I was to fill in a date for a doctor’s appointment in my calendar this morning and realized that it will be 2009 in a couple of months! How did that happen? It LITERALLY was summer last week. We had temperature’s of 70-ish degress all last week and today is is snowing a near freezing. ARGH.

When I was young it seemed like summers would never end and now I blink and a year goes by. At any rate, I did not have any kind of a 2009 calendar anywhere and hat using my phone to in my appointments.
We went out for dimmer over the weekend 9 a rarity, believe me) to my new favourite restaurant and they were celebrating some kind of anniversary. The kids got special toys, drinks were cheap and as we left the waiter gave us a Photo Calendar of Mexico ( was Mexican restaurant)

I was quite impressed! I used to have to buy calendars to get stickers and enough space to write down all our stuff but this was one of the better free calendars I have seen, It came with tons of stickers for doctors appointments and dance recitals, etc.

I was going to go out and buy fancy calender at Costc0o this week but I am so impress with this one will keep it. Was priced right, too!

Basic Grey just released the new paper line, GRANOLA.

Do you love it or hate it?

Picture of New basic Grey paper Pack Granola

It features mostly earth tone browns, beiges and blues with some mustard. I am not crazy about it. It might be good for some “masculine” layouts. The colors do nothing for me and the patterns are also very blah.
I love basic Grey papers but this one is a bit of a miss for me- what do you think?

right now I am in love with Euphoria Collection Pack.

Quickutz has just released its 2008 Christmas sets for their Die Cutting tools. The Jolly set is for hand tool/Revolution and Holly is of Silhouette.
To get more details and see picture visits of New “Holly” and “Jolly” Kits from Quickutz.

The set for the digital cutter ( Silhouette) looks pretty nice and includes vinyl and Quickutz tools.

Yikes. I am officially old. I have to wear bi-focals. I just about fainted when I went to Costco and got my prescription filed and i was quoted almost 600.– to get progressive lens eyeglasses. I buy my glasses at Costco because about 2 years ago I read in Consumer Reports that the Costco had excellent glasses and was a Bestbuy. That was when i was paying two hundred plus dollars. I needed to shop around.

I belong to an online deal forum and they constantly have threads for cheap contact lenses and glasses, The mention Zenni’s in the States as a good cheap place to buy glasses. Anti Glare/anti-scratch coating progressive lenses in a titanium frame cam to just over 80.00 with shipping. I got the glasses in a nice case and cleaning cloth. I took then to my eye doctor and he pronounce them “pretty good” The thing you need to have before you order is your PD or pupillary distance. This never changes0 it is the distance between your two pupils.

After receiving he bifocals I ordered some plain reading glasses and a “back-up” pair of long distance glasses. The total for two pair of glasses came to 40.00.
I have the type of face that can wear almost any shape and they have pretty generic styles- i wouldn’t try anything to new or different, I basically got a pair that looked most like the glasses I have now.
I would absolutely recommend . If you are nervous try a pair of reading glasses fist. The Pd on reading glasses make huge difference compared to buying from drugstore.

Not only is the ATG gun HUGELY popular ( and huge) to use as an adhesive in scrapbooking and card making- crafters have gone nuts decorating them! I wrote a post about the popularity of ATG

guns a while ago and mentioned people liked to decorate them. I went through some blogs and found ATG guns that REALLY stand out. This scrapbook tool has become so poplar because, well it is a tool, and they are comfortable despite their size and cheap to refill. The size to get if you are Scrapbooling or cardmaking is the ATG 714 size/a>

I first heard about this one of my craft forums a year ago and now they are HUGE. Scrapbookers were talking about how they decorated their 3M ATG-752 Adhesive Transfer Gun and at first I was APPALLED!
Crazy Americans are now decorating their guns with sequins. DOH! An ATG gun is a suped up tape runner on steroids. The tape guns are used for framing and caught on like wild fire in scrapbook community about a year and half ago. The biggest advantage is comfort and cost of refills.

What is an ATG Gun?

The ATG stands for Adhesive Transfer Gun.. So ATG gun is actually redundant. They are pretty big. The adhesive is fantiastic and refills are cheap. They are very comfortable to use.

The most popular size is Scotch ATG 714 and refill with this refill. because it is acid free.

Do you decorate your ATG gun? Post links to your pics!

If you’re like me your are gearing up for the onslaught of Christmas crafts. This time of year I am almost giddy with the anticipation of all the fun crafts to do an make. Favourites for me will be making candles and Christmas cards using stencil theorems. I have recently jumped back in with both feet and I am trying to get caught up on my scrap booking.

Last year I did something I sort of regret- I stated all my crafts and hauled everything out and dug right i without any preparation or organizing. it was pretty chaotic. Add to that my kids and their friends and within a few eeks I had trouble finding even a pair of scissors. Over the Summer I worked on creating a “craft” room but I am still not happy with it. I have been avoiding using a giant IKEA 5×4 cube Expidit shelf but think I may have to go that route. Currently I use 2 long shelves above a table and have clear bins I have labeled with White labels. I really should kick myself- I don’t like the way I organized them but labels are messy looking and smeared.

I should have used my DYMO Labelmaker to label all these bins! I have the bins sorted with brad and rhinestones, ribbon , inks and small paper packs. Uing my label maker I will also sort by color- using red for Christmas, Yellow from Spring, etc.

This is my own creation, a breast cancer awareness ribbon cross stich pattern free to download.

You can download the free pattern here

I am trying to make up a liost of site that have nice FREE GSD fiels to download and use on craft cutting machines- like KNK Studios, Pazzles, Quickutz Silhouette and Craft Robo.

Some nice Free GSD files including ballet gsd files and some karate ones to us ein scrapbooks, etc.

One of the best parts about creating something new -or finishing a new scrapbook layout or starting a new cross stitch pattern is sharing it! I don;t mean sharing it in the “showing off” kind of way- but learning a new technique and feeling pride in what you accomplished- saying look- I DID it! That feeling really doesn;t ever go away- sort of an adult form of “Look, Mom!”
I absolutely LOVE checking out other people’s craft blogs and seeing what the latest trends are, discovering a new tool or product I just have to have or just plain admiring some one else’s work.

One of the best ways to shar your work is to do it online- wh not create your own blog? I HIGHLY recommend you host your own blog on your own server a web hosts. There are several sites that can recommend some good ones.