Aug 2, 2013 | Big Shot, family, Thinlits |
I wanted to show you a little more detail on the Thinlit Card Dies that came out yesterday from Stampin’ Up!. Here are close ups of all the pieces for each set.
Thinlits Circle Card Dies
Thinlit Label Card Dies
And these were some samples that they had posted when we were at Convention on the Display Boards.
I can’t wait for mine to get here so I can play and show them to you in person.
And now to continue my San Francisco story from the other day.
Monday afternoon Kyle dropped us off at the San Jose airport – we got there several hours early so that he could get back to work for a meeting. Even though our travel plans were messed up we were trying not to mess up his schedule too much. The delay in leaving did allow us another visit and lunch at Facebook before we went to the airport. Once there we settled in to wait on our flight. This airport is small and quiet compared to what I am used to in Atlanta. The boys played cards while we waited.
In the evening we boarded a small plane to fly to LAX. Everyone was still a bit uneasy about flying and when we heard a rattle in the overhead bin and the flight attendant couldn’t get it to stop all the people around me were just kind of looking at each other – still not sure what it was but the flight wasn’t too long and we finally landed at LAX and pulled up to the gate. I watched out the window as the bridge was moved out to the plane – almost – then backed up – then to the plane – almost – then backed up – finally the pilot comes on and says the bridge isn’t working and they need to wait on maintenance to come out before we can get off the plane. Finally the pilot comes on again and says its not the bridge but rather the plane is in the wrong place and needed to be moved – everything put away, everyone buckled in seats before we can move. Finally that gets done, the bridge comes out and we get off the plane.
I wanted to stop at the help desk to check again on the direct flights – of course the same answer – they are full and overbooked just stick with the flight to Cincinnati. So we walk from one terminal to another and find our gate. Find some food and sit down to wait on the next flight which leaves just before 11 pm. It is the red-eye – yuck.
After a while Tyler gets up to say he has to ask the Delta agent something. I thought that was odd – I couldn’t think of what he would have to ask her that he wouldn’t ask mom or dad. So we waited and he came back and sat back down. Greg and I are looking at him wondering what he asked. Well apparently all this time his head has been hurting – like its exploding – and he had already taken some ibuprofen after we landed and that didn’t help. He asked her to call the EMTs because it hurt so bad. OK then. We sit and wait. A short time later here come what look to be 3 fully decked out firemen – I guess they are the EMTs from the fire station that drive the ambulance – they have all their equipment and sit down with us. Tyler gets hooked up and they talk to him and ask him questions about what is going on.
The options are to go to the ER – which will take all night since he would be low priority – not bleeding, breathing is normal, heart is good. Or we can go to the emergency clinic nearby and probably see a doctor in a couple hours. Problem – they can’t transport us there – it’s not part of their jurisdiction. But one of them remembers that the clinic has an EMT on staff that runs a shuttle service and he can come get us – so they call him. The EMT says one of us should go with Tyler and the other continue home with Ryan on our scheduled flight. So we decide that I will go with Tyler and Greg and Ryan will continue home. Now we all go talk to the Delta agent and wait for the other guy to arrive. She interrupts travel for Tyler and I and then says she will put us on another flight – so i ask her to put us on a morning flight to Atlanta – the first one leaves at 5:45 am. At first she starts to say she can’t do that since our flight isn’t direct – to which I pointed out that yes we in fact did have direct flight to begin with and should have been home already not here at this airport at all – so I expected her to get us on a direct flight – she said she needed supervisor approval and I said well you get that while we go to the emergency room. As we left she assured me that she would take care of getting us on a morning flight direct to Atlanta. Greg and Ryan and our luggage would continue on to Cinn. and then ATL.
Now the other EMT showed up so I luckily remember to give things to Greg – like the car keys! the little tickets for the luggage and I even managed to remember the coupon for parking. Gave them their boarding passes. And then he gave me all his cash. The first 3 EMTs left and we went with the 4th guy that showed up. We walked out of the terminal and back towards the security area. As we approached the security people made everyone stop – I mean they made everyone FREEZE – no moving, not even one step in the entire area. Guess what – it was a security breach!
