when will i see you again?

Seems like more often than not my blog post titles are titles of old songs or movies (or lines from old movies).

So, this time my post title (an old 70s song, if I'm not mistaken) is directed to SGT customers: when will I see you again? Hopefully I'll see some of  at you soon at either the Tuesday night Quickutz party, or the Thursday night customer appreciation/farewell potluck at SGT. I'm going to pop in to both of them so I hope I will see lots of you there! If I happen to miss you, just remember that you can keep up with me here or at my other blog, or on Twitter, or Facebook or by email. Or maybe I'll just run into you at one of the places we scrapbookers like to haunt (like Expo, or CHA, or ???)

In any case, sending hugs out to all the lovely ladies I've met through my association with the store and wishing you all the best!

(edited to add a pic that was taken at the SGT Employee potluck dinner last week - a fine looking group, if I do say so!)

home improvement

After the new roof - kinda hard to tell how bad the paint was, tho

We've lived in our house for about 11 years now. The first major anything we did in the way of maintenance/improvement was last fall when we re-roofed and exterminated. I guess you could say we "celebrated" the big 10 year mark with a new hat (roof).

This year we're on "phase 2" of our long-neglected home improvement. Our very dry & thirsty house was begging for a new coat of paint which it finally received last month. Then, last week we had a new front door installed. It's beautiful and solid and it "whooshes" when it closes. I like that.

After new paint - a subtle change, but makes such a diff!

Next week we'll be having our trees trimmed. And can I say that I can't believe that the tree work is going to cost about the same as the paint job. But like I said, it's been 11 years. The work is going to make such a difference.

Oh, and I almost forgot ... a new garage door is also on the list of improvements to be made.

Curb appeal? Yeah... we'll have it.

day 6 - socal shophop '09

Well, here's the recap of our very last day of Shop Hopping (better late than never!) We did the greater San Diego area as our last stint and had an ambitious plan, but thankfully the stores in that area are fairly close together and thanks to longer hours for the Shop Hop we managed to reach every last store and finish the full Shop Hop.

So our first stop was Scrappin Divas in Temecula. Our timing was perfect --we arrived just as the doors were opening.

Really wanted to loll and stroll up and down the block where the store was located - such a cute little area.

Here's what I left with:

Next it was Pink Pineapple in Vista.

We had the best time at this store. Gloria helped us to find lots of good stuff and gave us great suggestions for using the products we bought. And of course, you just can't beat the ribbons at Pink Pineapple. I went a little ribbon crazy as you can see:

After that we headed to Ever After in Carlsbad. They'd moved since the last time I'd been there (Shop Hop '07). I really like the new store --it's just as cute as the old one.

We got a little lost on our way to Jazi Crafts in Oceanside. Somehow the printer had cut off one of the step-by-step instructions in our mapquest and it was a crucial instruction because the wrong turn sent us away from the store. Thank goodness for cell phones and store clerks who can give directions!

 Found some more good stuff:

From there we headed to Paper Tales in San Diego. This was the first time any of us had been there and what a treat we were in for. Such a cute little boutique of a store. Lots of adorable stamps and cute little thises and thats.

I was happy to pick up some of the Maya Road velvet flowers that I've been wanting since CHA Winter.

Next stop: Scrapbook Your Life in San Diego. Here I am crouched down by their Shop Hop Display showing off my passport.

My favorite find at this store was the Spell Binders bird die - so cute!

We headed out of San Diego to Cool Scrapbook Stuff in Poway. This store has so much variety. You can find pretty much anything you're looking for.

I'm not sure exactly *what* I was looking for, but here is what I "found":

There was a second store to visit in Poway - Stamping Details. They had a fun make-n-take learning a technique with alcohol ink, and a really grrrrrrrrrrrrrreeat photo opp with a cut-out tiger.

And SOoooooo many stamps! Here's what I found that day:

Our last "official" stop of the day was Now and Then Scrapbooks in Wildomar. Was it ever crowded. My sympathies went to the girl behind the counter.

Voila, we finished Shop Hop '09 with days to spare. Well, we were *almost* finished. We actually had to make another stop to The Scrapping Table in Placentia because during our first visit one of our passports didn't get stamped. But thankfully it was right on our way back home so it worked out fine.

We all turned in our passports and were hopeful for the contests, but even if we didn't win anything we were just glad to have had a summer safari tooling around SoCal and enjoying ourselves.

The Postscript to our adventure is that none of us won any of the big ShopHop prizes. However, someone in our group *did* win an after-the-fact contest sponsored by ShopHop. It was a "make-n-take" contest for anyone who had participed in the Hop this year. And guess who won? It was me! Yup, I'm now the proud owner of a $50 gift certificate to The Scrappin' Table. I can't wait to stop by and see what's new.