Just over a week until December!! How did it creep up on us so fast? I have been getting into the Christmas spirit though lately and managed to get a couple Christmas projects done this week.

The first one is an Advent Calendar using the Noel line from Love, Elsie. There is a tag in each pocket, and each day Brent and I will take turns pulling a tag out. Each tag has some sort of activity on it that we have to do that day, such as “bake Christmas cookies and decorate together” “Movie night – you pick the DVD”, “Game night – You pick the Game”, “Do a Random Act of Kindness today”, etc. Something different on every 25 tags, and I tailored them all towards us (as in a couples thing) since we don’t have kids. This was a really fun project to make. If you’d like to see a tutorial I wrote on how I did it, you can read it here at iScrap (the articles section is currently being revamped)

****I have been having an awful time with my email lately – some messages are not getting sent and I’m not receiving a bunch either. If you have emailed me and I have not responded, please email me again – I do respond to each email that I receive.  Please use only this email for the time being: jess.acs@gmail.com  Hopefully these problems will get sorted out soon****

A new milestone…..yep, I turned the big 3 0 yesterday.  I still can’t believe I am 30 already.  The weekend was good, Brent, the dogs and I went back to the island for a couple days. We went out with a couple of my friends Saturday night for some drinks but we ended up going home early as I was feeling quite miserable with the cold I had just come down with. What fun I was – we went home and I was asleep in bed by 11:30!! Sunday was perfect though, we got to hang around my parents house all day not having to go anywhere and then we had a family dinner that night which was fun. My dad cooked an awesome meal for everyone and we had ice cream cake for dessert (my favorite!).

Thankfully my mom did not put all 30 candles on the cake! lol

Love this photo I got of my parents. We were joking around and laughing once everyone left after dinner. My parents are so much fun! xoxo

Here are a few more cool blogs to check out:

http://hallowshexdesign.blogspot.com/  Missy Sue Hanson

http://scrapbook-gal.blogspot.com/ Scrapbook Gal  Jennifer Summers

http://www.keelyy.blogspot.com/ Keely Yowler

Yes we have added another rescue animal to our household, here is Arthur – a 9 month old lop bunny, our newest family member.

He is absolutely adorable, but he really isn’t nice at all. We have had him almost 3 months now and we’ve been trying to tame him, but he hates to be held or picked up. He is fine with being petted UNLESS he knows we are trying to get him back in his cage, then he is just nasty. I actually haven’t held him since the day we got him. I simply open the door to his cage, he jumps out on his own and runs around, then I coax him back into the cage somehow (usually by putting more food in his dish). He is not afraid at all of anything, he gets along well with all the other pets. Everyday we have the 2 dogs, the cat and the bunny running laps back and forth down the hall, through my scraproom and back into the rabbit/guinea pigs room. He even wrestles with Gracie (the cat). Arthur is also completely litter trained which is really nice.

I wanted to give a shout out to Brent though. He really does have such a heart of gold with these animals. I am very lucky to have found him, as there is no way I could be with a person who was not an animal lover like I am. As I was driving to the LSS tonight to teach a class, I saw a calf running loose on the side of the highway. It must have gotten out of the farm that was right there, but he was on the wrong side of the fence, and only a few feet from all the traffic on the highway. Of course I panicked thinking the poor thing was going to run out and get hit so I called Brent right away, described exactly where I saw the calf, and he said he would call somewhere right away to report it. And he did. And I knew he would, I knew I could call him and he would feel that panic I felt knowing there is an animal who could be in danger and wanting to help. Last summer when we were visiting my parents, we were driving back to their house one night down a dark country road and we came across 2 large dogs standing on the side of the road all alone. We pulled over, coaxed the dogs to us to check for tags (which they didn’t have any of), then we tried to get them into our car. We just didn’t want them to get hit, and we wanted to find their owners. The dogs ended up running off before we could get them into the car, and we followed them for awhile trying to find them but they ran into the woods.

Anyway, kudos to Brent for trying so hard with Arthur. He has taken such a liking to this little fireball of a rabbit. He tries to hold him, despite all the many scratches and numerous bites (and Arthur bites so hard, he draws blood) he has endured. And it doesn’t stop him, he still LIKES this rabbit! I just know that there isn’t an animal in need that we wouldn’t turn away, if only we had a bigger house so we had room for more.

So thank you Brent, for loving these critters as much as I do. xoxo

First off I have been meaning to put this up here and I keep forgetting, but this blog looks best when viewed with Firefox web browser, not Internet Explorer. I used to always use IE, and then once I was introduced to Firefox, I’ve never looked back – it’s AWESOME!! And FREE!! Try it, you will not be disappointed, you can download it here

I just found out that I’ll be making a trip to Houston, Texas in January! Woohoo!!! I’m teaching 2 classes at CKC Houston – January 18 & 19. I’m so excited to be going! It will be my first time in Houston, and another thing that’s really cool, is the headquarters of iScrap is based there.

