Sweet Shoppe Designs

Hey, hey sweet shoppers!  laura here this morning and my blog post today is twofold  first off, in case you have been hiding under a rock (haha), i was gone for 6 days.  my husband and i went on a cruise to cozumel.  all by ourselves, no kids, just us.  we took a cruise to cozumel 2 years ago, and vowed to do it again every other year for as long as we can.  we aren’t the type of couple who goes out on dates a lot, we don’t ask others to babysit for us often, i’m a stay at home mom…i have guilt issues about doing that.  anyway, i digress…so, it was just us.  no kiddos.  we were ready for a few days of partying in the sun and a few more days of just relaxing as we sailed along the ocean.

are you laughing yet?  if you know me, i should have known, this was NOT going to be the case.

we left IL about 830 on Wednesday morning, as soon as we dropped the kiddos off at school and the pooch off to the vets to be boarded.  we had our parents all set to go with the girls’ schedules and lists of medications and well, we were good to go.  we got about 20 miles away from town and it starts raining.  it rained the whole way to New Orleans.  Illinois to New Orleans.  for those of you keeping track, that’s 13 hours.   no joke, it rained for about 12 of those.  in fact, while we were in Mississippi, it rained so hard we had to pull off to the side of the road.  even then the wipers couldn’t keep up with how hard it was raining.  it was an amazing thing to see, but one i’d rather have watched through a window of a hotel, or a house, not from the front seat of my car.  alas, we trekked on.  we made it to Hammond, LA where we were going to spend the night (about an hour north of New Orleans) about 10 PM.  as you may have guessed, we crawled into bed and that was the end of us.  no excitement for us.

the next morning, we headed to New Orleans.  we got there about 11, and we knew that they weren’t supposed to let us board until noon, but we thought we’d give it a try.  surprisingly enough they did!  we got on the boat and started to enjoy ourselves.  we ordered drinks, we ate, we just sorta hung out, we got ourselves in our room….but we noticed, we didn’t have any luggage.  we weren’t overly concerned about it because they told us it may take a few hours and we were early, so we’d probably get ours last since everyone elses would go on top of ours.  after we’d eaten, i started feeling sick to my stomach.  it wasn’t really surprising since i’ve been having stomach issues, but still, we were on vacation.  so, i decided to lay down for a bit.  my husband decided he didn’t want to waste his vacation away napping, so he went to just hang out on the deck for awhile while i napped.  he called me about an hour after i was in the room.  now, i tried not to act annoyed, but, seriously, let me nap dude.  he told me i needed to come up on the deck because there was something he knew i’d want to see.  after my whole ‘seriously?’ schpiel, i decided to go up there and maybe then he’d leave me alone.  i get up there and see that there’s a huge oil spill on about 500 pieces of luggage.  yes.  you read that right.  500 pieces of luggage were ruined by oil.  after finding out what happened (apparently a truck driver screwed up and well, ran into a barrel of oil, punctured it and poof.  spillage everywhere), we decided to go down to our room to see if our luggage was there yet.   as we were walking off the elevator, we saw it arrive.  THANK YOU BABY JESUS!  to make an even longer story short, our departure got delayed from 4 pm, until 2 am.  yes.  2 am.  the crew of the ship had to determine whose luggage was ruined, who needed to be compensated, yadda, yada, yadda.

so, obviously, our day in cozumel was going to be pushed back too.  instead of arriving there at 8 am on saturday morning, we were going to arrive about 11 am.  we spent most of friday in limbo because no one was sure exactly what time we’d get there.   now, i’m a scheduled control freak.  this was no bueno for me.  i had a bit of a panic attack about it all and was sorta freaking out thinking we wouldn’t make it back to New Orleans in time….yes, i realize, i was a hot mess.   anyway, the rest of our trip to cozumel was fairly uneventful (for once).  we arrived about noon on Saturday  and since we arrived late, they were going to let us stay until 7 pm.  we had booked an excursion to spend a day at Playa Mia.  this is a beach that had free food, free drinks, and gorgeous scenery.  we could just lay on the beach, be bums, and drink.  perfect.   the day was awesome…no need to dwell on awesomeness, right? :p

