Whew!!!! The show is O.V.E.R! It was quite a week, getting everything ready. But it all came together fabulously, and we weren’t rushing around feeling stressed or hurried. Well, that was a lie – I was definitely feeling stress, but it was the “good kind”, excitement mixed with hope and uncertainty about how it would all go. The booth looked great, although I want to think more about how to do it even BETTER next time. We had a WONDERFUL response from the brides and their mothers and friends, and I am hopeful that this will bring a lot of new Las Vegas business my way. It was such a boost of confidence to have people ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the products, and I made some great contacts with other businesses too.

Oh, and guess who I got to meet today! Sandy Ferreira
who was a contestant on Season 2 of the Apprentice. (We LOVE that show around here!) Those of you who watch the Apprentice know that Sandy is the owner of a Bridal Shop and is an event planner. She was the perfect celebrity guest for the Bridal Show this weekend. They were supposed to have a little “welcome to the show pep-talk” for the vendors at 10:30, but everything was running behind, so when I went to the area to hear her speak, she was all by herself waiting. I got to shake her hand, and visit with her for a few minutes. She gave me some great tips on follow-up marketing (and how important that is), and told me how she grew her business attending bridal shows. She gave me some encouragement on how to speak to brides after the show, and how to help set myself apart while they were in my booth. It was AWESOME! The only thing that would have made it better is if I’d have had my camera with me and got a picture with her too! Oh, and at the end of the day, she was near the door talking to the producers of the show, and she called out a goodbye, and “nice to meet you and good luck”. I thanked her again for all her info and tips. I feel a little silly being “star-struck” by the whole experience, but that’s how I feel! I definitely had more confidence today, and I plan to follow her advice on after-the-show marketing.

Ok, I’m one TIRED gal, so off to rest. Pictures of the booth will be up as soon as I have time to get them off the camera.

The Bridal show is THIS WEEKEND! And I’m almost ready! There is still a lot of last-minute printing/wrapping to do, but that’s about it. Mom and I had a fun shopping excursion to get all the last “little touches” for the booth, and it’s all finally coming together in my mind now. We found a great little basket for the Door Prize we are supposed to offer, and I created a series of matching wrappers and labels for it last night so it’s almost done. I’ll try to post a picture or two when I have a chance.

I haven’t had a chance to even THINK about scrapbookin’ this weekend. My new schedule lately has been to work on LO’s on Sunday afternoons, but that didn’t happen yesterday. I was kinda bummed, because I have some great ideas for LO’s in my head, and I want to work on them before I lose them for good. I will just have to set aside a week or two to catch up after this show.

There are quite a few things, non-work and non-scrapbook related that I’d like to blog about, but I can’t seem to find the words and/or the time to get it typed. I can always tell when I’ve been slacking on my personal journaling, because my mind starts to whir and spin a million miles an hour. I haven’t used the blog for much personal journaling, because I’m still feeling out my comfort zone with blogging, but the more personal stuff is bound to start creeping in as I blog more often. I have a lot on my mind that needs to work it’s way out, in journaling of some kind, blog or not. Things like spiritual warfare and stress of living in las vegas, the difficulties of finding friends while living in a town like las vegas, raising my kids up in the way they should go (especially while living in las vegas). Yea.. there is a theme there, for sure. This might not be the best place for all that “blah” to come out, and I’m sure I’ll have to be guarded somewhat, but be forewarned that some of my posts in the coming weeks might not be all positive and upbeat as I work through some of this stuff. (Not that some of them posts in the past have been all that cheery, but you know… it might get worse, before it gets better).

In a little while Allan and I (with no kids!) are heading to Kingman for a little afternoon/evening excursion. At first glance, it seemed like a bad time to be heading out of town – what with all the last minute stuff to do for the show, but Allan and I desperately need some alone time where we can finish a conversation and just BE together. We’ll eat at our favorite restaurant (Cracker Barrel) for dinner, and hopefully get refreshed and re-energized because of our time together. I know I’ll be all the better for it, and accomplish MUCH more the rest of this week.

Ok, enough for now. While I’m waiting for Allan to come get me, I need to go print more wrappers and CLEAN UP MY OFFICE SPACE before I go INSANE! See ya on the other side of tomorrow!

I’m a little weepy. Why you ask? Cause I finally got tagged (by BzyMom13 aka Angi)!!! Does this make my blog official?

Ok, it IS also almost 1 a.m., so my over-excitement about the tagging, and my emotional weepy reaction may be more because I’m EX.HAUST.ED! I just spent four hours over at the folks’ house, painting trim and cutting in edges for hubby, so he could paint walls. And that was after a full day of working on Bridal Spectacular stuff. Yep.. one tarred girl! That’s me.

So, what was I talking about? Oh yeah.. I got tagged! Here are my answers:

Four jobs you’ve had in your life:
- Nursing Assistant
- Preschool Teacher
- Residential Assistant (and then supervisor to other RA’s) for developmentally disabled adults
- Web Designer

Four movies you would watch over and over:
- Sense and Sensibility
- Sound of Music
- The Jazz Singer
- Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
Do these answers make me a dork??

Four places you have lived:
- Sacramento, CA
- Santa Rosa, CA
- San Leandro, CA (one street away from Oakland!)
- York, Nebraska

Four TV shows you love to watch:
- Apprentice
- My Name is Earl
- ummmmm… I don’t watch much TV

Four places you have been on vacation:
- Williams, AZ; train trip to Grand Canyon
- I think it’s time FOR a vacation, cause I can’t think of any others
- Oh yea.. before I moved to Las Vegas.. I vacationed here twice.