Here is the class project: A Pet themed accordion album

We had some crazy weather here on the west coast yesterday! Power was out all over the place and the wind was out of control! So what did we decide to do? We bundled up, and ventured out to do some close up storm watching! It was so wet, so cold, but a lot of fun believe it or not. We drove to White Rock Beach (and got detoured along the way due to a fallen tree), then we walked all the way to the end of the pier (despite the warnings of “enter at your own risk” and having to duck under the yellow caution tape that roped off the pier) – there was actually many others who were doing the same thing. It was even hard to walk at times cause the wind was so strong. Brent and I both had our cameras and I managed to get a few pictures, but he got way better ones! Check out his story about our adventure here

Zoey loved the weather – she loves to be out in the rain and wind, Angus on the other hand was less than thrilled at having to be out there (and I ended up carrying him all the way back down the pier and to the car)

For those who asked, I put the instructions up for the envelope/tag mini album, they can be downloaded here (they can also be found on the Tutorials page

First up, something very cool to check out – this week’s webisode on Craft TV weekly is featuring Christina Treu from MyPagesTalk.com. Check out the webisode here

We met Christina and her sister Adrienne at Memory Trends in Las Vegas – they created these cool little Speakin’ Up Voice Recorders – that you can paint, distress, cover with paper and embellishments, sand, and then add them right to your scrapbook pages or projects. This webisode shows some great ideas on how to turn them into Christmas Tree ornaments – I’m sure you will want several of these cool things once you see how easy and fun they are to decorate and use. These creative sisters are super sweet (not to mention gorgeous! :) )

A couple other things to check out:

There are 2 awesome contests to check out on iScrap!

Reflections Photo Contest : Prize: Canon Digital Camera (Value $250)

“My Favorite Things” Layout contest: Prize: Adobe Elements (Value $100)

Back home once again, it’s been a long day of traveling. I had to fly first to Dallas, then hung out there at the airport for a couple hours while I waited for my flight to Vancouver. It was hot! There I was dressed for winter wearing 4 tops including a big down filled puffy vest. I felt like I was going to melt just walking from the plane into the airport. After peeling a couple layers off I got to know half of the airport really well in my quest to find a Starbucks, which there weren’t any of in my terminal, believe it or not. In my travels I came across an Ipod Vending machine! I guess vending machines aren’t just for drinks and chips anymore. Now you can buy accessories for your traveling companion (your Ipod of course) or a new Digital Camera, if that happens to be what you’re in the market for while waiting for your flight. Ok, am I the only person who has not seen these yet?? My 3 trusty traveling companions include my Ipod, laptop, and Nintendo DS, all of whom could have benefited from some sort of purchase from the high tech vending machine. I did try to take a picture of it, without being too obvious. Sorry for the blurry pic, but I had to take it quick between groups of people walking by.

Anyway, the flight was good, and arrived early which is always a bonus. I had the entire row of seats all to myself – Fabulous! There were TV’s on the plane – which means in flight movies! – Fabulous! In flight movie: Hairspray. Um, not so fabulous. I was kind of disappointed as it had a great cast (although it was weird to see John Travolta playing a woman…). Maybe it was the fact that I was squinting at the small movie screen, or the other distractions of being on a plane, but I could just not focus on the movie at all & all the constant singing and dancing was driving me crazy. Perhaps I will give it another chance one day, I should know better then to watch them on planes, this always happens – I just have such a hard time focusing.

The good news is I finally finished a book! I’ve been reading this book since I bought it in Las Vegas back in September. I absolutely love reading but hardly get a chance to anymore. All I seem to read now are scrapbooking magazines or those celebrity news/ People type magazines while I’m on the elliptical at the gym.

I’ve been in 5 different airports in the last week and I have to say that I think Vancouver is the nicest :)

Overall I had a great time with my family in Indy, I can’t wait to go visit them again in March.

New Stores I discovered and love: (and a huge THANK YOU to my sister who took me around and introduced me to all these fabulous places!)

Hobby Lobby: Fantastic! And they had an awesome sale on ribbon which made me very happy!

Cost Cutter: Some cool stuff here

DSW Shoes: Self explanatory

Archivers: Totally awesome

Panera Bread: their Harvest Salad is AMAZING!!!

Wild Oats: LOVE this store! Wish we had one here.

Some of my other fave’s that we don’t have at home:

Petco: Had to go pick up some goodies for the furries!

Trader Joes: No Pudge Brownies, Dried Mango fruit sticks, and think thin protein bars – YUM!

Crate & Barrel: Always a favorite

Borders: I could spend all day here

Bath and Body Works: mmmmmmm…..

Target Superstore: Huge! So much stuff here!

Just a quick post for today – I’ve got only 2 and a half days left here in Indianapolis. I am really enjoying this city and I can’t wait to come back (only a few more months as I’ll be back in March – yay!). Having lots of fun with my sister – she introduced me to DSW shoes yesterday! Wow!!! Got some FABULOUS shoes though, I’m so happy about that! We also went to 2 different malls, Crate and Barrel (LOVE LOVE LOVE this store!), Restoration Hardware (another first for me), oh – and we found a Wetzels Pretzels!!!! Brent and I discovered this place in Downtown Disney when we went to the Anaheim CHA last January. Hands down the BEST pretzels I’ve ever had. Last night my sister took me out for a birthday dinner to this great authentic Mexican restaurant – SO yummy!! Yesterday was a great day :)

So, this morning, I’m trying to catch up on my emails. Here are some more blogs to check out!