fast forward to our sail back to New Orleans.  the day started off windy on sunday.  no biggie, we’re in the middle of an ocean, it’s bound to be windy.  i sat my butt down and proceeded to finish my 3rd book of the trip.  my husband went off to do lord knows what and he told me he’d be back in a couple hours and we could get lunch or whatever.  well, the wind picks up.  a lot.  by the time he got back, the wind was ridiculous and the temperature had dropped probably 15 degrees.  i went down to change because i was frozen and we then went up to eat.  when we were up there, the boat started rocking.  a lot.  our room was on the 4th floor and the waves were even with our windows.  i’m not one to get seasick, but this was ridiculous.  12 hours of this.  12 hours of the waves rocking the ship back and forth so much that you couldn’t walk straight.  it was horrible.

now, i can guarantee we will not take a cruise with carnival again, (yes, i realize that most of what happened was not their fault but things were SO unorganized on their part it was ridiculous) but we did have an AMAZING time regardless.

if you’ve made it this far, you deserve a medal LOL so, how about some pictures?  now, i didn’t bring my big ol’ awesome camera, i just brought my iphone.  i didn’t want to have the ‘need’ to take pictures and only wanted to take the ones i felt were worth it instead of just taking a ton of pictures.

one of my husband’s only requirements was that we stopped at Lambert’s Cafe for a meal.  he got it and was thrilled.

here’s a peek at the oil spill.  insanity, right?

here’s the aftermath.  they were transferring people’s clothing to new luggage.

just a cute little picture of us waiting (forever) to leave.

my 6 year old daughter was texting us on my mom’s phone.  this totally made my whole night.

Playa Mya.  gorgeousness and the weather was absolutely perfect

here’s a few more pics

and just a few awesome pics….

this was the main deck of the boat

Now, if you remember correctly, i said my blog post was going to be twofold.  i have an opportunity for you to receive an extra portfolio point!!

one of my favorite challenges of old were the spin-a-lifts so that’s what i bring to you today!

i want you to do a SAL of this layout by Arumrose titled Dreamer

here’s my take on it…

now, go run and make beautiful layouts <3

Hello Sweet Shoppers! This is Lydia, here to tell you a little about a fun event I attended this last weekend. When I first signed up for this blog post, I had no idea what I was going to post about. But, then it dawned on me that I would be attending Time Out For Women just days before I posted on the blog. And, I knew that that’s what I would talk about. Time Out For Women is an event produced and sponsored by a local faith-based publisher/bookstore. Every year, they put together a program of speakers and musical artists to do a 2-day event for women. And, then they take the show on the road. This year, they are putting on events in 22 different cities throughout the United States. For the last two years, I’ve been lucky to work as a volunteer at Time Out For Women, helping to spread the word beforehand and then helping with whatever needs to be done during the event itself. This year, I was assigned to time the speakers. Basically, each time a presenter got up on stage, I (and my fellow timer, Rebecca) had to set the timer on a big clock that sat in front of the stage so that he/she could see how much time was left. It was a fun job, and it put me up front and center, right near the action. Bonus!

The speakers this year were fabulous! I laughed a lot and cried a little. I came away with new ideas about how to be a better mom, a better wife, a better friend, and a better me.

But, one of the best things about this weekend was that I got to spend a little time with some great friends (and I got to make some new friends, too).

The two gals on the left of this photo are some of my oldest and dearest friends. We’ve been friends for more than 30 years. We went to Elementary School, Jr. High, and High School together. As the years have come and gone, there have been times when we’ve lived far away from each other and times when we’ve lived closer, there have been times when we haven’t been as “in touch” as we were at other times. But, these gals have always been there, part of my life that I treasure. After I had my baby in August, these two beautiful women came to my house one day with lunch for me and my kids, a freezer meal to use later, and a sweet baby gift. We ate lunch together, they held and fed my baby, and we just chatted. I appreciate their friendship so much. That lovely gal on the right is someone that I only met last year. But, it feels like I’ve known her for a much longer time. It probably has something to do with the fact that she went to high school with my hubby, married a guy from the neighborhood that I grew up in, and currently lives in my hometown. If we sat down and made a list of our mutual friends/acquaintances, it would be a very long list. It was so fun to see her again!

