Make a slide show, scrapbook or ecard

Many of you know that my friend Lisa called a couple of weeks ago and asked if I was busy this past weekend because she wanted to get together and scrapbook. I told her I was bummed because it wouldn’t work out. I already had several things on the calendar and it was my weekend “on” for worship. I always know our worship team schedule. It’s “set” as in I can look ahead for the entire next year and know when I’m on or off and I try to plan weekend things ONLY on weekends I’m “off” so that I don’t have to ask anyone to cover for me. Besides that, I took the entire month of May off back when Amanda graduated so I really didn’t feel like I could ask the other keyboard player to cover for me anymore this year. He ended up playing 6 weeks in a row back then. So, I told Lisa my sob story about how I’d LOVE to get together, but there jsut isn’t time and yada yada yada. Then, she emailed back and said that was too bad because she was talking about scrapbooking in Seattle and it wasn’t just scrapbooking – it was a scrapbooking CONVENTION! Ok… that required a little thought! I emailed the other keyboard player, Lenny, to see if he could cover for me and made sure Amanda was available incase he wasn’t. Fortunately, he quickly emailed back that he could cover for me and the next thing I knew Lisa and I were registered for the convention! Most of my IRL friends (as well as my blogosphere friends who have been around long enough to know how my need to research every little thing to death translates to huge procrastination problems. So… 5 hours later we were signed up for classes, had our motel room booked, a car rented, and standby seats reserved (or whatever the right term would be – lol).There isn’t much room for journaling on the pages I loaded above so I’ll have to give you more of the details here. Do you see all of those bags on the first page? Yea… we were gone for 2 nights (LOL)….I had more bags for this 2 night trip than I normally take on a 2-3 week vacation (LOL)! Lisa packed and repacked and made sure she had a backpack for the crops, etc. Me. I was just doing good to even get on the plane with any scrapbooking stuff to work on. I literally DUMPED stuff into my suitcase and figured I’d sort it all out there…. NOT my normal style at all and those who know me probably won’t even believe that I did that, but I did. I didn’t even have time to start packing until 9:30 p.m. the night before we left (LOL), but I got all of my book work done, the kids schedules lined out, etc., and like I said. I was doing good to have anything to work on (LOL)!We each took more classes than we can even count (LOL)! We learned a TON of new techniques, came home with a zillion new ideas, and I personally came home with a new key phrase. Those who know me will think I’ve fallen and bumped my head and you’ll probably be calling to inquire where the real Cynthia went…. are you ready for the new motto?

EMBRACE IMPERFECTION!That is SO NOT ME (LOL)! But, I’m going to give it a whirl – at least in the context of scrapbooking that is. In these classes you have ONE hour to do whatever you’re going to do and the rest becomes homework. These classes are SO FAST paced. I found myself nearly ready to cry in the first one. I like to arrange, rearrange, switch pictures, try different colors of paper, etc. When I called home and told Josh that I did 2 pages in an hour he just laughed because normally my speed would be about 2 pages in an entire weekend! Anyway. Back to the classes. They were SO MUCH FUN! Door prizes, motivation, encouragement, free products, etc. In the 3rd class I took there was this little geometric flower thing you were supposed to make and I just couldn’t get it. Did I mention the classes move fast and I like to take my time? I was just about ready to pack my stuff up and go outside when the lady across the aisle from me came over to my table and showed me what I was doing wrong! WHEW! I’m glad I stuck with it because it turned out really cute, but I’m such a visual person… and did I mention the pace of the class? (LOL)!Moving on. The classes were awesome. I tried many new things I’ve never done before. Styles I really like, but thought I could never do. After I unpacked my bags I showed Emily one of the little albums I made and she said “wow mom. You MADE that?” She was quite impressed and surprised that I made something so cute (LOL)! Unfortunately, I can’t show it to you now because it’s going to be one of Amanda’s Christmas presents. I’ll try to sneak it onto the blog later in the week when I know she’ll be at work and not able to look at it for a few hours. Then I’ll take it back off until after Christmas. Sorry to leave you in such suspense, honey.Ok… now look at those pages up above. You see the one with all of the balloons in it? That’s the big 10th anniversary birthday party for Creating Keepsakes magazine. They had ALL kinds of prizes, contests, giveaways, etc. One of them was this thing where you had to match up tools to the professional that would use them. Easy enough. Then, you put it in a pile up at the front and they drew 6 names. I did NOT want to enter this because I just had that feeling they were going to draw my name. I just KNEW it. Ask Lisa. She’ll tell you that I didn’t want to put my thing up there and I even told her if they drew my name SHE was going to have to go up there because I was NOT going up! So. You guessed it. Yep. They drew my name. I wasn’t surprised because I just knew this was going to happen. Do you KNOW what you had to do in front of how many thousand women? You had to *DANCE*! Ok.. .I have only been ballroom dancing 2 times and that’s IT! Fortunately, I was didn’t make it to the finals and I was able to go sit back down after only have to dance through the song one time! This cute little pregnant gal who was also sitting at our table ended up winning the big prize which was some cutting thing of which I don’t even know what it was! I could see Lisa at the back of the room laughing hysterically at the site of it all (LOL). I saw her using my camera to take some pictures… fortunately they turned out blurry so I can’t post any of me dancing up there in front of all those gals (or maybe I’m just saying they turned out blurry???). If you look close you can see me up by the podium in the large picture to the right on the page with all of the balloons.The other highlight of my trip was having dinner with my good friend, Lee who lives in WA! She treated me to dinner at Azteca which was WONDERFUL! Great food and a nice 2 hour chat! We email everyday and talk on the phone occasionally. It was great to actually have some girlfriend time to go out to dinner. I don’t think I even remember the last time I went to dinner without any kids. Thanks LEE! It was a great evening.We left at 5:30 a.m. on Th and I got home around 2:00 a.m. on Sunday morning! It was a BLAST! I still can’t really believe that we just flew off to Seattle to go scrapbooking for the weekend! I’m quite certain Lenny doesn’t read my blog, but I still want to say THANKS for covering for me because I wouldn’t have gone if he couldn’t play for me. Worship team is the one main area (pretty much the only thing right now) where I serve at church and I don’t take it lightly. I would never have just up and gone somewhere on a trip without making sure whatever responsibilities or commitments I had were covered. So. Thanks Lenny. And, a HUGE THANKS to my friend Lisa! She works for one of the airlines and gave me a ticket! That definitely made the weekend possible – cost and time. Normally we like to go to the mountains to a condo 3.5 hours away to scrapbook for a weekend although we haven’t done that for a few years now. This weekend we flew clear out to Seattle to scrapbook and it took less time than going to the condo (LOL)! It also wouldn’t have been possible without my mom, Tim’s mom, and Tim taking over kid duties and there were a LOT of them… early a.m. basketball practice, athletic parent meeting, dinner, laundry, etc. So, many thanks to my mom and Tim’s mom for helping out as well. Em held down the fort here at home pretty well. This is the first time I’ve been away since Amanda moved out so Em had a lot of responsibility this weekend.So.. it was a much needed break and I had a GREAT time! I tend to get in a slump this time of the year with the time change, the decrease in daylight hours, the cold weather, the long winter ahead, yada yada yada. Now I have some fun new things to keep me busy for awhile!