Musical Monday - tribute to my retreat scrapbooking buddies

Here's the story: Last year at our yearly Creative Memories scrapbooking retreat, the girls and I got silly and started singing the "ma-na-ma-na" song one night. It has been our "theme song" ever since. Kerri, Reesa and Mona came to Jessica's birthday party and while they were here, they conspired to get the t-shirts and went in together and got me one too. I had no idea they were going to do it so when they gave it to me at this year's CM retreat, I was so surprised! I have to say that it was quite fun! Too bad our whole group didn't get a chance to get in on it. (Jessica's birthday was right before the retreat).

Here is our group on "pajama night".
Mona, Joy, Kerri, Reesa, Darci, Me, Valerie and Denise.



The Ma-na-ma-na girls playing it cool

We had such a great time at this year's retreat! Denise did such a great job taking care of me and my customers... maybe I can get her to do it again next year so I can just enjoy!

Hobby

I just started doing this fun thing called Photo Hunters. If you click on the Photo Hunters logo above, it will take you to the instructions on how to participate. The founder of Photo Hunters, TNChick, also has a blogroll so you can go check out other people who are posting photos if you like. There is a new theme each Saturday. This week's theme is "Hobby". TNChick has a schedule posted for all of 2007 so if you want to participate, you can see ahead of time what themes are coming up and you can take your pictures and get them ready. Of course I'm not that organized so I am posting a picture of one of my Creative Memories Scrapbooking Retreat pictures from a couple of years ago. I am a CM consultant because I LOVE to scrapbook, meeting and helping people and I LOVE discounts. hehe... This is a picture of us showing off some of our favorite pages we made during our weekend.

Left to right in back: Mona, Reesa, Denise, Julie
Left to right in Front: Me and Valerie

I have so many hobbies that I don't have time/money/room to do them all. Did I mention that my hubby is building me a craft room? I like to paint, sew, sing, play the piano, scrapbook, make cards, write in my blog, take photos and other artsy/crafty things. I showed off several pieces that my hubby and I made here. He does the woodworking and I do the decorative painting.

Update: Well, this isn't really an update, just something I thought I would add. The first few years of Jessica's life were very difficult. She was hospitalized over 35 in just the first 3 years. She would get deathly ill from just a cold. She also had two heart surgeries and suffered strokes which left her blind, paralyzed, and other very difficult complications. With a lot of love, tears, and endless hours of therapy she was able to recover most of what she had lost. Those days were very stressful and as I look back on that time I mainly remember the difficult times. Once I started scrapbooking, I found a lot of pictures of Jessica smiling and having fun. I hadn't taken many pictures of her when she was very sick, I had mostly taken pictures on the good days. It was therapy for my soul to be able to scrapbook the good memories. I really enjoy getting those albums out and seeing her beautiful smiling face when she was so little. There are times that I wish I had taken a few more pictures of her in the hospital - mainly so others will know what she went through and what a strong person she is, but at the time I knew I would never forget and I didn't want pictures to remind me how awful things were for her. I have done some scrapbooking for my sons, too and I am having fun remembering them as little guys. I am currently working on my youngest son's album. I have realized that whether a child dies or grows up they will never be this age again - so enjoy it NOW! I take a lot of pictures and really enjoy posting them here on my blog and putting them in albums.

Creative Memories swaps

Here is a picture of some CM swaps. It is for a yahoo group called CMOnly Swaps. For this group I had to make 8 of each doll using the Sizzix dies and CM paper. These were a lot of work but so much fun! Now remember, there are 8 of each doll. When I send them in, I will get one of my own back and 7 different ones that other people have made. I can't wait to send them in and see what I get back! This is my first swap ever!



And I blame Samantha for getting me involved in swapping. LOL!

One of my recent scrapbooking projects

Here are a few pages from a 7x7 CM album that I made for my mother-in-law. Jessica is not well enough to travel and my in-laws go to a lot of family reunions, so I made this album for her so she could share our family with many relatives that we don't even know. Apparently quite a few people took interest in the album and it was passed around a lot. It's a nice way to be able to share our family even if we can't all go to the reunion. oh... looks like I took some of the pictures before journaling, but oh well. Enjoy:

My new addiction

My new addiction has a lot to do with my 4-year obsession... scrapbooking. (Not quite the type of addiction you were expecting? hehe... too bad.) I've been a Creative Memories Consultant now for almost 4 years. My CM unit hosted a weekend retreat two weeks ago and it was great! Ok, now on to my newest addiction: die cutting! My sweet hubby (he's sweet tonight because he was nice to me today - lol) bought me a Big Shot die cutting system several months ago. I recently found out that it not only uses the regular Sizzix dies, the Sizzlit dies, but also the QuicKuts dies. I have got to restrain myself... I can see a yellow warning light going off in my head when I go to websites that have SALES...... ohhhhhh, I just have to have that little tiara and wand dies because I've got a lot of princess pictures from Jessica's birthday party last month to scrapbook.... oh, gotta have the tent and campfire dies, Brandon spent a week at boy scout camp... those balloons and birthday cake dies are a MUST because all my kids have birthday parties that need to be scrapbooked... see where I'm going with this? The cool part is that I can use all my Creative Memories paper with the die cuts and ta-da! I have my awesome CM pages that I just love sharing with everyone. Miss Jess loves her albums too... afterall, they are all about her.