wedding; I quickly scrapped that idea. I don't have any pictures from the shower yet, but I'll try to take a picture of my stack of gifts to share. It is unbelievable how generous people are...we got a ton of stuff! One of my favorite gifts was a book that one of my great aunts coauthored. It is a cookbook but it was written with the historical society where she lives, so it also includes a ton of historical facts about the city and historical cooking, health, and cleaning recipes. It's a really neat book! My grandpa was 1 of 15 children, so my family's name is mentioned all over the book and there are pictures of a few of my great-aunts and my mom's cousins! Many of the recipes were from my family too. It's such a neat gift! I also got the portable fabric steamer I registered for...I'm super excited because I want it to steam my wedding dress and my bridesmaids dresses since they are all flying in...that way we don't have to pay for it! There were so many other fun gifts...everyone was so generous! Only 7 more weeks (from Saturday) until the wedding!!!

super productive weekend!

2008-10-19T22:54:00.004-04:00

I am SO excited about all the fun wedding things we got done this weekend :) We went to Muskegon (my hometown, where the wedding is) to meet with the priest, a florist, and a cake-baker. I am SO excited about our flowers and cake! The last florist we met with was very disappointing; we don't have a lot of money budgeted for flowers and she was basically telling me that my only choice in that price range was to have the bridesmaids carry 3 roses tied together. I guess that's not what I think of when I think of a bouquet. This place was totally willing to work with our budget and gave us great suggestions, which was really helpful since I didn't really know what I wanted. Our flowers are more informal and fun; it's even going to have snowflake blossoms and reindeer moss...how appropriate for our winter themed wedding!!! I think it will be SO cute :) And we got the entire wedding party for only $20 over what we budgeted - including delivery to the church.

The person we're using for the cake was ALSO great!!! And super reasonable. We didn't have much budgeted for a cake because a family friend was going to make it at cost for us. She found out that she will be having her fifth back surgery, so she won't be able to make it. The lady we are going to use instead was someone I met at the bridal show last January. She was SO nice, I was ready to book her back then. She gave us a TON more for our money than the other local bakers I'd talked with, so I'm very happy. And I thought her cake tasted better and she had way more options for flavors. We're going to have 5 different flavors: almond with raspberry filling, marble with bavarian cream, double chocolate brownie with peanut butter, apple cinnamon with cinnamon, and blueberry muffin with cream cheese. Delicious. I'm going to make sure that someone gets a piece of each flavor and hides it in a box for us to take on our honeymoon. Also, our cake is going to be decorated in such a fun way! Hopefully I'll have pictures to share after the wedding, but rest assured it will be fun and wintery :)

2 things

2008-10-06T01:10:00.005-04:00

wWell, I think this is turning more into a personal blog than a blog to share the cards I'm making. Perhaps next year I'll have more time to spend on this new hobby! I do have a couple of cards to share, so hopefully I can get those posts up soon...tonight is all about venting :)

I noticed 2 things today. First, I am absolutely pathetically (almost embarrassingly) attached to Troy. I am staying at my sister's house (which is about 3 hours away) tonight because I have my final dress fitting tomorrow. I am going to be gone for less than 24 hours. Yet, when I was leaving today, it felt like I was going to be gone for a week. Pathetic. It made me think of the time when my friend Dusti's mom came up to visit her at college (a 4+ hour drive from her hometown) and ended up leaving that night because it would have been the first night she had ever spent away from Dusti's dad since they had been married and she couldn't handle being away. I thought this was absolutely ridiculous at the time, but now I feel like I'm becoming like that! Ugh, it's disgustingly cheesy...I'm going to blame the feeling on the fact that I haven't been sleeping well, so I was just really tired and I get all emotional when I'm overtired.

Speaking of overtired, the 2nd thing I'd like to point out is that it is almost 1:30am and I can. not. sleep. I tend to stress about things far more than I should (to the point of making myself feel sick). I seem to be doing that right now...I'm realizing that we have just over 2 months until the wedding and have SO much to do. I know it will all get done, I just really was hoping that for once in my life I wouldn't put it all off till the last minute, so I could actually enjoy the end of our engagement instead of being stressed about everything that needs to be done. I can't seem to shut my brain off at night to be able to sleep; I just keep thinking of the gazillion things that I need to do asap. I'm also really behind at work, so that doesn't really help the situation any.

