Weekend Report

Continuing the weekend report..... ;)

Saturday morning was a blast! I met two friends and their daughters at IHOP for breakfast, then we all headed to the rubber stamp convention. This convention was much smaller than the one in January, but I still found a couple of booths that I really liked. One in particular was spectacular to me - I can't remember the name, but it was full of templates and supplies for dry emblossing, which I love. Every time I see cards made with this technique it strikes me again how elegant it looks. Even after helping do about a million wedding invitations for a friend's son's wedding I still enjoy doing dry embossing! Anyway, we were at this booth for quite some time and watched a demo on coloring and glittering after embossing that was very subtle and pretty. I'm now set up with supplies for trying this myself. ;) Luckily tomorrow night I'll be going to a scrapbooking night at my church and I think I'll bring this stuff to work on.

After I got home Keith, Lynne' and I headed out to Plano to look at a boat. We first stopped at Scotty P's for lunch, which we loved, and then my sweet husband took me to Woolie Ewe. Oh WOW! We all got an email the day before that they were having a 40% off everything sale and I almost didn't go because I knew it would be like a kid in a candy store. I've heard from bunches of my friends and the goodies they got and there were smiles all around in the store. I did good and didn't buy nearly as much as I'd like, but I'm still waiting on that winning lottery ticket!

We didn't like the boat, so headed home and traded the daughter for the dog and the three of us headed north to Gainesville to look at another boat. More than anything it was just nice to have that time alone talking together, regardless of what purpose we had.

And yesterday afternoon after church the three of us went with James and Loni to see the movie RV at the dollar movies. I dearly loved this movie and laughed so much. Robin Williams is just such a mess and this seemed like such a real movie to me. We did talk about some of the character flaws on the way home, so I'm glad to see that all my kids are so well grounded. It just makes me so proud of them and really it's such a small thing I suppose. The rest of the evening we grilled hamburgers for dinner and then played a few rounds of Farkel. Just a really good family evening.

~ Elizabeth

Nothing purchased can come close to the renewed sense of gratitude for having family and friends. - Unknown

Scrapbooking Baby Shower

Friday night after work I headed to my local scrapbook store for a surprise baby shower for one of the gals that used to work there. The food got set up and we sat and waited...and waited...and waited! I guess the surprise was on us as she was rather late and for some reason that just really tickled me. :) When she did arrive she was very touched and it was so good to see her little pregnant belly.

Besides the regular gifts all of those attending worked on some layouts for her baby book. We teamed up and it really turned in to quite a bit more fun than I anticipated, since I don't always feel very creative "on the spot" like that. But my teammate was a good friend, so it was fun to visit and work with her. I was very pleased with the layout we produced, but unbelievably forgot my camera and have no pictures of the layout or the shower.

At the end of the evening we tallied up and the mama-to-be had 22 pages in her baby book! Good times....

Gifts of Unity

This evening marks the end of a very busy, very satisfying week for me. Lots to blog about, but first I want to mention our church service this morning as it really spoke to me.

Our service was led by Pastor Oscar, who has recently returned with a team that went on a mission trip to Peru. He is an amazing man who has such a gift with missions and it was awesome to hear him speak today. Our church has been doing a series on "Unity" the last few weeks and today's sermon was on the "Gifts of Unity" or our spiritual gifts. It became an introspective service for me and I'll probably be praying on it for days to come.

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. - 1 Corinthians 12:27-28

Isn't this beautiful? God fully recognizes that we all have strengths and that they all work well together. I remember when we joined this church we were given a spiritual gifts quiz that would point us towards our strengths when finished. I had a score of zero on leadership and was not surprised one little bit! I do not enjoy nor do I feel a need to lead. I am perfectly happy filling the behind the scenes jobs and letting others make decisions. And our Pastor did assure us today that sometimes the "background" gifts can be the most awesome. I am willing and able to do some of the grunt work so that people who are gifted in other areas can go about their work. How awesome that there is such a diversity of gifts and that we can all work towards a common good!

We were also blessed with a quartet of young men visiting our church to sing acappella. Their style reminded me so much of the folk singers from the 60's and of course I do love that style of music. After service when we went to talk to the young men we were pleased to discover they had cd's to sell and we've been singing along with it today.

~ Elizabeth

A Knitting Party

Last night will be one I treasure for quite some time. It seemed like it would be fun, but little did I know just what a good time I would have.

A group of 9 of us met for Mexican food first and could barely eat for all the talking and laughing going on. Believe it or not the fun even included some flirting by a nearby male, until his mom picked him up out of the highchair to leave!

We next headed to the coffee house and met many more ladies for knitting and coffee. The only downside was the lack of cheesecake, but the proprietress has assured us that she will have plenty the next time we visit. The entire evening went by in a blur and too soon it was time to head home. I was driving along the turnpike (messing with my eye as I tried to find the invisihair that was niggling - probably one of those hairs from yarn!) and thinking back on the evening and realized that my silly little cheeks were sore from smiling! That signals a successful and fun evening indeed.

I have been wonderfully and abundantly blessed with the women that I've been meeting the past few years. It is so good to have ladies to share hobbies with and some special women to share giggles, phone calls and emails with.

~ Elizabeth

New Layouts

Last night was my monthly scrapbooking group and we were all pleased and excited to discover that this month's project would be using some of the brand spanking new Making Memories paper from CHA! We did two layouts in the two and half hours and I actually even finished - minus putting the pictures on the mats of course. The wealth of talent and sharing in this group always amazes me.

WFMW - No Stinky Chicken Allowed!

First let me say that I have my daughter-in-law to thank for today's WFMW since I didn't realize what I did was any big deal until we started talking about it!

Anytime I have chicken yuck (bones, skin, etc.) to throw away I first put it in a ziploc bag and place it in the freezer. On trash day I grab the bag out of the freezer and toss it in the trash, thus ensuring I will never have the dreaded "Bad Chicken Smell" from the garbage all over my home. Simple and works for me!

Need more tips? Head to Shannon's blog and discover many more links!