Wednesday, May 31, 2006

They passed!

My little ones finished swimming lessons this past Sunday. I didn't think they would do it but they passed! L passed Seal and B passed Red Cross 4. They both had great teachers and I was in shok when they passed. Now we are having a break from swimming. I need to be able to have a break on weekends now!

L2S June Page Kit


Corry created a very cool kit this month. June's Kit has a whole paper pack including sticker alphabet letters and tags for the Color Me Silly line from Basic Grey, a package of Scrappincloth flowers, a package of Bazzill Biggie Brads, 2 different colors of twill, a package of Heidi Swapp Ornament Exclamations in lime as well as a great instruction sheet and "how to". This kit will sell out. It is $39.99. Check out our site to order at Love 2 Scrap.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Scrapbook store over-saturation...

I went to a pretty new store today in Edmonton and checked it out. It had some nice stuff but not a lot of stuff. The owner was very nice. So now, from what I know we have 3 on the north side, 1 in the west end, 2 on the south side, 2 in Sherwood Park, 2 in St. Albert, 1 in Spruce Grove, 1 in Stony Plain, 3 in Leduc and I have been told another 3 opening up in Edmonton. They are close to completion. There are also that I know of, 4-6 online scrapbook stores located within the Edmonton area.

How many scrapbook stores do we need? None of them have anything I haven't seen already. I know it is a persons passion and it sounds like fun but take it from me who doesn't even have a store-front (for this reason), it ain't all fun and games! With this many in town I just don't know how anyone can make money at it. You also have Michael's on top of all these stores and there are tons of those. So now we have 17 scrapbook stores plus about 5 online stores. So we have a total of 22 scrapbook stores in the Edmonton area. Don't you think that is crazy?

What are your thoughts? I know scrapbooking is huge but I personally think all of these stores opening up are just committing business suicide.

Monday, May 29, 2006

what a photo....


this photo was taken from space the morning of september 11th, 2001 in new york city. se the smoke plumes from manhattan?

heidi swapp is in the house!


ms. heidi is chatting at love 2 scrap june 21st from 8-9 p.m. PST ~ 9-10 p.m. MST etc. make sure to mark your calendars. we are going to have one thread going so please on't be asking a bunch of questions ahead of time so we don't have to go back to different threads. this thread will be started in the forum this week just to notify people so please don't go posting in it yet. hope you all are there. she is one cool lady!

cku layouts are here!


here are my cku layouts i did and had fun creating. some items are not completely done. i will post photos when they are done.

this canvas is a donna downey class. I have almost finished it and will post the final soon.

this is an elsie flannigan class that i loved. great job elsie!







this is page one of a cool but difficult layout taught by lisa bearnson. the photo on the right shows when the "memories" flap is open.




I will post more later but we are using many of our projects for future classes and mane & takes so we may not post those. you all are in for a treat if you take classes.

it's monday & i need help...


our cute little shih tzu baby maggie is driving us freakin crazy! she is pooping and peeing on our floor in our kitchen. we have barricaded the rest of the house because we know she would be doing it everywhere else too! as she was a pet store puppy for a while we also notice she eats her exciment. YUCK!! so i just wanted to find out from all you dog lovers, how did you train your pups? we feed her and take her outside immediately after but she does not bark to go outside yet.

also, she was a quiet little puppy for the first week. now she is a yappy thing. how do you train them not to bark without getting a stun olor, high pitch frequency collar, etc?

please help! maggie is taking run of our house!

Kits, kits & more kits...




our DT has been designing our monthly scrapbook kits and wow they have rocked! tammy did crate paper, janna did scenic route, corry is doing basic grey! we have some great ones in store. here is a sample of what we have had so far!

I can't wait to see what they come up with next.
great job ladies!