Whew, here's hoping the little vent session will make the stress melt away so I can get some sleep. I have to drive the 3 hours back home tomorrow because we have a volleyball game tomorrow night. The unfortunate thing is that my niece and nephew will be waking up by 5:30am, so I can only get 4 hours of continuous sleep at this point. Hopefully I can fall back asleep when my sister leaves for work at 6:30. I love staying at her house because she always feeds me well and I adore my niece and nephew, but this is definitely not the place to stay if you actually want to sleep. I swear I am bad luck (except not tonight so far!) because almost every time I stay here someone has an ear infection, or something which keeps them up screaming all night long. My sister swears they don't do that when I'm not here.

Busy Busy!

2008-10-03T22:18:00.004-04:00

Well, we've been pretty busy lately. I'm hoping to get our invitations mailed in the next week; we'll see if that's possible or not. We've had some unexpected expenses lately (our cake-baker had to cancel on us because she's having her 5th(!) back surgery and alcohol is a lot more than planned), but things are coming along! We decided not to do a big honeymoon because of the cost, so instead Troy is planning a surprise honeymoon for us :) I'm really glad we're doing this because this way there's no way I can worry about it; I won't waste time on the internet looking up things to do or anything. Troy thinks I'm going to love it, so I'm excited. And it's much longer than it would have been if we'd gone on a big trip; it will be from the 14th until Christmas Day. I'm super excited that we're going to spend Christmas Eve/Morning with just the 2 of us and not staying at one of our parents' places. I'd really like for us to get our own family traditions at some point :)

In other news, our cat Pudge was pretty sick last week. She had some serious diarrhea. I took her to the vet and got her some medication...giving a cat pills is NOT a pleasant experience. It was a rough day; I had to give her 2 showers to clean her up, clean up TONS of poop in the carpet, and give her pills and liquid medication. She also managed to do some crazy ninja cat moves and scratch my face and eye with her hind legs (she's declawed in the front). My eye was bothering me until about Wednesday. I'm glad it healed on it's own because I don't have health insurance and I really didn't want to go to the dr. I've had corneal abrasions twice before though, so I pretty much knew how to handle it.

John and Nicole are coming to visit this weekend! We're going to the UT football game tomorrow night and going diving in a quarry on Sunday. If it stays as cold as it is now, I might just stay warm and hang out with Nicole. We'll see though...Troy already has like 3-4 more dives logged than me :( I need to keep up!

No cards :(

2008-09-11T11:51:00.007-04:00

Well, wedding stuff has completely consumed most of my free time. There has been no time for non-wedding-related projects :(. We got our final mock-up of the invitations done, so hopefully we can make them this weekend! Also, we got our first wedding present yesterday! That made it all seem very real :) My friend M.Y. mailed our gift to us because she left for Saudi Arabia on Sunday. Unfortunately, she won't be back until next summer, so she won't be able to attend the wedding. It was such a great gift though, she bought us things when she was in Lithuania this past summer. M.Y. travels more than anyone I know, and to the coolest places! She teaches English, so she gets jobs in such fun places. She will be teaching English at a school for women in Saudi Arabia; what a fun experience!

Besides wedding projects, we went scuba diving again! We went to three wrecks in Lake Huron over Labor Day weekend. Unfortunately, our diving was cut short when we surfaced on Saturday evening and smelled smoke on my friend's boat. The coil in his engine blew :( We got towed in by the owner of the dive shop, at which point the thing that pulled his boat onto his trailer broke! Let's just say we were grilling chicken at 1:30am to finally have some dinner by the time everything got fixed. Fortunately, it was a beautiful day to be stranded on the lake after dark :) The picture below is of Troy and I in all our diving glory :)

A Wedding Card

2008-08-18T14:45:00.005-04:00

This is a card I made for a good friend's wedding I went to last weekend. Their wedding was beautiful! And lucky me, they are going to be doing the music for our ceremony! They're both great musicians, so there was a ton of music in their mass. The best part was that everyone in the church was singing along! It was great. I'm so happy for them!