After a few minutes the security agent asked the EMT if he had a patient – he said yes a patient and his mom – he showed his ID and we were allowed to leave the airport and go to his shuttle. And he drove us to the Emergency Clinic. Once he dropped us off though the shuttle service was done for the night so we would have to take a Taxi back to the airport and the clinic would give us a voucher for that later. OK – I didn’t need to stress about getting back to the airport. So now we waited at the clinic to see a doctor.
I’ll stop here for now. So if you want to know how the story continues be sure to check back.
Thanks for stopping by my blog! And I always enjoy the comments – including the ones about your travel troubles – glad to hear I wasn’t the only one.
Jul 31, 2013 | family, Stampin' Up! Convention |
Whenever I go on a Stampin’ Up! related trip I make sure to bring a gift for my roommates. That is just one of the many fun things about these trips. This year I was a bit short on time due to a delay getting home from our trip to San Francisco so I went with something pretty last minute and simple for my convention roommates.
I decided to use the new Wood Mount Stamp cases – I bought full sized and half sized empty cases. I used the This & That Epic Day Designer Series paper for the covers – cut to size and insert inside the plastic cover. Then I filled the boxes – the large box was filled with snacks and the small box was filled with some little convention/workshop necessities – post it notes, paper clips, pencil, chap stick, tissues, etc. To finish the boxes I stamped and cut tags with the Chalk Talk stamp set and framelits and added some Chevron Ribbon to tie the tags too.
I also received cute gifts from my roommates – but I don’t have pictures of those to share yet – I’ll have to do that later.
I will start to share the story from our San Francisco trip.
I still haven’t shared this story on my blog – but I told a few other people this weekend and they all say it needs to be written down because they have never heard anything like it. So since it is long – I better break it up into parts.
Over 4th of July our family went to San Francisco to visit Kyle (he is working out there for the summer). We had a great time visiting and sight seeing – I’ll create some My Digital Studio Layouts to share about that trip later. Right now I was going to share about our adventure home. Everyone I’ve told has said to write this down and share because as the story went on and on it was just comical all the things that went wrong. So this is it because I just couldn’t make this stuff up and if you don’t care to read on then go ahead stop here.
First I’m going to back track to the day we arrived in San Francisco. As we came in to the airport first I said “I sure hope there is a runway under us because I sure do see a lot of water”. Then all of sudden we hit down on the runway – hard – hardest landing I have experienced. And so hard this happened –
The oxygen masks dropped out of one of the seats.
I’ve never had a landing so rough. So then a day or two later is when I read on Facebook about a plane crash at the San Francisco airport. Initially I wasn’t sure it was real but then quickly realized it was. And thoughts of our rough landing returned – along with the fact that we were in the back of the plane and I think we came in on that same runway. It really was too creepy. Such a terrible thing. But we had a few more days in the area before heading home. I just didn’t realize then how much that incident was going to impact our trip home. And really I think it impacted airports and people everywhere since two of the four runways at SFO were closed for a good week. I’m sure there are many other stories that people have of trying to return home or go somewhere during that time. In the big picture we made it home safe and sound eventually but during the journey I kept saying “you have got to be kidding me this can’t be real” and many times I really wanted to sit and cry and mostly I just wanted us all to be home and safe and secure.
So these are the thoughts that kept running through my head after we were all at home –
“You know you’re a mother when you ignore your fears, hold back your tears, power through your exhaustion, and overcome all the obstacles put in your way for the sake of your child.”
We were to fly home on Monday with a direct flight from San Francisco (SFO) to Atlanta (ATL) leaving around noon and home about 9 pm. On Sunday I received a phone call on my cell phone that said our flight had been cancelled. I think I listened to it 3 times expecting it to give me some instruction on what to do next – push 1 to talk to someone, call this number, do this or that – but nothing it just says your flight is cancelled. So now what was I supposed to do. Now normally I take my laptop on trips but this time I didn’t – so trying to look things up on my little cell phone was not fun. But I went to my Delta app and called the customer service number – the wait was over an hour so I opted for a call back instead of sitting on the line. They did call back and I explained that our flight was cancelled – honestly during this whole experience it seemed like some of the people I talked to didn’t have any idea that the plane had crashed – you would think working for the airline that would be something they would be aware of the moment it happened.