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

CKU or CKC coming to a town near you....

i was in a retailers class at cku and also chatted with lisa bearnson for a while. did you know that they are thinking about bringing ckc and cku to smaller area and we stressed alberta needed this and that they were definately the leader of scrapbooking in canada which is VERY true. well you know what? she took janna and i's information to contact us and said that she is going to talk to her people. can you imagine if this came to alberta? doesn't mean it would be edmonton but it may be calgary. it would definately put a damper on events like the urban scrapbooker and scrapfest though.

these types of events i can see are going to be so popular in the next year or so that it will be hard to fill them because there will be lots of competition. what do you think?

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

I can't wait to go again....

i have been feeling very overwhelmed lately, personally and professionally. i never get more than 4-5 hours of sleep a night, i have work on my mind about 18 hours a day, i am a single parent half the time when my hubby is out of town which is most of the time, my kids are active and busy little munchkins, my kids are frustrated that i am not spending more time with them, my hubby wants me to spend more time at the lake, i am having issues with my mom about the lack i see of her and how much we miss her and the list goes on....

you know, i don't like reading other peoples blogs where all they do is bitch and complain about the dumbest stuff and i swore i wouldn't have a negative blog but i just wanted to mention this because i had a release this past week. it is like a weight was lifted off my shoulders and i became a new person. the story starts like this...

i left wednesday morning and went to the edmonton airport. it was pretty uneventful until i got to the calgary airport. when going through customs, the customs agent opened up my bags and checked me out pretty good. she said i was going to be her random check. lovely was all i had to say! she went through everything and i mean everything. she patted me down and frisked me. the gromets on my jeans kept sending off the detectors so for a couple seconds i even had her hands in my pants. what an experience that was! i was mortified but i understand why they do it. i look like holly hobbie or grandma lee so i couldn't figure out why they wouldn't do it to the scary guy behind me but whatever. then i was looking in the gift shop when i saw this very tall man fall and smash his head on the tile. i immediately saw blood coming from his head. he was bleeding pretty heavily. a couple passengers ran to his aid. one was a nurse. i would have but the sight of blood makes me pass out. they don't know if he had a seizure or blacked out or what. he was an east indian man and wasn't making any sense and was spasmming. i don't know if there were language issues or he suffered brain problems from the fall. it took about 15 minutes for the ems to show up which i thought was ridiculous. the man was supposed to be on our flight. they found out that he was an instructor at a miami university but was from louisiana. when we got on the plan he was still lying there with the ems. the boarding agent told us on the plane that he was in stable condition and off to the hospital but i was in the 3rd row and heard him tell the pilot that it didn't look good. i thought about him the whole time i was gone and still do and wonder what happened to him.
so needless to say i kept thinking this was a sign that i shouldn't be flying. i saw final destination. was a scared? heck ya!

then i get to utah and see my good pal janna and everything was fine. i took classes that made me think about who i am, what i want from my life, the people that matter most in my life and what i want from my life that i am not getting. it was an eye opener. i talked with christy tomlinson from chatterbox for a few moments and she really made me see "the big picture". she was in tears when she mentioned that she was leaving chatterbox full-time to just work occassionally. she said she has 6 kids and she is missing out on them. she also said what is going to matter in 10 years? that she helped a whole bunch of scrapbookers create some nice albums and pages or that she mattered in her kids' life. i saw what she was talking about. i shared a tear with her. i totally understand. on the flip side of that, i have been disliking scrapbooking so much over the past 6 months or more because i only ever do the business side of it and don't get to enjoy my hobby anymore. this past week changed that. i not only enjoy it but i have such a different vision now and can't wait to go and create more. i saw so many cool layouts and creations and met such wonderful people from all over the world like all over the us, brazil, germany, south africa, australia and other canadians. our friends from scrap-a-lot (shirley ann, kim and cheryl) were there too and i was in classes with all of them. i got to know them better and really enjoyed chatting with them as well. they are all very nice ladies. i did hear them say too that they don't plan on being in this more than 3 more years as well. it is so easy to burn out. i can't imagine that all scrapbook store owners don't feel the same. stacy julian said she is missing her kids as well and is burning out. i heard that from numerous celebrities. elsie flannigan is hoping to get pregnant soon. it was amazing to meet them all in person and some of them for the second time and find out more about them. they are so down to earth and real!