The card uses a cuttlebug embossed background, with the rectangle and scalloped rectangle cut with nestabilities dies. The car is from a scrapbook sticker thing...I had to make a Michaels run after I realized I didn't have any wedding card stamps! I thought the card was cute and I didn't realize it when I made it, but they used that color pink at their wedding! Perfect!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tomorrow is my dress fitting! I'm very excited. I'm going to stay at my sister's house tonight, so I will get to see my niece and nephew too :) On a not-so-fun note, my dad is in the hospital and needed surgery this morning. Apparently he had an intestinal blockage. He had esophageal cancer a couple years ago and he was really, really bad for awhile (down to 91 lbs), so I was very worried last night that this was something related to the cancer. However, after the surgery today, they said the blockage was caused by scar tissue from where my dad's feeding tube had been inserted. Since the tumor had blocked his esophagus and they eventually removed his esophagus, he had a feeding tube in his intestine for about 6 months that year. Can you even imagine going 6 months not eating?! Crazy! My sister said he doesn't look comfortable right now (he has a tube stuck down his nose...really, who would feel comfortable), but he should be fine. My sister actually has experience with this type of problem, as her son needed surgery when he was 10 days old because his intestines were twisted and he went through basically the same thing as my dad. So, all should be well, and I feel much, much better today :)

I'm here again!

2008-08-15T15:22:00.005-04:00

Woohoo! I remembered to post something today! Sorry the lighting is bad, I am still experimenting with taking pictures and this was in the mail before I noticed how bad it was. I made five of these cards to send to all the people whose birthdays I missed. Anyone who knows me, knows that I am HORRIBLE at remembering birthdays. This card uses a cuttlebug happy birthday embossing folder, some flowers that I received as blog candy from someone, some ribbon that I received as blog candy from someone, and the sentiment is from one of the Papertrey Ink sets: Pond Life Sentiments. I thought it was cute and it was easy to make multiple copies of it :)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Troy (my fiance) had a coed tournament softball game last night and they won! I do the book for the games, but I almost had to go in and play because someone slide tackled into their 2nd basewoman and they didn't have any more girls to sub! Fortunately, she was ok. I might have to play on Saturday though...scary, I haven't touched a bat in over a year and even then it was just for one day!

Also, I'm going to my very first card class tonight. A Stampin Up demo that Troy's mom knows is holding a class and I figure this will be a good way to learn some techniques. Everything else I just see on blogs and dream about doing...but never really try :) I'm excited to meet some new people since I don't know many outside Troy's family in this area :)

I'm back!

2008-08-14T12:43:00.005-04:00

Ugh, I knew it would happen. I got busy with work, wedding, etc and quit posting on here. Well, I'm back to try and be better! So here's a card! I made this for my lab-mate, as she is moving on from her post-doc to a real grown-up job. The stamps are from Papertrey Ink: Pond Life and Pond Life Sentiments. Beyond that, who knows what cardstock or ink I used. I thought it turned out decently well.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On a personal note, wedding things are coming along! It seems we're going to have more insurance money left over from the flood than we expected (because we got paid for our own hard work and we don't plan on replacing some of the ruined furniture), so we are considering using it to go on a honeymoon. First we were looking at all inclusives in Mexico because it seemed easy, but we weren't super impressed. That's just not really our thing...we'd rather explore a city and be free to eat where we choose. Unfortunately, our top choice places are still way beyond our budget. We'd LOVE to go scuba diving in Belize, Roatan, Grand Caymen, or any other of those amazing dive spots, but we're thinking we'll have to wait for that. So our new top choice is to find some lodge in the moutains in Canada or northern U.S., get a room with a fireplace, and enjoy nature. You can go snowshoeing, on a sleigh ride, skiing, dog-sledding...so fun!! I'm really excited about this prospect, we just need to find some place we can afford and try to narrow it down from all the amazing little towns in the mountains everywhere! I went to college in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and I miss the real winters we got up there, so I'd love to go somewhere with TONS of snow! We'll see how it works out :)

Dresses!

2008-07-23T14:48:00.005-04:00

My bridesmaids' dresses came in on Monday! I was so excited. Unfortunately, 4 of them live out of state, so I didn't get to see them; they are being shipped to the girls. I decided to take some stress off of me and let all the girls pick out their own dress, as long as it was long and navy. I went with Alfred Angelo because they were reasonably priced and had the largest number of dress styles that all came in every color they offered. This way, no one can complain about the cost or whether or not they like the dress, because they picked it out! The picture below shows all 5 dresses on the models from the Alfred Angelo website.

no stamping...but some wedding stuff!