You may recognize Tana and Andrea in that photo above. Tana (tanbanan) was the one who first got me started in digiscrapping. When I expressed an interest, she showed me the ropes and linked me up to the best places to buy digi supplies (including the Sweet Shoppe). Andrea (AndreaG) is another member of our SSD community. I knew her from the digi world for quite a while before I ever met her in real life. And, another digi friend who was at the Time Out For Women Event was Rebecca. We are on a CT together, but I had never met her before. In addition, she was my follow timer at this event, and it was really fun to talk to her and get to know her a little bit. Here I am with these other wonderful digi girls.

The theme for the 2012 Time Out For Women event is “Seek the Good.” Coincidentally, my One Little Word for the year is Good. I’m working on seeing the good in my life everyday and creating good memories for myself, my children, and my family. Already, that word has helped me to feel more positive and upbeat about all the twists and turns that seem to come along in life. And, attending this event over the weekend only helped me to find more ways that I can find good things in my life.

I thought my pictures from this weekend were perfect for doing a layout for one of the February Portfolio Challenges this month. While I don’t consider myself to be a fantastic photographer, I did try to get a few photos of some of the details of this event, and I used them to make this layout for Challenge #2.

Well, that’s it from me for now. I hope everyone has a great day and that you all find lots of GOOD things to be grateful for!

Hey ya’ll … Amy here. Better late than never, I slept most of the day today, that’s what my brain thinks rainy Sundays are for. Anyway, my post is really about yesterday. My very close friends and I went to the beach. Yes in the middle of January. I am just that crazy of a beach lover. They were having the 147th anniversary re-enactment of the Battle of Fort Fisher (North Carolina) one of the last battles of the Civil War. Fort Fisher is what allowed the blockade runners to keep bringing supplies into the south during the war and it’s fall is one of the things that ultimately cost the South the war. It was very interesting and we learned a lot about the weaponry of that time and how people lived, etc. Ever since my husband started his second job, we have not spent much time together on the weekends and it makes me sad. Last year he and I went to this event together, just the two of us, so I was a little sad. But it’s a wonderful thing to have such close friends. My “ex” boyfriend from high school and his wife are my very very best friends and I love their children like my own, so it was really funny to go with them and see my favorite place on earth through their eyes. The three year old especially loved the firing of the muskets, while his mom wasn’t quite so sure!! lol I can’t wait to scrap the pages with my memories from yesterday. I want to tell the story of how Ron came back into my life, and how I met my bestie Melissa through him, I want to scrap the raw emotion I feel every time I see the ocean. I want to scrap the wonder in Chase’s eyes at the guns, and the tears on his cheeks when he fell down and scraped his chin. I want to scrap the memories of events that molded our nations history, for better or for worse. It’s amazing to me how many ways you can look at one day and think about what you want to take away from it and document so you will remember if forever. I’m glad I’m getting my camera out more and I’m gonna scrap more and 2012 is going to be the year of memory keeping for me once again!!

p.s. if you wonder about the title of my post, those are the words that came out of my mouth as we were walking back up to the car after I had danced and twirled on the sand with the kids, just like I was 8 years old myself. The ocean is a spiritual thing to me, I can never describe how it makes me feel and people sometimes look at me silly when they see how emotional I get over it, but i NEED it. I read somewhere that we have 90% salt water in our veins and I said I knew that I had the ocean in me!! Till next time, sweet shoppers! I will close with a few pics of the day and maybe some of you can suggest some kits for me to scrap them with?