Kathie Davis

Trace’s Creative Pieces

Emine Pala

Nili Elburg

A Sweet Smackerel

And one more: this is the Tilano Fresco Blog: you can read Nicole’s rendition of our CK trip here :) Tilano Fresco Blog

I also wanted to make a little note here about a previous post about some iScrap membership giveaways: some settings were off in my blog options and it wasn’t allowing people to post comments. A few people managed to find a way anyway (way to go :)) but its been fixed now. So for everyone who did manage to leave a comment – I’m sending you all a free membership. I’ll do another giveaway soon.

CKC Seattle was a lot of fun!! Nicole is absolutely hilarious, I had so much fun traveling with her.

We started our journey Thursday morning at 4am when she arrived at my house to pick me up. Both of us had each only had 3 hours of sleep! We made it through the border super quick (there were no other cars there – first time I’ve never had to wait in line to get through). We arrived really early at our hotel – just after 6am! Luckily they let us check in so we could drop our stuff off, then we headed over to the conference center to get ready for my first class which was at 8.

Here we are at 7am all bright eyed and excited about being at CK!!

The class went really well – it was so great having Nicole there helping plus we had a couple helpers that were assigned to the room. After it ended we wandered through the vendor fair to do some shopping and then we headed to the mall! Woohoo!!! As tired as we both were, we were geared up enough energy to shop.

On our way to the mall – in our matching sunglasses which we got in Vegas (on a trip there for Memory Trends) last month!

However, the energy didn’t last all that long, plus we didn’t have much luck finding stuff we wanted. We stuck it out until mid afternoon then we headed back to the hotel, lay around and watched Oprah, then went back to the conference center for Nicole’s class which was at 5:30. Her class was great (Tilano Coaster class)- we had 3 helpers this time – and after it was over, the remaining kits were snatched up like hotcakes!!

We had so much fun during her class that we suddenly got a second wind – Time to shop again!! We went to a different mall this time and shopped until 9, realizing we hadn’t eaten yet, so next stop was the Cheesecake Factory. Not the greatest experience: waiting 40 minutes to get in, food not great (mine), also finding a huge hunk of cardboard mixed in with my broccoli pieces (just lovely), and having an arrogant server who screwed up our bills and made us wait an extra 25 minutes while he fixed it. We didn’t get back to the hotel until after 11pm and we were exhausted!!!

We got about 6 hours of sleep before the alarm and wake up call woke us. It was so hard to get up, and then we dragged ourselves back to the conference center. This was my largest class yet – I’m not even sure exactly how many people were there, between 40 and 50. I’m such a shy person too, I hate public speaking, but I didn’t have time really to think about it, so I wasn’t all that nervous -surprisingly! The class went really well – what fun people we had in all 3 of our classes this weekend!

After this last class, we headed back to the hotel, had breakfast and then I had to repack my suitcase twice to get everything to fit. We checked out and left for the airport, luckily we were early cause on the freeway WE RAN OUT OF GAS!!! Yes, completely. We were just about at the exit for the airport turnoff and suddenly Nicole was like “oh no…Jess…” and she looked really panicked. Immediately I thought we missed a turnoff or something (like we had yesterday – we were very good at getting lost!).

So Nicole exclaims “I think we’re out of gas!” and here we are going around a bend in the FREEWAY with a cement barrier on our left side and NO shoulder, nowhere to pull over. So the panic sets in and luckily we manage to roll far enough ahead to where a little bit of a shoulder appeared. We literally rolled into this and stopped. CRAP

We are sitting there kinda laughing a bit – a nervous laugh like “is this really happening??” but then we’re like “what are we going to do??”. Literally 2 seconds later a cop pulls up behind us and comes to my window (cause he’d get run over if he went to Nicole’s window – the lane of the freeway was RIGHT there). He called the DOT (Department of Transportation) to see if there was an Incident Response truck nearby and there was so he came within about 10 minutes. He took me to the nearest gas station to fill up his portable gas can, then we came back to the car and he put the gas in for us. What an awesome service this is – we don’t have this in Canada. It’s a government funded service – they have trucks that patrol the highways and freeways all day looking for stalls, accidents, debris on the roads, stuff like that. They push cars out of the lanes, give people gas if they run out, move stuff off the roads so people don’t hit it. Great service.

I hate to think about it if the car had died just 15 feet further back, we would have been in the middle of a lane in a curve & guaranteed we would have been hit.

The cop told us this was the 2nd WORSE spot in the entire state we could have run out of gas in. Yeah thanks buddy, make us feel even better why don’t you?

We did make it to the airport on time though! Then after spending all afternoon and most of the evening on airplanes, I arrived in Indianapolis, my first time here – it seems like quite a nice city. Best thing about it of course is that my sister and her family are here! It’s so good to see them, my nieces are so adorable!