2008-07-22T11:29:00.005-04:00

I have been on a wedding productivity roll lately! Here is the first draft of 2 parts of our invites. I made them myself in Illustrator (even the snowflake!). I'm not sure what happened though! The text is navy and the snowflakes are light blue in the jpg on my computer, but when I uploaded them to blogger, it totally changed. Oh well, you get the idea.We're going to be making pocketfolds and I still have 3 more inserts to design, but I was pretty happy with what we've got so far. We also started our first registry this weekend...what an ordeal that was! It took forever! I am the most indecisive person ever! We ended up skipping over a lot of things because we needed to pick out the color of something else first, etc. But I think we're making progress, and now we can edit it online, so that should be easier. The worst part is how bad I feel asking for people to buy all these things! I'm afraid to register for soemthing expensive, even if it is something we really do want and would be willing to spend that much money on it ourselves.

Get Well Card

2008-07-15T09:58:00.003-04:00

I made this card for Troy's Grandpa. He was out for a walk on a trail and was checking to make sure that he had his cell phone in case anything happened when he tripped. He broke his foot! So this sentiment seemed perfect for the occasion :) The stamps are all from from the set Pond Life by Papertrey Ink. The background was embossed using a cuttlebug folder. The eye is a googly eye. I think this is my favorite card that I have made so far :)

---------------------------------------------------

We went camping again this past weekend. My mom's family goes camping every year the weekend after the 4th. My mom has 8 brothers and sisters, so while they are rarely all there, it's still a lot of people! We were camping right by Lake Michigan and on Friday night a huge storm was coming in so Troy and I went to the beach to watch it coming. It was crazy; if you looked up, you saw tons of stars, but if you looked across the water, the stars were all covered by clouds and there was lightning everywhere. I get nervous in storms (I was shocked by lightning as a child), but I have to admit, it was pretty cool.

Graduation Card #2

2008-07-10T09:23:00.005-04:00

I made this graduation card for a girl I tutored in physics this past semester. She was such a great student, and I was honored that she thought to invite me to her graduation party. She has a medical condition (POTS) that made it so she slept a lot and was often unable to attend classes. I'm so proud of her and I hope she does very well in college.

The card uses all the same things as the other graduation card, just different colors because it was a different high school.

On a personal note, we have insurance people coming to appraise the damage in our basement today. Last Thursday morning (Wed night), we had major storms in this area and our sewer line was blocked, so everyone in our neighborhood attached to this line had flooding in their basement. It was about 4 inches in our basement, but at least it wasn't a foot like some of our neighbors! This isn't covered under basic homeowners insurance, but fortunately Troy added sewage back up to ours! Most of our neighbors aren't covered though, so it was really sad to see how much stuff people had to throw away. A guy across the street had a partially finished basement and he had to throw away his kids' toys. There was even a commercial sized dumpster on our street because so many people had to throw things away. All in all, we were pretty lucky; having just bought the house 6 months ago, we didn't have much in the basement. Although, as luck would have it, we had JUST moved the furniture from my apartment to the basement 5 days before the flood. Oh well, hopefully we have enough coverage to get new furniture and we can put that upstairs and our other icky college furniture downstairs. Apparently, we also get a discount on our deductible for the "(wo)man hours"we worked cleaning it up that night. Let this be a lesson...add sewage back-up to your insurance, it's totally worth it!

On a more positive note, we finally met a lot of our neighbors! Nothing like mass water damage to bring people together. We were at a loss as to what to do, so I went and knocked on the door of a house across the street because it appeared they were having problems and they let us borrow an industrial sized pump to get the water out. I'm glad we finally got to meet many of our neighbors.

Lake Huron diving

2008-07-07T10:59:00.004-04:00

We had so much fun this past weekend. My fiance (Troy) and I spent two days SCUBA diving in Lake Huron with John, a friend of mine from college. John has a boat set up for diving and he goes wreck diving all the time, so it was great going with him. Troy and I hadn't gone diving in over a year and never in the Great Lakes before this past weekend, so I was pretty nervous going into it. We ended up having a perfect weekend, the lake was amazingly calm! On Friday, we dove the Strong, which is a wreck that is mostly a pile of lumber now. It was a pretty shallow wreck though, which was nice to get started on. Then we just dove around some rocks because some fishermen sank the mooring (sp?) line on Sport, the other wreck we were going to dive. Saturday was the best. We dove the Regina, which was down to 70+ feet. It was a freighter that is laying upside down on the bottom. It was amazing because the wreck is still intact for the most part. We went down to the stern and the first thing you see is the propeller which is 14 feet in diameter. It was so neat to just look at how massive the ship was. We ended up doing 2 dives at Regina. It was SO cool. John has totally hooked Troy and I back into diving and hopefullly we'll spend a lot more time doing it. Here's a picture of me in my diving gear...look how amazing calm Lake Huron was!

