Have you ever been to Crop & Create?  This was my very first.  So I guess I’m a Crop & Create newbie.  Let me just tell you right now…it was uber-amazing!!!  Scrapbook & Cards Magazine put on one heck of an event!  Believe me…after you read this post, you will definitely want to attend the next one (yes, I’m an enabler)!

We arrived at the hotel the night before the event.  You need to make sure you get your beauty sleep before an event like this.  We even got a little sneak peak at them setting up.  We were so excited, we could have started right then!

The next morning we registered and got our badges, and goody bags.  The goody bag was a large scrapbooking kit!  Lovely!  They even included ideas of what to do with the kit.  How cool is that?

When registering I signed up for a whole bunch of classes.  That is usually what I do when I attend something new.  I like to take as many classes as I can to give me a feel of what they are all about.  We got to work with companies like Simples Stories, Fancy Pants, Dear Lizzy, We R Memory Keepers, Ranger, and Core’dinations.

The classes were amazing!  I have never used a Snap Album before…let me tell you…I am hooked on them now!

I forgot how much fun it was to play with Distress Inks…I want to play again with mine.

Putting stickers on photos?  I never even thought of doing that!  Now I’m going to do that for sure!

Here’s a double layout class I took using the Attwell collection from Fancy Pants…

We even got this very cute zippered bag to put embellishments in from Fancy Pants!  Love it!

Here’s another mini album class using a 4 x 6 Snap binder from Simple Stories…

After a wonderful, but tiring, full day of classes, we had an evening of make-and-takes and even a dessert bar!  Yum!

So many cute crafts for the make-and-takes.

• There were three cards,

• an owl pendant,

• a gift card holder,

• and a sample of gold foiling from the Minc Machine.

Oh boy, that Minc Machine…I’m very tempted now.  Dang that Vicki Boutin!

She showed a technique that made me want that Minc so much more.  I thoroughly enjoyed ALL the make-and-takes!

I never really participated in them before at other events, but I really should have.  And I definitely will from now on.  You meet so many wonderful ladies just standing in line for these make-and-takes.  What a great way to meet new friends!

After the classes on the second day, Vicki worked on some tags using the Tim Holtz Distress Crayons, and Collage Medium.  They turned out beautifully!  Vicki is so talented.  She just sat down to play, and ended up with a whole lot of amazing tags!

And here is Vicki doing a photo shoot!

Hey…and I even won some goodies!  What could be better than that?

I can tell you what’s better than that…having all these wonderful photo booth pics with my old friends and new ones!

What an amazing time at Crop & Create!  But be prepared…the energy is so high all weekend…you might need a nap!

Fun times!  Can’t wait for next year!  Will you be attending, too???  Let me know in the comments below…

Well, vacation is over now.  I had such a wonderful time!  I can’t wait until I can go out there again.  I really enjoyed the rest.  I really needed the rest.  I feel so energized now!  Wait a minute….maybe I shouldn’t go that far, but I do have a bit more energy.

So, my last few days at the homestead were spent mostly indoors.  It was quite nasty outside with all that white stuff falling.  The wind thought it would chime in, too.  I hate wind!

I spent the next few days in my nice warm PJs watching movies.  I caught up on season 2 of Downton Abbey, and watched the first four discs of NYPD Blue!  I loved that show!  I wish it was on Netflix so I could continue watching it.

My Mom made us a turkey supper one of the nights.  Sooooo yum!  She must have made one heck of a large turkey at Christmas because there were sure enough leftovers to make us a nice meal.

A few days later it turned sunny for the day.  It was bitter cold, though.  Brrrrrrr!  But since it was sunny, we went for a little road trip to Bloomfield.  There was really only one store that was open.  It was a lovely little store called Green Gables.  What a delightful place!  There was so much to look at!

We stopped part way through to go for lunch.  We went to Agrarian.  I ordered a supper yummy grilled cheese with mushroom soup.

After a delicious lunch, we finished our perusal of Green Gables then went home.

While I was still at my parents, I worked on my skills at bra-making.  I’ve never made a bra before, but I sure needed to learn.  I have always had trouble finding a bra that fits me.  I have very narrow shoulders.  My bra straps are always falling off.  So, I finally decided to take a Craftsy class (www.craftsy.com) to learn how to make myself a bra.

If you’ve never taken a Craftsy class, you definitely must!  The classes are so professionally done, and the instructors are so knowledgeable.  The sewing went fairly well.  If you count having to seam rip it out 2 or 3 times each step as fairly.  But that goes along with learning, right?  Well, I got three quarters of it done before the top thread kept breaking on my Mom’s machine.  So I will finish the rest of it at home.

I will post a picture of my bra once I finish.  I’m quite proud of myself so far.