Hey all, Melissa here with your blog post today. Today is a big day for me and my hubby. It is our 20th wedding anniversary. I sit here in disbelief that it has really been that long, can I really be that old? LOL! A little background on how we met. I met my husband in Washington state at a church dance for young adults. I was 24 at the time and had basically decided that I was too old and I would never get married. He came up to me at the dance and started dating the next day. I had a strong feeling from the beginning that this was the one, but was afraid of that feeling. 10 days after we met he asked me to marry him and I said yes. 2 months and 2 days after we met we were married and now here we are 20 years later, more in love now. I was trying to think of how to capture this memory and day in a special way and I decided to do a layout with a picture from our wedding day and write 20 reasons why I love him. As I reflected on these it helped me remember the little things that I may take for granted on a daily basis. The little things that are so easy to forget and get lost in the daily shuffle of life. I sat at the computer working on the page, listening to my husband snoring in the background and my face lit up as I remembered all the reasons I love this man and why I am so grateful to have spent the last 20 years with him and why I look forward to eternity with him. I hope we can all take the time to remember the reasons why the special people in our life are there. How they have helped us grow, how they have given us strength and how they have loved us.

Hola, Sweet Shoppers! Lex here, and today’s an amazing, special day for me: six years ago, I married my best friend, Mark. I can still remember the strange haze of anticipation that I had throughout that whole morning and afternoon. This was despite a sudden, heavy downpour that happened right when I stepped out of the wedding car to position myself at the door of the church. My coordinator was calling me, frantic and saying we should book a tent (our reception was in an open courtyard) but I was weirdly unconcerned, LOL. In the end, it didn’t matter. When Mark and I stepped out of the church, the afternoon sun cast an amazing golden light on everything. It was magical.

On the one hand, it’s kind of like the six years happened in a heartbeat. On another, we’ve experienced some pretty crazy downs and exhilarating ups in this marriage of ours. One of the best things I love about our relationship is that until now, we are friends. We like many of the same things, and then snark on each others’ idiosyncrasies (He loves onions, while I believe the road to hell is paved with them). We have tons of private jokes that honestly, we can’t even remember where they started. We like fantasizing about how we’ll be when we’re retired and enjoying grandchildren (I think that not much will be different, but who knows?)

Anyone looking at my gallery knows that our relationship is pretty well-documented, haha. Still, I thought, in honor of today, to scrap a little look-back layout about us. I found the quote–which obviously is part of wedding vows–on Pinterest. Today we’re going to do one of our favorite activities–eat–at an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant that we’ve been dying to go back to.

Thanks for reading, and hope you have an awesome Friday!

Materials used:
Life in Technicolor by Dani Mogstad 
All Worn Out: Borders and Tags by Penny Springmann 
Font: DJB A Fresh Start

Tracy here to talk about snowmen.  Wait…Tracy…the one from Florida?  What do I know about snowmen?  Not much about the real ones as I’ve only built an actual snowman probably 4 or 5 times in my whole life.  But what I do enjoy is building them through craft projects and activities, especially with my son.

This year his elementary school hosted a Winter Wonderland family night for the K-2nd graders and their families.  Our favorite part of the night was when we had to make the youngest member of the family into a snowman.  I did a layout about it using Melissa’s new Chill Out kit too.  We had to use toilet paper to roll him up and then threw a red “scarf” around his neck.  It was the funniest thing watching all the parents getting dizzy from circling their children.

Another fun snowman activity that my son likes is to make doughnut snow people (although those don’t last very long).  Here we made some with mini doughnuts, doughnut holes, chocolate chips, gum, Reese’s cups, peppermint patties and potato sticks.

This year I want to try some new crafts with the kiddo.  One of them will be Heather’s DIY Printable Templates:  Snowman Box.

I also want to try these Block Men, A-Bottle-Able Snowmen and Cheesy Snowmen.

If you have a favorite snowman activity that you’d like to share, please link us up.