Graduation Card #1

2008-07-03T14:29:00.003-04:00

I made this card as a high school graduation card for my fiance's brother's girlfriend. Whew, that's a mouthfull. Their school colors are blue and yellow, which is why I chose those colors. The stamps are a Stampin Up set (I'll have to look the name up later and edit this, I don't remember right now). The background was made with a cuttlebug emobssing folder (again, don't remember the name). I think it turned out well. I have to admit, I sit down to make something and am always at a loss until my fiance helps me figure out what to do :) If he would ever take the time to do things like this, he would be way better than me, lol.

On a personal note, I'm really excited for this weekend! We are going camping in Port Sanilac, MI. We are meeting up with a college friend of mine and going wreck diving in Lake Huron. He has his own boat and leads dive tours for a shop up there, so I'm really excited. It will be our first time diving in the Great Lakes. Someday I'll get a fancy diving camera set-up so I can share pictures of things like this :)

Father's Day card

2008-07-01T12:35:00.006-04:00

This is a card I made for my dad for Father's Day. It uses Dad's Outdoors from H & M Stamps. I used to always go steelhead fishing with my dad every April, and the fishing stuff in this set made me think of him. The (sort of) oval around the sentiment is actually from PTI's Borders and Corners Circle set, I just stretched it into as close as an oval as I could to make the sentiment fit. It's actually the first stamp set I ever purchased! I wasn't quite sure what to do with it, so the inside is just a hodge-podge of random fishing images that I stamped and colored :)

Books!

2008-06-28T10:02:00.003-04:00

I saw this on the ZoeLife Creations blog and thought it was fun, so I decided to try it. I'm pretty sure I won't do very well :) I couldn't figure out how to easily underline in blogger, so I skipped that part; I didn't feel like going into html view every time I wanted to add an underline. And I 'intend' to read everything, so I didn't italicize anything either, lol.

The Big Read" reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.”
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them ;-)
6) Amy's adding...I didn't read it but I saw the movie...mark with an astrick!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll*
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis*
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen3
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (kind of duplicates #33)*
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen*
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58??? It wasn't on the list I copied
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons7
8 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens*
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple, Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine de St. Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Well, I read 10/100...not terrible, but at least I have a list to go to next time I want to read a book!

First Card to Share

2008-06-27T22:36:00.006-04:00

Well, I've finally started making some cards! I'm definitely not dedicated to the point of all the people whose blogs I stalk, but I'm getting started :) I made this card for my mom for Mother's Day. It's been done for awhile, I just haven't taken the time to try to upload it yet. So here you go! Hopefully I'll actually get into this blogging thing and keep this up, because let me tell you, the people whose blogs I read seem so great and I would love to become a part of that community :)I made the flowers with some cuttlebug dies and used some fiskars scissors on the grass. I'm honestly not sure what I used for everything else; I guess I better start keeping track of that stuff :)

still a newbie

2008-06-07T19:11:00.002-04:00

Wow, I started this blog awhile ago mostly so I could view other people's blogs and leave comments without being anonymous. I never knew I had comments or anything! Perhaps I'll have to start taking this a little more seriously :) Well, I'm mostly hoping to share stuff about my wedding planning and my new hobby/obsession: stamping. Honestly, I have only actually stamped one card. BUT I have been obsessively stalking blogs and reading forums for at least a month now. And I have slowly acquired more than enough supplies to actually start making some things. However, I'm working full time and taking a summer class right now, so I've been putting it off until my class was done. Only one more week and then I can start seriously working on wedding stuff and trying out this stamping thing :)

Just starting

2008-04-22T11:28:00.001-04:00

Well, I signed up for Google Blogger and I thought it had created a blog, but apparently not! I'm just trying it out to see if I want to switch over from livejournal and because this allows me to comment on other blogger posts...it seems this is a popular blogging tool!