i came back re-energized, missing my kids, missing my scrapbooking, missing my husband and wanting to rekindle that spark that spouses sometimes lose as well as focusing more on my life and finding out that there are some things in my life that i can't change and somethings i have to learn to accept. my life has changed over the last few years and i can't have the life i had before that. i have to accept that i have a new life and this is my new normal.


over the 5 days i was gone, i shared tears and laughs with janna and became even better friends with her. i learned more about her and had an all out great time! i made great friends that i sure hope i can see again down the road. janna and i had a great time and are planning to do this again in the future. i can't wait to go back. i highly recommend it!

Hockey crazed....


the morning after the Oilers beat the Sharks for the series, we were in Provo at CKU and I was sitting down at the make n'takes and heard the lady next to me mention to the instructor that she was from san jose. well my brain didn't catch up to my mouth and i blurted out, "we kicked your ass last night". well i think this poor woman was mortified. she didn't know exactly what i was talking about. she looked at my name tag and of course it say sherwood park, ab. and not edmonton. she said "pardon me?" and then, "oh you must be a hockey fan". I laughed it off and said "yes, i am from edmonton". i don't know if she saw the humour in it but she was pretty nice and talked to me while we were working. what a dunce!

Sunday, May 21, 2006

CKU Rocked Provo!

well needless to say I had the best time of my life by a long shot! i just got back today and janna will be back tonight. i had the time of my life and man do i have lots to share. none of this is in chronological order. anyone who sees my albums will know i don't do chronological! first it all started by a long mother of a day flight on wednesday to provo. i went to calgary first, then to denver, then to salt lake city. when i got to salt lake it was an hour car ride to provo. long day!
anyhoo......on wednesday we did nothing really. we relaxed and played on the t.v. with the intenet.

on thursday we did 2 mini classes. one was a making memories class taught by margie romney-aslett who is hysterical. if you like donna downey you would love margie! after that class we took the chatterbox which was a mini 8x8 layout that turned out cute. this class was taught by the talented christy tomlinson. christy told all of us how she is leaving chatterbox full-time to work part-time and stay home with her 6 kids. she was a very touching speaker and very down to earth. we did make n' takes the rest of the day. we did some amazing products from manufacturers like epson, heidi swapp, karen foster design, xyron, crate paper, junkitz, rusty pickle, scenic route, paper crafts and tons more.

after the classes we took a limo with 6 other ladies to the all my memories store in draper, ut. it was very cool! can you believe that create all my memories products right there from that store? it's true! after we were done shopping there, we caught a ride with some fellow cku'ers.
they were an absolute hoot! howdy goes out to karen from baton rouge, la, claudia from va and beth our quickutz design team lady from one of the other southern states (i am drawing a blank right now...oops!). these ladies were so frickin sweet i can't tell you. not only did they give us a lift in their rental car but they took us to wendy's to get some dinner and i also grabbed some krispy kremes there. ohhhhhh krispy kremes! after that we went to the marriott to attend the cku tailgate party. it was very cool! we got tons of goodies by the leading names in scrapbooking. after the tailgate party we went to the campus crop which was a blast. they gave us a ton of stuff! they gave out prizes for about an hour and a half. i won a chatterbox page kit with all the fixins from christy tomlinson. we stayed up till about 1:30 a.m. and then went to sleep in our super-dooper comfy beds (like no other girls
~ these beds put the ones at the village creek to shame girls). on friday, i attended 5 classes which were with lisa bearnson, 2 with elsie flannigan, donna downey and teresa collins from junkitz.












we then after the classes went to the study hall to finish our class projects. lisa's class took a while. on friday night we caught a ride with our goofy pals from the south to pebbles in my pocket in orem, ut. i had read about this cute little store and really wanted to check it out. this store also designes their own products, they are creators of pebbles in my pocket and pebbles inc. this store was super cool! they had everything. i mean everything! janna that lucky bum had been winning stuff all day long. check out her blog for all her details about her winnings.