Hi everyone this is Jacq bringing you today’s 365 days of bliss post. We will be celebrating our sixth wedding anniversary tomorrow and I can’t believe that it’s been six years since I walked down that aisle and said my I do. I can still remember all the planning and effort it took for everything to be put together. We planned our wedding from overseas so we hired a wedding planner to oversee everything which kept me sane all throughout the process. It took a year of emails, phone calls, lots of internet browsing, several dress fitting, three engagement photoshoots for our special day to be accomplished. And well it was all worth it and so much more, that day went by so fast I felt that most of it was a blur except the wedding ceremony. When the huge church doors opened for me and I started my walk down the aisle I took my time, it was slow motion, I saw people’s faces, smiled at my friends, held on to my father’s arms and got teary eyed when I saw my tearful mom. I can’t forget the look on my husband’s face standing at the altar waiting for me, I think his face reflected the happiness that was on my face too. When my dad gave my hand away and we held hands I remember thinking, this is it…this is my forever. And it’s been one wonderful roller coaster ride since that special day. We now have two beautiful daughters, a home of our own and I just love the life that we’ve created together. I look at my daughters and I’m reminded everyday of our love and how blessed I am to have everything that I needed.

Thank you for reading my post today (and for allowing me to be mushy even for a bit). I hope you have a wonderful day.

Hey sweeties! This is Aly. This time of year always makes me think of Traditions. Family traditions, but especially holiday traditions. I love thinking back on my life and realizing that so many of my most wonderful memories have been centered around traditions that my parents set, and carried through with every year. Being a parent now, I realize the time, love, and effort that goes into each and every tradition that is established. Today I want to share a few of our families holiday traditions with you. I also am thinking of traditions that I don’t love, along with new traditions I want to possibly start.

Holiday Traditions I Love

Advent Calendars

Around our house, there is a countdown to the countdown. The kids love putting the pieces on our advent calendars. They also get one of those chocolate advents each year that they love. (The chocolate in those is like wax, but they love looking forward to that little treat each day.)

Christmas Books

I love to read through our Christmas books. They are one of the things we anticipate as we are unpacking the Christmas boxes. We like to add a new book to our Christmas Library every year. My favorite that we read this year is “The Three Trees.” We also started the tradition last year of reading “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.”

Holiday Clothes

I absolutely LOVE buying my girls cute Christmas shirts. The minute I see them in the stores, I have to buy them some. I LOVE LOVE LOVE them. Every year, aIso buy my kids new Christmas dressy clothes. I love to dress them up and take their photo in front of the tree. They usually don’t want to cooperate, but I don’t even care, I love it anyway.

Visiting Santa

Every year we take our kids to visit Santa. I like to do this towards the first part of the month so that the kids can give Santa their list, and that the list cannot change anymore!

Holiday Lights
I have to be honest… Christmas lights really aren’t my thing. I am a little OCD about how Christmas lights look. I like houses with a classic one row of straight, white lights. Every year we do go look at Christmas lights, because the kids absolutely love it. We go to Christmas Village where they have little houses with different decorations and themes, with lots of lights. This year they even had a Christmas Train to ride.

Christmas Cookies

We always make sugar cookies to decorate for Santa. The kids get so creative with their art on them. Such a mess, but so much fun!

True Meaning
I love all of the commercial things that come along with Christmas, but my absolute favorite part of the season is celebrating the birth of Christ. Every year I have a deeper understanding and love for this special Spirit that we celebrate at this time of year. My husband’s family established a tradition many years ago to have a Jerusalem Dinner at the first part of December. At the dinner we dress as people at the time of Christ’s birth may have. We eat fish, unleaven bread, grapes, avacodos, cheeses, and things that may have been there then. We think about Jesus and his parents. We think about the true meaning of this holiday. It is by far my favorite thing we do during the month of December.

Some of the Traditions that I don’t love:

• Gingerbread houses
• Christmas Lights on houses
• FREEZING temperatures

Some Traditions I am thinking of starting:

• Live Nativity
• Local Nativity Displays
• Elf on the Shelf
• Christmas Book Advent

These are a few of the things that consume us at this time of year. I am so grateful for my family and the traditions that we have! What are some of your traditions? What do you love or hate about the holidays?

Leave a comment here for the chance to win a $10 GIFT CERTIFICATE for the Grand Re-Opening of Sweet Shoppe Designs on January 1st.