Before I sign off on this holiday post, I need to post a random pic.  Here it is:

Yes, it’s a package of 4 bags of milk!  Yes, I said milk!  People in Ontario buy bagged milk.  Strange.  But I do prefer that to buying jugs of milk.  The bags pour nicely and don’t get crusty like the jugs get around the opening.

Well, that was my vacation folks!  Hope you enjoyed catching up with me, and my adventures.

Well, I’ve been out visiting my parents for over a week now.  So fun!  A lot of relaxing went on.  It was a little nasty to go outside.  It was either windy as h*&# out there, or snowing like crazy, or raining on top of the snow.  But we managed one day to go out for a walk.  A 3 km walk to be exact.  Wow!  I haven’t been on that far a walk in a VERY long time!

It wasn’t too cold.  I made sure to wear a scarf over my mouth so I wouldn’t start having an asthma attack (which happens when you breathe in cold air).  We were heading into town from my parents acreage for a little lunch at the one, and only, restaurant in town.  We were going to go the day before, but when we called it said to check their website for hours.  It said that it was open on Friday from 2 to 9, and today (our walking day) was Friday.  When we got to the restaurant….it was closed!

No notice on the door.  In fact, the sign beside the door said that they were open 2 to 9.  Well….I guess that’s a small town for ya.  A bit depressing.  🙁  So we had to turn around and head back…no lunch for us.  I did find a little something to keep those hunger pangs at bay…

Yeah, I know what your thinking…woop-dee-doo!  That would keep my tummy from growling for all of 2 seconds!  Anyway, when we got back to the homestead needless to say…we had some much-needed lunch!

The next day we went to on a shopping day to Kingston.  Along the way we had to take the local ferry.

Brrrrrr….actually, it wasn’t as cold as it looked.  It was about 1 degree celcius.  You can see all the large slabs of ice near the shore.

Menacing looking isn’t it?  Further out in the middle the slabs of ice turned into one large slushy mess.  It was as though we were travelling through was monster-size slurpee!

When we got to Kingston we parked downtown, and shopped all those quaint little shops they have there.  But there were way more eateries, cafes, and restaurants than shops.  In fact, after shopping for a couple of hours we wandered ourselves into one of these cute little cafes and had some lunch.  Hey, shopping gives you quite the appetite!

The lunch was quite yummy.  So was my café latte!  Sooooo good!  And the price of the food was very reasonable.

After we had been “fed” up…we shopped for another couple of hours.  Yes, we are determined shoppers!  Once we had checked out every store downtown, we headed over to Pickers World Market.

My Mom and I saw it advertised on the news the night before.  Unfortunately we got there fairly late.  We only had about half an hour to take a look around.  So we only got to see a small section of this big market.  Oh well, I can check it out again the next time I come out this way.  In that small amount of time, I did manage to find myself a cute little teddy bear to take home.  And those that know me know I love teddy bears.  In fact, I collect them.  I have a very large collection.

So here are my shopping spoils for the day:

We topped the day off by having supper at the Barley Room in Picton.  Wow!  That place was awesome!  Wonderful atmosphere, delicious food!  For supper I had the Cornish Pasty.  Sooooo yummy!  And for dessert…you can’t have supper without dessert…I have Coconut Cream Pie.  Absolutely heavenly!  I didn’t leave any of that on my plate that’s for sure.

The band playing was so amazing.  They were called Northern Voodoo.  If you haven’t heard of them before, you MUST check them out!  In fact, go to their website now…you won’t be disappointed.  I was so impressed, I bought their CD!  They had the entire pub hopping!

Right now I’m out visiting my parents in Ontario.  That was my Christmas present!  So excited!  The trip out here went just fine.  It was late at night when I got here, but it was warmer than it was at home.  Not that much warmer, though.

The next morning I met a friend at Eatons Centre.  This is a friend I made while on the Crop and Cruise to Hawaii in 2012.  I met so many wonderful friends on that trip.  Anyway, me and Jo-ann met up and had a girls shopping day together!

We came, we shopped, we conquered!  We shopped til we dropped.  And let me tell you….it didn’t take much.  After having a bite to eat we hit the Old Navy store because it said “up to 75% off”!  We spent quite a while in there.  I got a lot of nice shirts!  After that, the rest of the mall went down hill.  We didn’t really see anything else worth buying.  And I thought Eatons Centre was so much bigger than it actually was.  So we decided to hit the underground mall stores.  I saw some real interesting ones on the way to Eatons.

Actually it ended up we only really went into 2 more stores.  All day and we went into 3 stores.  A bit shameful, but that’s what it’s like when you get older.  But I say 2 bags of shopping are better than none!  Yes, say it sister!  LOL!

Now the weather is not co-operating.  Quite windy and rainy.  Good time to catch up on blog work.  I will also be updating my website and editing videos.  I’m hoping to be more present on this blog and post at least every week.  This is my promise to you, my fans.  So I’ll sign out for now.  But hey, I did do a post this week, right?  🙂