So we tried to figure out how to get home and since SFO was still cancelling flights and the runways were closed we thought it would be better to leave from another airport – options were San Jose and Oakland. We were closer to San Jose and that would be easier for Kyle to drop us off and return to work with out impacting his day too much. The airline rep would find something and then tell me what it was and then I’d say ok and then she say darn – it was gone already. Actually for the first part of the conversation she was talking to someone else – and was chewing gum – not at all a good customer service rep like our Stampin’ Up! ones are. So anyway every option she offered kept getting snatched by someone else before she could get it so it ended up that “the best she could do” was fly from San Jose to LAX to Cincinnati to Atlanta – eventually arriving home on Tuesday mid morning. UGH! Why did I pay extra for a direct flight??? So that is what she reserved for us and passed me off to a ticketing agent to get our actual tickets. Later I tried to go online to see if there were direct flights from San Jose to ATL – there is one leaving at around 11 pm and it was all sold out. And there were several leaving from LAX so we thought once we got to the airport we would try to talk to someone in person and try to get a more direct flight. The checked for us but all the flights were full and oversold due to the cancellations from San Francisco. So it was still our best option – plus the added problem is that there were 4 of us traveling which seemed to make it that much harder.
Ok that’s all the lead up to the story before we started the journey. I’ll continue next time so be sure to come back to hear what happened next.
Thanks for stopping by!
Jul 10, 2013 | family |
I’m home at last. Just wanted to let you know that my posts to my blog may be a bit scarce.
We took a trip to San Francisco area last week – left on July 3rd and were supposed to get back on July 8th. I finally got home last night – almost 24 hours later than planned – and after being awake for more than 32 hours. And it’s a LONG story that I’ll share later. Anyway I’m way behind on things to do before I leave on Sunday to head to Salt Lake City for a retreat with my upline and sidelines and then the Stampin’ Up! Convention. I’ll try to post when I can but right now it will be at the bottom of the list until I get caught up. I hope to have time while I’m in Salt Lake City so you may see retreat and convention updates next week!
If you are my friend on Facebook you can see some of my updates on our trip and the return home on my page there.
Back to work – I have to get ready for my stamp clubs this week!
Jul 6, 2013 | family |
I thought I would share some of Ryan’s art work. He actually has several pieces in his room that I need to get and photograph. But these I’ve had for awhile in my craft room.
I think he made these more than a year ago so it was probably his 10th grade year.
I hope you like them as much as I do!
Jun 17, 2013 | family, My Digital Studio, Scrapbook Pages |
In May I took a trip with my parents and brother to Germany last month and I’m working on documenting our trip using My Digital Studio. I kept notes in a journal, and kept brochures and tickets, etc from the trip. I started working on it while I was on the trip but didn’t get anywhere close to what I thought done. Partially because some days I was tired and ready for bed when I got back in the evening and partially because we did so much! I thought I would share some of the pages with you this week.
I decided to use one of the Stampin’ Up! Digital Templates for this book – and since I knew I would have lots of pictures I choose one that used lots of pictures on each page – The Best Year Photobook Template. The template is set up to have a two page spread for each month of the year. It looks like this –
Mine is a layout for each day/activity – this first layout is from our journey over the ocean – our flights – from Atlanta to Amsterdam and then on to Berlin – and our arrival.
This is the left page and I kept the layout pretty much the same – but I changed the top left section to reflect our trip rather than the month of the year. The strip at the bottom has the exact date and in the top corner – I was adding modes of transportation that we took that day. On some I changed the paper fill in the punch.
For the right page I changed a few of the decorative pages to photo boxes. In most cases I removed any embellishments that were over-layed on the photo boxes.
The trip there was long and I didn’t get much sleep on the flight and basically at the time we were arriving was the time I would have been going to bed at home. So I was a very tired traveler once we arrived.
I hope you can see how the templates are flexible and you don’t need to use the as they were designed. In fact – the original template is actually a 12″ x 12″ photobook and I converted it to an 8″ x 8″ book for my project. I’ll be printing 4 of them when I’m done. One for my parents, one for my brother, one for my Uncle, and one for myself.
Thanks for stopping by today.
Dec 7, 2012 | family, Holiday Gift Making, My Digital Studio |
My Digital Studio Family Wall Art project
We had a lot of fun at our last My Digital Studio Class creating this Hybrid Wall Art Project. Cindy and I worked on this project together and we were both so pleased with how it turned out. Cindy is our local My Digital Studio “Queen” – go visit her blog for lots of MDS ideas – Nutmeg Creations – she will have a post about this project today too.
Have a great day!
