My favourite good things

Martha has her "Good Things". Oprah has her "Favourite Things". Well move over Martha and look out Oprah...these are a couple of my favourite good things.


I LOVE on-line shopping. A little addiction I have picked up living so far North. I love browsing the sites. I love filling a cyber shopping cart. And I LOVE the 3 easy clicks it takes to pay for something. Maybe that's a bad thing...
And then Voila! Beautiful things show up on your doorstep. Well. OK. I don't have doorstep service per say but it shows up at the office and Hubs drags the boxes home. Did I mention he walks to work? What a trooper. Especially when donation boxes arrive. His face was 3 shades of red the last time that happened. "What is in this sucker?" He barely made it up the stairs! Turns out it was another great donation from Patty Rose and her group of crazy, generous scrapbookers from Ontario! But I digress...

Here is my latest purchase from Land's End and as a Mum on the go I am SO jazzed to try them out:

It's also GARAGE SALE DAY!!! Woo HOO!!! I love going to sales but I have to admit even with all the work involved, I love having them too. It means I am getting rid of a whole lot of stuff I don't need. If I have clutter around me it squishes the creativity right out of me. I don't know where it goes but it certainly doesn't hit a scrapbook page. So over the last month I purged every single room and closet in the house. Including the basement. As FLYLady says, just take babysteps. And if you don't know what in the world I am talking about...check this out.

So all my purged scrapbook supplies went into my class boxes, getting all ready for my new project to be started in September!!! SO excited about that too. And everything else is tagged and stacked in my dining room. My house looks like an episode of Clean Sweep right now. And as of 5pm tonight everything will be gone gone GONE!



It's going to be a gooder. We are so remote that people jump on stuff like this. They should be called garage stampedes! No need to stay open for the whole weekend or even the whole day. No need to advertise very heavily, a few signs at the grocery store will do. And I guarantee at least 85% of it will be gone in the first hour and a half. So think of me between 5pm and 8pm. I'll be wading through a throng of people trying to keep an eye on my 3 year old. Who also loves the thrill of the sale!

Get back into the SCRAP of things!!!

My little man is 7 weeks old...where did that time go?!? Most of my 10 other friends/family have given birth as well or are well on their way. That's right...10. We all had a busy year apparently!!! I'll still be breastfeeding when this little shindig is happening but I have BIG PLANS to attend:


Check out Leica Forrest's Blog for more details. There will be some freakin' FANTASTIC Canadian talent there to teach their scrap-tastic projects. I am SO excited to meet Jackie Ludlage. Like I'm-a-geek-can't-speak-properly-in-her-presence-will-probably-embarass-myself-EXCITED. Jackie is the co-founder of Canadian Scrapbooker Magazine which published a layout by Leica Forrest last December featuring my Great White Scrapbooking program for the kids up here. Excited doesn't begin to describe!

I highly encourage you all the check this out...Leica puts on a heck of a good time and thanks to the FAB people who attend and of course Leica's generosity, a lot of $$$ will be going to charity. So come out and get your scrap on!

Blog Posts and Baby Toes

I am blogless...here's why:



And I will never, never again show pictures of myself like this...nobody should have a record of what they look like in the hospital!!! Little man shot into the world in 2 hours. Went from 5cm to baby born in under 28 minutes. Boo YAH! We are currently renovating...stay tuned for more regular blogging. And maybe a little scrapbooking? It's going to be a busy month, bear with me.

As promised but months late

My scrap classes have all come to a halt until this baby decides to make an appearance. Which makes me happy on the one hand because I am big, tired and slow. But on the other hand makes me sad because I really looked forward to it every week. There is some blooming talent in those classes that I want to keep a tab on! One girl who was there every week she could be was Sasha. Always looking for the next cool project, always listening, learning. Always decorating an album or some other big project when the others were making cards. Just fun, creative and fabulous to be around. So months ago I promised her I'd feature her on my blog soon as she finished her first scrapbook page. Well one thing led to another of course and between school breaks, me throwing up for 4 months of my pregnancy and ordering in some Stickles for her to finish off the project, it just didn't get done. Until now. So here you go Sasha...your very own page on my blog. Keep up with your projects, you are some kind of talent girl and you can only get better!
This was Sasha's very first 12x12 scrapbook page. Photos have not been added yet. This photo does not do it justice...she added some Mod Citrus rub ons, Stickles and gems. In this particular class I was encouraging the students to use what they had and invent their own title letters. Sometimes when dealing with used supplies (or my own for that matter!) we often end up with an E missing, etc. This was Sasha's take on the class, she decorated each individual letter.
For the Valentine's day class, we were just making cards but Sasha decided to start another paperbag album. We had done them a few weeks prior to this so she knew what to do. I loved the layering of the paper flowers on this!
Hopefully, after the birth I'll still have one or two opportunities to teach card classes but it depends on how I am feeling. I will for sure be starting more classes when we move in the summer! I am looking forward to seeing what unfolds. More class pictures to come in the next couple weeks...we did some great stuff at Easter! Happy Scrapping!

