Sorry about the late post – the day slipped away from me and I just realized I didn’t put one up.

I took Ryan and a friend to the Skate Park today.  They spent several hours on their skateboards and Ryan came home with bumps and bruises and scrapes – oh my!  He should be good and tired tonight and probably sore tomorrow.  But he had fun!

I wanted to share with you one of the gifts I received at convention.  This is the gift that my upline Wendy Randall made for everyone in her downline.  She gave them to us at our group meeting on Wednesday night.  The colors are Crushed Curry and Pumpkin Pie.  This is a Top Note purse that she showed me how to make a few months ago.  I have made several different ones and I’m pretty sure I’ve shown them on my blog.  Hers used the new Elegant Bouquet Textured Impressions Embossing Folder for the Big Shot.  The Embossing Folders give a very deep impression because they have both the positive and negative of the embossed portion.  If you use a texture plate it is much more subtle.  The closure on the front was created using a Build-A-Brad.  And the front flap was wheeled with the Jumbo Wheel called Friendly Words.  Wendy also sponged the embossed portion and the front flap to give everything more dimension by the addition of the shadows.

Inside the purse Wendy had a container of embellishments – mine was Basic Gray Corduroy Buttons – I’m assuming everyone had something different – but I didn’t actually ask anyone else what they got.  We also had door prizes at our meeting and I won one of the new Decor Elements called Eat – it has the word “eat” and underneath a fork.    I’ll have to use it to create a menu board to put up in the kitchen.

That goes right along with one of the business classes we took.  It was called “Create a Simpler Life”.
We talked about how hard it can be to fit everything we want into our routines.  So we learned about some everyday shortcuts to
prepare for workshops, make meals, cleaning, and more.  And one of the things mentioned was planning a menu each week. Over the years I have done that at various times – planned meals for the week, planned themes for each night – like mexican night, pasta night, chicken night, etc.  I need to get back to doing something like that again.

In that class they gave away a few prizes and my roommate, Diane, won!

She received a book called “Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Home”.  The author is from Iowa which is where Diane lives so she was thrilled to get it.

Now her job is to read it and pass on to the rest of us all the great cleaning tips she learns!  I’ll take any help I can get to make cleaning this house easier.  I worked on dusting and floors on Friday before my club meeting.  But didn’t finish so I have more to do.

I had a great time at our Stamper’s Club meeting last night.  And all the orders were placed today.  Everybody is going to continue with the club which we will start again in Sept.  I’ll share those projects later this week.  One was the Tile Card from the blog tour that I also used as the project for our group meeting at convention and I posted the picture and instructions that week also – so I won’t show that one again.  But the other two I’ll show – one was a demo from the group meeting and the other one of our Make ‘n Takes from Stampin’ Up!.

Have fun the rest of the weekend!