The Memory Bee

Howdy from Houston!

I've had a wonderful weekend here in Texas, teaching at By Design Scrapbook Boutique and spending a few hours today doing one of my favorite things...shopping!
I know I say it every time I teach somewhere but truly I am so blessed to get to do what I do! I meet and know the nicest people! Since this was my third time teaching at By Design, I saw many familiar faces and friends. I hope you enjoy your projects, learned some new things, and made new friends, too. I can't wait to come back again!
We painted and distressed and Binderied and folded and made some really cute ATC cards...right? I have so much fun getting out of my comfort zone with paints and inks and all and now enjoy passing that on to my students. Tranforming the grungepaper to look like leather is just so cool!

By Design was celebrating their second birthday, so of course there were cupcakes with glitter ...the BEST I've ever tasted! The store is just so unique. It really is a destination store...if you ever have the chance to shop there, it's really worth it!

Friday night after class I got back to my hotel, got my jammies on, and crawled into bed with my computer. I had been up since 3am eastern time, so I was exhausted. Within a few minutes the fire alarm went off! I opened my door to see what was going on and saw water streaming out from under the door across the hall. The boys in that room had knocked the sprinkler off the ceiling! The water doesn't just spray out...it comes out like a fire hydrant. Within a few minutes, there was about water about 6" deep coming into my room! I was able to move to the floor above but didn't get a great night's sleep! I wasn't too happy with the way the hotel handled it, so I didn't want to stay there a second night. I decided to move to the hotel where I was already planning to stay the third night near the Galleria. I had used Priceline to find a hotel near there and when my bid of $70 for a 4 star hotel was accepted, I found that I was going to be staying at the Hotel Derek. Things really do work out for the best! I've had two nights at this fabulous hotel...it is very cool! I told my husband that it's so cool that they have baskets for your clothes instead of drawers! How chic is that?! Here's a look at the room...I love the wall of windows with the couch that runs the length of the wall. The bathroom is one of the nicest I've seen and I stay in a lot of hotels! I didn't find out until after I was already settled in that they have "Lady Pink" rooms for female travelers with pink bedding and robes. Can't believe I missed that!

Can't wait to get home tomorrow though!

My guys

It was good to have all my men here for Father's Day, except my dad, who is still not feeling well in Florida and can't come home until he is well. It's the first time since college I think that we haven't been together on this day! I'm looking forward to him being here soon, I hope and pray!
Jeremy came home from college for the day...always so good to have him here to hug!

I've been a pretty sorry blogger lately! My life has actually been pretty boring. Assembling kits, preparing PowerPoint presentations for my classes, making travel arrangements, lining up the last couple stores where I'll be teaching this year (so excited to add Whim So Doodle in St. Petersburg, FL and All About Scrapbooks in Chesapeake, VA), getting in a few trips to Bravo and Starbucks with Brandon, and getting ready to go to Houston on Friday have consumed my days. All good things but not too exciting to photograph for the blog!
My gardens need attention! Hopefully I'll be able to take a little time to work on those this week...

A new winner!

I never heard from the first person the random number picker picked, so I put the numbers in again and it choose number 44...Marilyn! I know her! Congratulations! Thanks to everyone for all your comments...it was fun to read! I'll have to give bathtub updates every six months or so, to let you know how the tub holds up!

44 Powered by RANDOM.ORG 

Hi Debby! Your tub looks so nice.

The Tiny Attacher looks GREAT!

I love reading your blog.

Posted by: Marilyn Tschorke | June 09, 2009 at 03:19 PM

More before and afters...

I still haven't used my newly painted bathtub. The paint is supposed to "cure" for 72 hours but when I was redoing the caulk, I leaned my arm on the side of the tub and left an imprint. I'll use another shower for a couple more days just to be sure it's completely ready to go. It's so much more attractive than it was. And I love the new shower curtain. It just makes me happy!

The rug and towels are Simply Shabby Chic from Target and the shower curtain is from Anthropologie. I'll eventually repaint the dark pink walls with a pale pink. I'm the only one who uses this bathroom, so I can make it as girly as I want! Fun!

The reorganizing, sorting, and purging has continued in our bedroom. There are now no piles of stuff anywhere! I've been stalking the Target website, watching for a free shipping offer on these Simply Shabby Chic bookshelves that I've wanted. The shipping was $148 and I did not want to pay that much! Finally they had a free shipping offer and so I saved that $148! All my supplies for teaching (the punches and small things that get packed into baggies) just got piled in a corner of our room because there wasn't anywhere else to put them. Now they are organized into baskets and will be so easy to access when I need them. Here's the before and after:

Next to that shelf is a desk that was made by my great-grandfather's uncle. It has traveled with me since high school. I'll show a picture of that one of these days. I replaced a small bookshelf at the other end of the room with another one of the Target bookshelves and organized that area, too. (If you're interested in this Simply Shabby Chic furniture, I'm very impressed by the quality of the details. The reviews online are very mixed though. We only had a problem with one of the shelves that had a broken edge that we had to glue.)

As I've mentioned before, our master bedroom used to be an in-law apartment. We took the wall out between the living room and bedroom and made one large room. So we have a large room...big enough for a couch and TV area (this next picture shows the Simply Shabby Chic TV stand, too.) I'm just about done in this room. I just need to hang photos. Here's a look at that end of the room:

In between my little projects, I'm immersed in getting the two new classes (the travel album and part 2 of the ATC holder class) ready to teach in Houston at the end of the month. The living room and dining room are piled with boxes again, I'm cutting lots of ribbon, packing kits, writing instructions, making step samples, doing the Powerpoints, and all the details that go into new classes. Plus I have only one teaching date left open for the fall...working out plans for that, too!

