I haven't Disappeared, Honest!

I know, I can't seem to keep up with anything or anyone the way I'd like to these days! Have the days gotten shorter? Either they did or my interests have just gotten broader, but at any rate I always feel that there is so much I want to do, look at and read about that often, at the end of the day, I have nothing tangible to show for the day other than the house being clean and the beds and laundry being done!

A couple of weeks ago hubby dragged me along for a nice, if very short, trip to Canada. We went to London Ontario for three days, soI really didn't get to see anyone I knew!  We flew from the Cincinnati airport (CVG), which is actually in Hebron, Kentucky to London (Ontario) via Toronto. As you can see from the very enhanced and brightened picture of Toronto I took from the airplane, we were not flying in on a bright sunny day! Now there was something that I found a little weird!

We flew Air Canada, and believe it or not, all but one leg of the trip was in a prop plane? Yes you heard me right, a plane with propellers, not jet engines! I can't remember the last time I did that, in fact I can't remember doing that at all, but given that I've been flying for over 45 years, yes I am that old though I was pretty young when I first flew to Paris, the odds are pretty good that I must have hopped on a prop plane at some point!

I was fortunate enough to meet and travel with two of Hubby's students and they were seriously the nicest young women. Imagine little me, and I mean that literally as I am just under 5 ft 4 walking with three people who range in height from 5 ft 11 to 6 ft 2!  Yup, I travelled with giants, LOL!

Someone who is not a giant and that we spotted while waiting for our plane in Toronto was Don Cherry and Ron MacLean of Hockey Night in Canada fame! We were reminded of his flamboyant jackets when in the airport in London where he had a jacket he had donated for a charitable cause. I took pictures of Andrea and Brandis with the jacket so they could show their friends and family.

 I did visit a Michaels and two local scrapbook stores while in London and I truly feel sorry for my Canadian scrapbook friends! At this time the Canadian dollar is at par or worth even a touch more than the US dollar, yet an item that costs $1.99 here, was  $4.49 there!  Seriously?  I guess that despite the fact that the item in question was made in China, it must have travelled to the US and then to Canada. 

My biggest disappointment was not finding anything at all in any of the stores that was made in Canada for the Canadian market.  There was one line of stamps in one of the local scrapbook stores, but that was it!  I hope that when I travel in the next year to Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec city, that I will be lucky enough to find something different than the big names we are all familiar with, Prima, My Minds Eye, K & Co etc. It is always finding the things I haven't seen first hand that enchants me when I visit a local scrapbook store!

Next I hope to post my "pages" for the March layout class I'm teaching, so please come back soon!

Thanks for dropping by,

M-C

Teaching Classes

Hi all, well it is official, I will be teaching classes again.  Yeah!  I've missed it, alot! I'm busy preparing two classes for Scrap, Paper Scissors in Loveland, OH and one for C-Shore Creations, Inc in Bellevue, KY.  Here is a short video showing the mini-book we will be doing at C-Shore.  I'm hoping to put kits for that minibook up on my Etsy store early next week.

Hope you Like it! You can order your kit on my Etsy shop now for delivery within three weeks! Or, you can order it already made!

Some Good Stuff

There is so much going on!  If you remember, one of my dreams was to go to CHA in Chicago this summer.  This is one dream that I'm going to achieve and for less than $300, all inclusive!  I was able to combine this trip with another and minimize the difference in airfare for the sidetrip to Chicago to only $90 more.  Thanks to my buddy Pat Davenport, Cricut teacher extraordinaire, I have access to the show floor and 2 roomates, one of them of course is Pat. The convention center is near Chicago O'Hare airport, so the shuttle will be free to and from the hotel, bonus! And the hotel is across the street from the convention center! Yeah!!! I will of course be reporting from CHA again, which if memory serves, is how this blog got started in the first place! Anyone else going to CHA that I can meet up with?

Those of you who follow me on Facebook know that I've been battling a very nasty bug which unfortunately forced me to abort a visit to Ramona's Store in Bellevue.  Ramona created my dream store while I wasn't looking and has expanded from just stamping, for which she is very well known in the area, to also providing scrapbooking and multi-media classes.  Ramona is a wonderful, warm, talented lady that I first met when she came to a Scrapbook Buddies Meetup! I'm going to teach scrapbooking at her store as soon as we can get together that is! Although she only opened her doors a very few months ago, her store has already expanded once. In addition, it and all the wonderful artsy stores in Bellevue, KY were recently featured in Cincinnati Magazine! I'm looking forward to feeling better, meeting Ramona and teaching again!