One random winner will be selected an notified before the store closes. You can comment through December 24th at12:00pm Mountain Time. I will post and notify the winner that afternoon, before the site goes down. Hope your holidays are happy!

Oh my gosh… can you believe that there is only 5 days until Christmas!!  I, Rebecca, am not ready! There are so many things I want to get done with kiddo before Christmas and I’m not sure I’m going to make it… we might have a New Year’s Gingerbread House… haha.  However, one thing we have accomplished is seeing Santa.

Now, I should add that as a child, I wasn’t really allowed to believe in Santa… my mom tried to have some magic around the day, Santa would come while we were at church on Christmas Eve. We weren’t allowed to have any Santa decorations and if I went to see Santa, it might have been once when I was a really little kid. Now that I have a child, Santa still doesn’t pay a huge part of our celebrations… he isn’t the reason for our season… however, we do elf on the shelf and go to see Santa.  My four year old is way too logical for his age, and he really doesn’t understand who this guy is and why he wants to know about what kiddo wants for Christmas. In fact, he asked Santa for socks and underwear… haha!

For the last three years, our tradition has been to go down to the bowling alley to have breakfast with Santa in the bar area… screams Wisconsin, doesn’t it? haha  Actually, it’s a great event and I think that the parents and grandparents look forward to this more than kiddo does… for some crazy price of $5 per person, kiddo gets to sit on Santa’s lap and have a professional photo taken (which we get a free copy), a hot breakfast, a goody bag, and a free game of bowling.  It really is a fun time… and lots of photos are taken. Which I still need to scrap… what has happened to this month??? I’ll give last year’s photo…

With that… I still have a few things I need to get done for the exciting things coming to the Sweet Shoppe in the New Year… so, I’m going end with wishing you all a very Merry Christmas… and Happy Hanukkah to those that celebrate.

{{hugs}}

Rebecca aka mamabee

Hey sweeties!  Laura here and this morning, I want to talk about one of my favorite things to do over the holiday season, helping others. As most of you know, I’m kinda…rough around the edges.  I tend to be crass sometimes, I tell it like it is, but once you look past that rough exterior, you’ll see that I have one of the biggest hearts of anyone you’d ever know.  I’d do just about anything to help someone in need.  I learned to help those who are less fortunate than us from my mother and I hope to pass that along to my children as well.   I try to have all of us involved in some sort of charity work throughout the year, but living in a super small town, the opportunity just isn’t always there. As I mentioned, we live in a very small town.  Small as in, my daughter’s 1st grade class has only 17 students in it…the whole class.  One thing that we do throughout the winter months is help out at our local food pantry.  This is where living in a small town is nice.  The past couple years especially (with the economy the way it has been), there has been greater need for help as far as feeding families in need.  The food pantry is always looking for volunteers so I figure, what better way to teach my children the gift of giving to others, than having them volunteer with me.  This was the first year that both girls were able to help me load and unload boxes and while my youngest didn’t really understand what we were doing, my oldest definitely understood this year, and has already asked me if we can do it again next year! Another thing that we do every year is sponsor a family over the Christmas season.  Each year, our town hall has a spot where you can sign up to sponsor a family and you are given a list of things that the family needs.  A lot of times, it’s things that we take for granted like new shoes, jeans, a winter coat and even socks and underwear.  We also will donate to our local Toy Drive as well.  I know that my children are spoiled (thank God) by their grandparents, so every year when we do our annual purge, we donate those items to the local toy drive.  I can only hope that my girls grow up and want to help others because they love to do it AND because they can. My mother always loved this bible verse and it has always struck a chord with me , “In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Before I leave you today, I get to present you with the Layout of the Week.  This is always such a challenge for me.  Our gallery is just exploding with yumminess all week long!

This week I chose a layout by Trish (MommaTrish).  I absolutely ADORE the way she uses so many patterns on this,  the different fonts and word art she used for the title work and that sweet little photo of her dd.

Congratulations Trish, I’ll be PMing you shortly!