2011 Paper Trey Ink Satmp-A-Faire

A papercrafter's dream come true! A whole day of making cards, meeting my idol card/stamp designers and doing it all with my favorite paper crafters Dana and Katie. 200 people attended the event which sold out in 7 minutes! These events NEVER come around this area, they are usually in Chicago or Florida. Lucky for us Paper Trey Ink is Cincinnati based.

 The best surprise of the whole day was the goodie bag! They gave us 3 stamp sets, 2 pads of patterned paper, buttons, flowers, shimmer brads, notepad, picture frame magnets, epoxy stickers, coasters, postcards, and of course the adorable tote it all came in!

 We made 5 cards (make n' takes) in the morning session and 5 more in the afternoon. Each make n' take was headed by one of Paper Trey Ink's designers. It was so amazing to meet and talk to the women who design cards/stamps that inspire me each month.

Here are the 10 make n' takes we made at the event, I love each one more than the next!

They had examples of cards made by all the designers all around the room to inspire and take pics of. I made a collage of my top 12 favorite cards.

 We even picked out up a few new techniques to try.

Heather Nichols, Michelle Woodson, Betrsy Veldman, me, Dawn McVey, and Lisa Johnson

Already dreaming of what next year will bring!

Lexus turns 11! More Summer Fun!

We are officially heading into Birthday Season (July - September). We celebrate 12 different birthdays during this time! To kick it off we helped my BFF's little boy Ryan celebrate his 6th birthday at Woodland Mound. What a great place to go for a b-day party! I recently bought a new rocket stamp set and luck would have it found b-day bags to match it...so cute!

My 3-yr. old sons idea of breakfast...I don't think so!

 Another summer, another fun day at Stricker's grove for Randy's company picnic. As usual the girls each brought a friend and we all had a blast squeezing it all in. Austin shares his mother's love of roller coasters. This year he rode the BIG roller coaster with me and again with Randy. He loved every second of it and proclaimed "We do it again!!!" when it was over.

Shelby, Lexus, McKenna, Austin & Kimberly

 Lexus turned 11 this year; the last 11 years have literally flown by! Lexus requested an owl cake for her birthday this year. Owls are one of her favorite new animals. She loves them in Harry Potter and The Guardians of GaHoole book series. I totally stole the idea from on-line, and think it turned out pretty good.

Kimberly, Lexus, & Austin playing her new Wii Lego Harry Potter game.



We have had a lot of fun taking advantage of all the FREE summer events provided by the city parks. The girls both attended volleyball and soccer camps, all 3 kids saw the Sunrock Farm animals, Mr. Cowpie, and made some crafts.

 

Mr. Cowpie

 I was soooo excited to take Lexus to the midnight screening of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 on Thursday July 14th. It was a FANTASTIC experience for both of us! All 20 theaters at AMC Theaters on the Levee were sold out. About 50% of the people were dressed up as some HP character, some costumes were fabulous and some were not...hee hee! We were lucky to have a group in our theater re-enacting scenes from all the movies to entertain us as we sat for 2 hours waiting for the movie to start.

 Steph took Austin to the Reds game against the Pirates on Friday, he loved every time they hit a home run! He got to sit with Aunt Steph and Grandpa Grothaus.

More adorable pics of Bella, she is now 5 whole lbs. and 11 weeks old. The kids are happy they are now able to take her for walks around the block. What a different and energetic puppy she is now that she is healthy and happy!

Bella and her new fav toy!

What Do Doctors Know Anyway???

I went to the doc on Tuesday and for an ultrasound on Wednesday. The doc called to let me know I am perfectly healthy, they didn't even find gall stones. Basically, they have NO explanation for what happened Friday night. While I am extremely happy that they didn't find anything, logic tells me perfectly healthy people don't have things like that happen to them. Soooo bizarre! I am not the only one falling apart. My poor little sis is having some heart issues, pray they find she is perfectly healthy too!

We had a great time celebrating the 4th of July at my parents house Monday! We played a little t-ball, went on a tractor ride, played in the sand, and had lots of fireworks fun!

I find it soooo funny when we see Bella sleeping like this. She is doing better too! She just finished her meds yesterday and is finally eating like she should.

Fireworks and ER visits...Happy 4th of July!

What a wonderful weekend to have 4 whole days off work! The sunshine and hot weather has returned and plenty of family parties to attend. I was almost starting to wonder why we bought new bathing suits. It felt great hitting the pool and cooling off with some wet fun!

The only thing we didn't plan on was a trip to ER Friday night for me. I started having intense pain across my upper stomach, chest and back. Then all the muscles in these areas started to constrict, not relaxing and making it extremely hard for me to breathe. If that wasn't enough I was throwing up every 10 minutes too. At the ER, the doctor determined it was my gall bladder and that I had gall stones. They had to give me two strong doses of pain meds to finally get things feeling back to normal. I go to the doc tomorrow and he will order an ultrasound to determine the next step. It could be anything from medicine to help when my gall bladder becomes inflamed to surgery to remove it. You don't pass gall stones like kidney stones, they stay with you forever. The only way to take them out is to remove the gall bladder. They say having a gall bladder attack like this is the closest you will ever come to knowing what a heart attack feels like...I think they are right and hope to never expereience it again!!!

At the same time, we have had a sick puppy who is struggling with eating and fighting a common parasite for puppies. We are hoping her medicine will start working and that she will regain her appetite. Today, she is finally starting to look like an energetic puppy!

Thank goodness I was feeling better the next morning and we were able to celebrate the 4th of July with the Ossege family and see the fireworks at the Fort.

We bought a BIG load of fireworks to bring to the Grothaus celebration, the kids can't wait to watch them! We went to the Ft. Thomas Parade at the top of our street this morning. Could we just get one year without rain of on the 4th???

I will post pics from the Grothaus celebrations tomorrow; time to go enjoy family and fireworks!