janna and i went to dinner at this great mexican restaurant called mi rancheros across the street from pebbles. they had the best mexican food i have ever had. i had the enchilada gumbas grande (enchiladas with shrimp). we both had these pina coladas (virgin of course it is utah) and they were like no other pina colada i had ever had. they were slushy, had a ton of whipped cream and a cherry on top! bueno, bueno, bueno!

on saturday we did 4 more classes. mine were with donna downey, tracey white, sarah milne (scenic route paper) and christy tomlinson (chatterbox). i love all the great layouts i created. i have posted a few but don't want to post all as i am going to be using some of these gret ideas for some classes coming up at love 2 scrap. after classes we went to the commencement and graduated. we had a great time, saw the slide show of all the attendees, saw everyone who won the great prizes for their layouts, dorms, etc. we then went to dinner with a friend we met at cku, katrina forman from colorado springs, co. after that we went with a great lady we also met this week from grundy, co ~ gabriela espinosa. hi gabi! she was a blast! she is moving to australia and i sure hope she keeps in touch! we went to pebbles again, made some make'n'takes, got some more great stuff for great discounts and just had fun! after that the four of us, janna, katrina, gabriela and myself went up to janna and i's room and chatted for a while and did a mini photo shoot in our room. janna has those photos so i will post as soon as i get them from her. janna has a lot of photos of me i will post. i never did go to bed last night. i have been up ever since and will be until bed. i caught the bus to the airport at 4 a.m. i am bagged! but tonight is game night and the oilers are playing so i will be watching that!

all in all, cku was a blast and i definately want to go again! i heard it won't be in provo next year but i definately want to go and hopefully see my great friends again!

also for all you l2s'ers, i received a bunch of goodies (not shown in my loot picture) that will be going into prize draws for future l2s crops and retreats. great stuff scrapbookers!

the red mini album in the photo has all the make n' takes i did in it. we got tons more stuff not shown here. we got full packs of product for classes as well. lots of fun!

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Well I am Off Tomorrow.....Ayyyyeeeee!

I am nervous as all h but you know, I need to go away for a much needed break.......hmmmmm?
A break with now sleep! Smart choice Renee! just joking! Tomorrow at 7:20 a.m. I leave good ol' Edmonchuk for good ol' Salt Lake City! I have only been there once when I was driving through to go to California when I was in grade 10 and they let us gt off a chartered bus to shop in a store. I remember buying a Benetton sweater while there. No wonder I was broke at the end of the trip and couldn't eat the whole way home. Stupid kids but that is a whole nother story!

Back to this one......tomorrow it is off to CKU!

I can't wait to get away and enjoy evn if it is hardcore class taking but some pretty ool scrapbook celebs like Stacy Julian, Donna Downey, Elsie Flannigan, Theresa Collins, Sarah Milne, Tracey White, Lisa Bearnson, Christy Tomlinson, Carrie Utley and more! Here are some photos of the Conference area we are going to be at. It looks pretty nice!













I will not be blogging until I get back so everyone have a great week and I will post everything when I get back!

Take care and wish my sorry ass luck at the airports. I spend enough time in them tomorrow!

Friday, May 12, 2006

New Do Yesterday! What Do you Think?


well i have to start by saying that my hairdresser crazy tammy as we like to call her for obvious reasons janna can atest to, didn't give me exactly what i had asked for but i am starting to get used to it. i asked for warm colors (blonde, browns, etc.) well i got blondes and red. my hair lightens a lot in the summer so i don't exactly want to be red. i will be an orange the minute i walk into the sun. she also cut 2 inches off my hair. for someone growing it, i have a very edgy, textured blunt cut. let me know what you think. i had to go today and get the grand-daddy of straightening irons to get rid of my natural wave. bad picture because it is late at night and i am tired but i think you get the idea.