I have excuses...er...I mean reasons...really I do

Ok, so the blog got pushed to the wayside during our housing search. THAT was something I don't want to repeat. My wedding was less stressful and giving birth naturally was far less painful. Seriously. But then when we got home and I tried to blog...nothing. I have been having horrible issues with blogger. Is anyone else having trouble? It wasn't loading pictures, it was kicking me off randomly and everytime I went to a new page it would say the page was unavailable. Weird. I guess it's all better now...I'll find out when I go to load the photos in!
So what's new and scraptastic in my world? We are winding down the Great White Scrapbooking Club for the Easter break. Today will probably be our last class for a while as I have a little appointment to give birth soon. Well, not so much an appointment as the baby will come whenever it darn well feels like it. Only God knows. So I'll finish up this session with a great little matchbook album project...I'll post pictures of that next week.

We have been going strong with the ladies class at the Dene K'oe program as well. Last night was fun, we worked on Spring/Easter cards even though it was blizzarding outside!!! Gotta love the North baby. Last week we were fooling around with doodling and made a little cardstock album with a ribbon or fibre closure. My favourite book right now for doodling is called "Doodling for Papercrafters" By Maelynn Cheung but I really want to get my hands on a copy of "The Doodle Formula" By Adrienne Looman.

A few of the ladies brought their children and even 5 year old Hailey got in on the action. She has been a solid fixture in the class and participates as well as the older girls! What a great time. The donated supplies are a real blessing. We've been able to do several different projects each week. When I move this summer, I will be staying in contact with the program coordinator, Leona so I can continue to send her supplies to keep the scrapbooking class going. We have a good core group and I certainly don't want the program to dissolve with my departure. So we really, really appreciate all the generosity that let's me distribute supplies to the 2 seperate classes we have going on right now. Thank you all so much. Here are just a few finished projects from last week...
No pictures yet, but easily added later. The doodle on this was inspired by "52 Scrapbooking Challenges" By Elsie Flannigan.
Here is what little Hailey came up with...the kids love the stickers. They are always a huge hit at the card classes as well. She said she wanted to put a picture right on the front, so she made her own photo mat.
Other than my regular classes, I'll be over at the elementary school next week doing Easter cards with the Pre K to Grade 6 classes. 2 mornings, trying to fit everyone in! I'll take some photos of the finished work there...should be interesting. I have big plans with ribbon for those projects!

Anyone can make a difference.

You just have to try. Don't be discouraged if you think you are "Only one person". Moses was "Only one person". Noah was "Only one person". Jesus was "Only one person". Now, I am not comparing my friends to Jesus but do we not strive to be Christ like in our lives? I've always been the type to help others without thinking twice about it but over the last year and a half of living here I have really kicked myself in the behind about it because I was slacking. Because of where I live. I thought "Why do it? Nobody will appreciate it." That simply is not the case, no matter where you are. So here is a very easy way to bless others today, I hope you all take a minute to participate. It is an amazing Pay It Forward that doesn't require heading out into the snow. BLESS SOMEONE TODAY!!!

Head over to WILNA FURSTENBERG'S BLOG. A dear friend of hers is battling cancer and Wilna has come up with a fantastic way to lift her spirits. Take 5 minutes out of your day to make a card for Lois!!!

Saddle Up, Scrap Class Rides Again!

The weather has settled down a wee bit...it was "only" (I use that term loosely) -18 C today. For all you Fahrenheit folks that would be about 0. And tonight it's dipping down to -47 C or -53 F. That's actually the warmest day we've had in a while so scrapbooking class was back on yesterday and that makes me extremely happy! Some of these kids are SO talented. We were just messing around with Valentine's cards and some decided to take on a bigger project and start some paperbag albums. Some of the guys were pretty jazzed to be making something personal for their girlfriends for Valentine's Day. I had them all convinced it was the best (and cheapest!) way to go...flowers are insanely expensive up here. So we had quite a few dropping in to create something sweet.





















This morning I was up before the sun (which up here right now means about 8:30am) to teach a card class to some highschool students at Dene High. My close friend Denise teaches a Functional Intergrated Program which is a program that teaches life skills. She asked me to come in and do some Valentine's stuff with the kids for the better part of the morning. It took us all a while to get going but boy, when we started busting out the fancy paper and bling, these kids really started to shine. We did a bunch of embossing which everyone (even the crazy teacher) caught onto really quickly. In just one demonstration the kids were manning the embossing gun themselves. Check out some of the mad talent in these rookie papercrafters:
















Dino


















Archie



















Cody



















Melissa



















Rona





















And we even got the teacher and tutor in on things!
Denise (Oops, I mean Ms. Dewling)
















Tina (tutor)


















Again, I have to thank a whole bunch of people for sending donations of scrapbooking supplies... from the SISters and MISters at Scrap In Style to all sorts of scrapbookers right across the country courtesy of the amazing layout Leica Forrest did about us for Canadian Scrapbooker Magazine in the Winter 2007/2008 issue. The call for supplies they put out has kept a steady stream of packages arriving every couple of weeks. This is how these programs stay running. THANK-YOU!!! For the first year I did the card making classes at both the elementary and highschool and I used all my own supplies...things were getting a little slim! But with the absolute outpouring of generosity I've not only stepped up the card classes but the Great White Scrapbooking Program is going strong (HUGE Thank-you to Dayna and Denise for all their help this week!) and the adult and family craft classes at Dene K'oe have started. I am really looking forward to seeing what happens this summer...I have MONSTER plans for an inner city scrapbooking program in Saskatoon. Stay tuned...you never know what I'll come up with next!