Wrapping Up the Week

Wednesday was an early release day for the school kids. Erin had a Dr. appt. and asked me if I'd be willing to pick her girls up after school and keep them until she got home from the Dr. I was more than willing. So I offered to take Abigail when her school got out, too. She was more than happy to come along. So I picked up Abby, Eliza and Libby after school. We decided to go to lunch. Of course, they wanted different places to eat. Two wanted Subway and one wanted Paradise Bakery. Libby LOVES their pasta salad! Anyway, we stopped at Subway and picked up two lunches and headed to Paradise Bakery for the other orders and to eat. The girls were so much fun! They giggled, laughed, talked and giggled some more. After lunch, they wanted to go "window" shopping. Of course, they wanted to buy once we got there. So they did! It took them about two hours to decide exactly what they wanted!! Yikes! Then I took home Erin's girls and Abby and I drove to meet her mom so she could take her home after work. By the way, Erin was finished with her Dr. appt. in plenty of time to pick the girls up after school....but I wouldn't have missed out on the fun with the girls.


Today was Abby's field day at school. The first four events were water oriented events. And, brrr...., it was cold to start off the day. But the wind finally stopped blowing and the sun shone down warm and soon, the kids were all dried off. Then the next three events were tug-of-war, an obstacle course and a kangaroo hop. Abby had a ton of fun! She has lots of friends at school and she does an excellent job of cheering on the other kids when they're performing. Lots of the kids weren't paying any attention until it was their turn, but Abby was good to cheer on all of the other kids in her line. What a good sport she was! They she asked us if we'd stay for lunch and we were happy to. I forgot to say, Mark was off today since he had some training this week and put in all of his hours in four days. It was a fun day and I'm so glad we went.




This afternoon I spent with Jan working on another class project. This one will be oriented to a beach/water vacation. Perfect for summertime.
Tonight I've been grading papers, but that's done now and I'm off to work on some project in my workroom. Gotta stay busy, you know!
Tomorrow is three soccer games, an altered apron show at Mystic Paper, which I participated in, and a Pinewood Derby for Matthew! Whew! I'll be ready for bed tomorrow night!

CHA

This weekend begins the semi-annual CHA trade show. CHA stands for Craft & Hobby Association. It's where the many manufacturers of craft and hobby products gather in Anaheim to peddle their wares to retailers throughout the world. My job is to take some of 7gypsies' new products to be released at the show and make something from it to show how the various products are used. In other words, I use their stuff to make something useful and lovely to look at. What fun that is! I get to play with the new stuff before anyone else gets to even see it! Oftentimes I use prototype products. For one of the projects this time I used a new board book (parenthesis), new transfers and lots of paper and embellishments. Here is the end result. I won't bore you with all of the pages/pictures, but here are a few of the Parenthesis Board Book.



Erin was gracious enough to let me use their pictures from their recent NY trip.

The second project is a Paper Bag Book using their new Gypsy Market papers, Gypsy sticker sheet, large photo turn, paper bags, and lots of embellishments.




The idea of this book is following a "gypsy" (read...junker!) in her travels as she searches for the perfect junk! The sticker sheet quotes and sayings (for the most part) are direct quotes from our girls' retreat from five years ago. Deb, Ellen (my sisters), Paula and Patty (sisters but not ours...but our VERY DEAR friends) met at Deb's for a week-long retreat filled with creating, junkin', traveling, laughing and at show at Gammage (Phantom of the Opera). It was one of the best weeks of my life. Such wonderful relationships and oh, so fun!!! The places in this book document just a few of the places we've gone together over the years in our search for the "perfect junque"!! Just a note of instruction...the paper bags lay sideways in the book and are bound together at their bottoms. In each bag is an idex card (from the Photo Carousel collection) with a picture, business card and some detailsl about various places we've been. It's funny to me that all five of us have such similar tastes and enjoy so many of the same things.
You can see all of the 7gypsies products at www.sevengypsies.com . But I'm warning you, you may get pulled into the gypsy van, and then you're trapped. You'll be a gypsy, too!