My New Mugshots.....thanks to Sheryl!






my good buddy and neighbour sheryl does amazing photos if you ever need to hire someone! let me know and i will hook you up with her. here are some of my newest shots.

letters by janna.....my version!


well I did my beautifying of the letters and I tell you I did what i did with my "a". I m still working on my "r". I painted it bark by heidi swapp and then used her vine mask and mixed bark by heidi swapp, espresso by making memories and spotlight by making memories. i loved how it came out. i used ashphalt by making memories on the inside and then sanded the crap out of it. if you want to check out janna's letters or place an order check out her blog.

Way To Go Oilers!


The Oil won 6-3 against San Jose tonight! Great job guys. Can't wait to see the next game!

Monday, May 08, 2006

Full Already???


Can you believe it?....our L2S Fall Retreat is full already! I can't believe it. We already have people asking for a waiting list. So....if we have enough interest we may run a second retreat. We will have to see. If you are interested please let me know as we need to book it.

Tom Cruise.....is it just me?


but the guy infuriates me now. I have never been a huge TC fan but now after his comments about post-partum regarding Brooke Shields and more recent events, he disgusts me. I mean really, how can a man even begin to know what it feels like to give birth and then go through all the hormone changes and everything that goes with it afterwards? I suffered mild post-partum after I had my first child and no bit of exercise or diet was going to fix that Tom! So I would just keep your mouth shut when you don't have any clue about what you are talking about!

More recently, he made a comment on a talk show that he wanted his pregnant girlfriend to be, the young Katie Holmes (16 years his junior), to change her name to Kate Cruise when they got married. The name Katie is not professional and sounds baby-ish. What a way to diss your fiancé on t.v. in front of millions of viewers. Nothing like making her look bad! What does that say for cool, sauve and very professional Katie's like Katie Couric for example? I heard that his publicist was his sister and he was advised to fire her because he is talking far too much about Scientology. Scientology is getting a bad name because of TC. I don't know much about this very Hollywood religion but I do know that if TC keeps rambling on about all the garbage he has been it will be detrimental to Scientology. You hear the things about how she wasn't going to give birth in a hospital, that she has now alienated her family and friends pre-TC, etc. What happened to little Joey from Dawson's Creek? She should have stayed with Chris Klein! At least he was down to earth. Poor TC spent too much time making War Of The Worlds I think!

I saw him on an interview the other day promoting MI-3 (of which I have no interest in seeing), and someone asked him what he was going to do now and he said, "go home and hop into bed with Suri and Kate". The poor girl, I sure hope he sticks around because I and many others think she was just a young, healthy baby machine for the man. She has said that she idolized him when she was younger, had posters of him on the wall. Well now, she has seemed to have changed the way she looks, her style, changing her name (not many stars removed their famous last name), giving up her career, etc for this guy. No wonder he went for a young one because no one over 30 would have done this. Good luck Katie, I think you are in for a rocky ride!

Just had to vent.....my opionion only and would love to hear what others have to say!

Friday, May 05, 2006

Jenni Bowlin Kits for May



Did you see the amazing kits from Jenni Bowlin for May yet? Pretty freakin cool! You might want to check these out before they are gone.

Love 2 Scrap's May Kit is pretty cool as well. Check that out! Janna created it!

Rhonna is cool....


I just saw these on Rhonna Farrer's blog and thought they were tres cool!

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Look what I got.......


Meet Maggie!

I have been wanting one for about 13 years. I got a Shih Tzu! Never thought we would ever get a dog. I am a cat lover and so are my kids but my hubby is a dg lover and usually a big dog lover. Anyways, we went to the pet store yesterday and this is what we came home with. I am so thrilled. She is such a good puppy! I haven't heard her bark yet. She is a little timid but adorable none the less.

Soccer season starts and I am now MIA....


Tonight was the start of soccer season and now I am gone 4 nights a week. What was I thinking? Oh well at least the kids are getting some exercise and having fun as well as making some new friends. Here was a shot of L during half time tonight.

Retreat is now over and I want to go back.....





We had the Love 2 Scrap Spring Retreat this past weekend at the Village Creek Country Inn at Pigeon Lake and I had a blast! We had a great time but it just wasn't long enough. Here are some photos of all the fun!