I got a new camera this weekend! My boyfriend bought it for me! And let me tell you, it is way nicer than the one I had! When he took me to the store and told me his plan, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, a camera is a big deal, and it wasn’t his fault mine was stolen. I felt sort of funny standing there in front of all of those pretty cameras, I was having a hard time picking one out ’cause I didn’t want to get one that was nicer than I need or unnecessarily expensive, so he finally picked one out for me. And he picked a really good one! I still felt funny about him buying it for me while he was standing there paying for it, but let me tell you, once it was paid for, I had a hard time not dancing around right there in the middle of the store. I do believe a little skip may have slipped out, it’s not very dignified for an adult to skip in the middle of the store, but I just couldn’t help it.

He told me I could just file it away as a bad boyfriend tax, but let me tell you guys, he’s not a bad boyfriend, he’s a great boyfriend! By far the sweetest, best looking boy out there! And we have the best time together. I love him!

I wanted to take a picture to document the occasion, but the battery wasn’t charged, so here’s another one.

Can I just say, first of all, that my husband makes the best waffles!  Growing up, Matt’s mom taught him and his brother to make a breakfast item once they were old enough and every other Sunday he made the family breakfast.  Ask him to do any other cooking not using a grill and we have trouble, but great waffles.  Anyway…yesterday we had the famous Matthew waffle - Owen’s with extra syrup - played with the kids, and stayed in our jammies too long. 

Then, I packed it up and headed into the city to the Original Gino’s East in Chicago for pizza and to meet Virginia Miracle (is that not the coolest name ever?) for lunch.  VeeDub, as she likes to be called, is one of the staff from Brains on Fire www.brainsonfire.com  , which is the company Fiskars hired to help launch the Fiskateers.  We had lots of fun catching up and eating Chicago style pizza.  For those of you who don’t know, the Original Gino’s East is now in the old Planet Hollywood.  It is a huge space.  And, every inch of that space is covered in layers of graffiti that they moved from their old site to the new site.  Every piece of furniture, wall, etc… is covered in Sharpie Markers and White Out with signatures, phrases, dates, websites, and more dating back to who knows when.  There is layer over layer.  Pretty neat place to see…  Anyway, we braved the city traffic to O’Hare, which was terrible yesterday, but it gave us more time to chat.

After I dropped her off, too close to her flight time for comfort (only to find out this morning that her flight was canceled and she sat in the airport for a while), I went home and had some more fun play time with the kids before heading out to another crop, this time at Memories & Beyond in Downers Grove.  This was my first time helping to host a crop, do some demos, and a make-n-take as a Fiskateer.  I had a blast!  I got to hand out goodies and demo the craft drill.  I even had time to get a two-page layout done for myself! 

It may have been a long day with lots of spent gas, driving around, but I can honestly say that it was a good day for this mama…

Love your craft.

Here is my first project with it. It’s box #2- how cute is it? It comes with a scoring template too so you can get nice clean folds. (I just used a pen and pressed hard over the scoring lines because I don’t have a scoring tool- it worked just fine) The chipboard on this is from Heidi Grace (woodland) and the paper is Making Memories (love that Boho Chic!!!)

So if you see me at a crop you’ll likely see me doing a make ‘n take with this tool (and the HG chipboard of course!!!) and I’m going to make a bunch more of these little boxes to fill with treats and treasures to give away too. =)

Happy crafting!

Be passionate - craft!