Still waiting to hear from Sue about the Tiny Attacher punch!

And the winner is...

Edited to add: If I don't hear from Sue by this Thursday, 6/18, I'll choose a new winner and that person will have one week to contact me with their address. Thanks everyone!

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

173	

Timestamp: 2009-06-12 00:00:42 UTC

My friend also raves about Tim's tiny attacher but I have yet to cave in and buy one.

Posted by: Sue Bone | June 11, 2009 at 12:04 PM

Sue, please email me at memorybee@msn.com with your address. Congratulations! You will love this tool!
A big thank you to Tim for the nifty giveaway!

I've been painting...

I wish it was as much fun as painting some yummy colors on canvas and creating something cool, but it sure wasn't! I painted my bathtub! It was a bad shade of yellow...not even the buttery yellow it looks in the photo. I bought a tub painting kit at Lowe's and yesterday I finally tackled the job. It looks really nice for now, but we'll see how it holds up! I'll be out $35 and a few hours if it doesn't last. I need a new tub no matter what, but at least this might buy me a little time. I don't really want to spend $ on that right now! Here's look at the before and after...I'll show you another picture after it's dry with the new shower curtain...lots of ruffles...love it!

While we're waiting for the paint to dry, how about a little giveaway?! One of my favorite new things is Tim's Tiny Attacher. Do I really need another stapler? I know, I thought the same thing until I tried it and saw how adorable the little staples are and how it goes through chipboard and lots of layers of embellishments. It's just so cute for attaching things and for just making a little decoration on a page, like I did on this page in my travel album class. I have a Tiny Attacher and a package of refills to give away to one of my blog readers! Just leave a comment on this post and I'll draw a name to win it. The drawing will end on Thursday night at 8pm Eastern time. You want this..don't be shy!

Vintage inspiration

Again I've been holed up in my room, creating one more class that I'll be teaching in stores in the months to come. I wanted to create a travel album that would be useful and purposeful (sound familiar?) and wished I could just reproduce this really cool vintage scrapbook I picked up at an antique store a few months ago.

Instead, I used the album as inspiration and turned this plain gray piece of Tim Holtz's Grungepaper into a fabulous faux leather album cover with paints and inks. I can't wait to teach my students how to do this! I love it!

We're going to make our own 11" x 9" album using the brand new October Afternoon Road Map papers and embellishments, different size page protectors, 7gypsies naked paper bags, and lots of fun things! Then we'll put it all together with the 7gypsies Binderie punch! I would never think I would need another hole punch, but after using the Binderie punch and seeing how convenient and precise it is to mechanically punch the holes, it has become one of my very favorite tools. I plan on giving on away on my blog soon, so watch for that! You can see more pictures and read more about this class here.

Here's a look at just one of the pages...

I'll be teaching this class, the new ATC holder class "These are the Days," and the Just Be album at By Design Scrapbook Boutique in Houston on June 26 and 27 and then at the other stores on my schedule in the weeks after that. I don't sell the kits to students myself until a class is completely done at stores, so if you'd like to buy a kit, you can call one of the stores on my schedule, and they would be glad to send you one. Once you receive the kit, you can email me, and I'll send you instructions and pictures of every page.

Thank God for perenial flowers that are just growing away without any attention from me! My colorful annual flowers have been sitting for almost two weeks, just waiting to hit the window boxes, pots, and the ground around the house. Soon...I promise!

Such good times!

CKU Nashville 2009 has come and gone and now I'm reliving the happy memories of the sweet southern ladies that I spent the last few days with! It's no secret that I love CKU (or I wouldn't have taught at about 28 of them!) and the biggest reason that I do is the time we get to spend creating something special together and sharing our stories.

Some highlights...

• Hearing the stories that my students will be documenting in their "Once Upon a Time" albums: stories of dear family members, gardens, summer fun, friendships, and more. We shed some tears and made new friends. You girls did so great! I could have left and gone to the pool...everyone was working and visiting and doing their thing! I loved it!
• eating some fabulous food in the Opryland restaurants! Mmmm...love the tastes of other's meals {:)} and the vanilla gelato with popcorn and caramel sauce. Oh, my!!
• spending time with good friends in the business and making new friends! We laughed till we hurt! A big thanks to Tim, Mario, Margie, Lucy, Teresa, Jamie, Trina, and Elizabeth!
• teaching this album track with such cute product from October Afternoon. The album we used from Fancy Pants made it so unique because of the mixture of chipboard, felt, and acrylic pages. A huge thanks to them for supplying the product for our classes! Several other manufacturers provided other things that made our album special, and I thank them so much! 7gypsies provided Binderie punches for each person to use and they loved them! You don't think you need another hole punch until you try this tool and then you have to have one!

If I had extra kits for this class, I could have sold it many times over, but I don't. The good thing is that I plan to make it into a class to teach in stores this fall, so you can watch for it then.
Word has it that CKU Provo in August will be the last CKU. It is going to be very sentimental...CKU has been a huge part of my life for the last 7 years!

I finished off the weekend with a fabulous time teaching two sold out classes at Scrappuccino! My feet were tired by then but it was so nice to see everyone! Lola and Kathie are so sweet! Thank you so much for your hospitality and to the students who worked so hard. Check out all your cute pictures in the photo album on the side!

Now it's back to work...another class to design for the end of the month at By Design in Houston! I'll have peeks up soon.