My acorn is famous...

Well, sort of. ;)

My new friend, Deb, has posted my little acorn at her blog say it with letters!. She makes the cutest wood shapes to alter. I just ordered and received a bunch of letters to make Christmas presents. They are really well-made and the customer service is fabulous!

Happy Friday!

Thanksgiving recap...

The good news is...nobody ended up in the ER this year!!! We had a great time visiting with family at Aunt Emily and Uncle Jim's home. Aunt Emily does such a wonderful job making all the Thanksgiving food for the family...and this year the house was packed!



Here's an overview...I couldn't get a shot with everyone in it at once there were so many people!

The Hopkins' Family table:

On Friday, after doing a little Black Friday shopping, we went back for lunch. I think the food is even better the second time around! Not to mention that I love Aunt Emily's potato pancakes!

This year we stayed at a new hotel...and our room was so nice I could have stayed a week! Max liked the fact that our room overlooked Eat 'n Park! :)

Here's Christian enjoying the big bed, which Max and I shared with Andrew.

The living area...Will tells me to remind everyone of his bed (the pull-out from the sofa). And that's actually a balcony outside the doors.

And one more...isn't he cute?

You know you're a scrapbooker when...

First, a little background...one of my favorite lines of paper of all time is called North Shore from a company called Scenic Route. Here's a pic of part of my stash:

Yesterday, the boys and I went to Target to buy a storage piece for their toys. I ended up getting this awesome system from ClosetMaid...I just love it! All their Thomas the Tank Engine toys fit into the bottom three bins. I've got Legos in another, Matchbox/Hot Wheels in one...it's just fabulous.

Anyhow, you buy the pieces separately. The bins come in a wide variety of colors and styles. Here's our finished product. Look familiar?

That's right - I totally bought bins that matched the paper line...but they turned out so cute!

In other news, we're getting ready for Thanksgiving around here. I'm making a whole tray of chocolate covered pretzels to take to Monroeville tomorrow...yummy!

I've also been doing a ton of scrapbooking lately. I think I may end up doing a flickr show of all the layouts...be on the lookout! ;)

I'm a secret agent...

A scrappy agent, that is. On the Fiskateers blog, I am one of the 3 Fiskateers. Every so often, May (a lead Fiskateer) assigns secret challenges to three Fiskateers. Later, the results of those challenges are posted up on the blog. Well, I am part of the latest group of 3 Fiskateers! It's a big honor for me and I'm really excited!

You can see my work here: http://www.fiskateers.com/blog.

I especially love the round tag...those birds are too cute!

Scrap-Diner Crop starts tonight...

This is going to be amazing!! There are so many fun challenges and chats, not to mention the great prizes!! Just click on the ad below to visit the Diner!

As a sneak-peak, here's the chat schedule:

10:00PM EST November 16, 2007. This is the Rusty Pickle Chat

Noon EST November 17, 2007

8:00PM EST November 17, 2007

7:00PM EST November 18, 2007 Drawings!!!

Yes, you read that right...Rusty Pickle chef Libby MacNeilly and the owner Tasha will be on-hand to chat with us tonight!

So stop by the Diner...I look forward to seeing you there!

A little smack-down...

I'm still behind on posting my projects, but here's a little video you might enjoy. :)

I'm such a slacker...

I have more Texas photos to post, plus I have several projects to share. But that will have to wait one more day. I'm too tired to deal with hooking up the camera and downloading images tonight. But tomorrow is another day!

I'll share more then. :)

P.S. I've got a new video coming...

Some photos from the Alamo...

I'm back from Texas...

I still feel like I'm decompressing from this weekend! Fiskars is absolutely amazing! I am so honored to be associated with this company. They truly care about their consumers, which is rare in this day and age.

We got in early on Friday, so a few of us took a couple hours to walk around downtown San Antonio. I got lots and lots of photos of the Alamo for Max (I'll upload some later) and was able to get some cowboy hats for the boys. But that was just the beginning! On Friday evening, they had a catered pasta dinner for us before the sessions began. They gave us an overview of the whole Fiskateers program and then had us go through a couple creative exercises. We ended up creating a layout, which I'll add in once I've taken a good photo of it. We were up way too late on Friday chatting and scrapping!

On Saturday, our sessions began bright and early! We had three classes before lunch, then after a lunch/sightseeing break, we had two more sessions. After the second session we were greeted by a mariache band (I'm sure I butchered that spelling!). The band serenaded us outside where two boats were waiting to give us a tour of the Riverwalk. The boat ride was fabulous!!! I got some fantastic photos of some S.A. landmarks. The drivers let us off at a restaurant where we had a real Tex-Mex dinner! Yum! After that, it was back to the hotel for one more session.

My last session was with Heidi Grace of Heidi Grace Designs. Let me tell you, she is AMAZING!!!! We laughed, we cried, we hugged. So fabulous. I was a little worried that she wouldn't be as nice in person as I imagained...and I was so wrong! Just so great.

So, all told, we ended up creating (or at least starting) 5 projects on Saturday. The boys got in to one of my projects, which fortunately was the one I wanted to re-do anyhow. Once I get them all finished, I'll post photos.

On Sunday, we had two more sessions and then we were off to the airport. I met some amazing ladies and will cherish the weekend. I am overwhelmed that I was chosen, and am really looking forward to the opportunites that are now open before me.

Speaking of opportunities, I now have the honor of training more people who love Fiskars products as much as I do. If you're interested (training will be held in Chambersburg in Jan/Feb of next year), please shoot me an email or leave a comment on the blog.

It's coming soon...