Four websites you visit daily:
- Heavenly Promises (always making updates to it, so I visit it at least twice a day! )
- Scrapmommies.com
- Scrapartist.com
- TheDigiChick.com
- Google
- and about 50 bagillion blogs and scrapbook sites that would make “visit daily” list more like 4 HUNDRED. Yea, I think my kids might be a bit neglected!

Four of your favorite foods:
- nachos
- chocolate – it’s a food right?
- chicken mcnuggets from McDonalds (don’t ask, I don’t know WHY I’m addicted to them. Do you think they have some kind of preservative or something that makes me crave them??).
- chocolate – Yes, it’s my favorite twice

Four places you would rather be right now:
- in bed
- in York, NE
- on a train, with hubby
- in a bubble bath

Four bloggers you are tagging:
- Samuel (yes, I’ll have to type his answers for him. Think that will work?)
- Laura
- Um, this is how BAD of a participant in the blogger community I am. I lurk on other people’s blogs, and there aren’t any other blogger I can think of who would know me well enough to not think it’s weird that I tagged them. (Just pretend I said something coherent and agree with me on that one). So, yes, I read 40 bagillion blogs, but do any of the authors know me? Nope, not many. I wonder if I need to think about THAT one.

Off to bed before I fall out of my chair in utter ex.haust.ion!

So, in the middle of getting ready for the BIG BRIDAL SHOW (aaaghh!), I am also helping hubby with some home improvement projects at his folks’ house. Today, I painted a hallway, and watched hubby work on a wall in the kitchen. I say “watched”, cause that’s about all I could do. It would have been too difficult for us to try and work on it together, so I did what I could and then cheered him on. He’s still working on it right now. (Well, hopefully he is still working – I left and came home, so he COULD be just hanging out with his dad instead of working. I’m not there to crack the ole’ whip!)

Yes, home improvement projects, and only TWO weeks left before my show. Did I mention that yet? TWO weeks! Ok.. deep breathing….in…out….whoooooooooo.

I managed to finish my flyer for the show last night. I have a few minor edits that I found this morning, but other than that, it’s READY to print. Estimates are that there will be around 1200 to 1500 brides at the show, so I’m planning to print 1000 flyers. Too many? I guess we’ll find out! I also need to get cracking on printing all the gum wrappers for the samples we’ll be handing out. I’m doing 800 of those. 800 sticks of gum. Yea, that’s gonna take a little while. Good thing my Mama is here to help out! And I have decided, sort of last minute, to go ahead and add Hershey(r) kiss labels and Peanut Butter Cup labels to the list of products I’m making. So, had to order the round labels, and start working on some samples. I think we’ll be giving those away as well, but doing 800 of those should be a piece of cake compared to the gum sticks.

Why am I writing all this in my blog? I have no idea, except I really want to update the blog more often, and this is pretty much ALL I think about right now. Well, this… and scrapbookin! But, I’m trying to refrain from working on layouts as much as possible. Yea… that’s going REALLY well. See…..

Journaling reads: “Samuel with his favorite toy – macrame cord!”
Papers and stamp from “Weekender” kit by Jan Crowley

Background papers (including header text filler) from “Wonderland” kit by Jan Crowley; Bow from “Zoey” kit by Clara Wallace of Matter Of Scrap

Yep, not doing layouts… none at all!

Now, I’m off to actually WORK on WORK, and try not to hyperventilate.

Oh yea, and to rest… cause there’s plenty of painting yet to do at the folks’ house.

Two weeks… I have two weeks to finish getting everything ready for the Bridal Show. It’s certainly possible to get it all done, but oh my goodness! The To-Do list is still pretty long! One of my problems is that I’m always thinking of things I could add, other wrapper designs I could put together, ways I want to arrange my flyer and brochures, etc. I guess I probably should just QUIT thinking and start working, and let all the pieces fall into place as they will.

In other news, we’re having “sleep” issues again. I think I went a week.. maybe two…with some fairly decent sleep at night. But, Baby Allan appears to be “teething” again, and has decided that 2 a.m. makes a GREAT bedtime. Right now, Daddy is holding him, so my arms can take a break. If he’s not asleep by 1, it will be my turn again. Thank goodness Mema (my mom) is here now, and I can take a nap undisturbed while she hangs out with the kiddos. It’s just awfully hard to get ready for the Bridal Show, when I’m sleeping instead of working! Sigh… I’m sure this isn’t the last time I’ll write about sleep and bedtime issues with him.

Off to work on a Friday To Do list… and hope I’ll be awake enough to tackle it!

Well, it’s official. I’m 100% addicted to digital scrapbooking. I still plan to do the paper variety, especially when my sis comes next month for a WHOLE WEEK, withOUT the kids!!!! (Yep, just a tad bit excited about THAT!) Traditional paper scrapbooking is great, and it has it’s own rewards and challenges, but it’s not as versatile and easy to do as digital scrappin is. I just counted layouts, and I’ve done almost 40 in less than 30 days. Yea, that’s a lot of sitting at my computer! I’ll probably only get 10 or so done of the paper kind when my sis is here. It will be fun to have a mixture of the two kinds in my albums.

I made a list of my “Must Scrap” to catch up on Samuel’s life, and it’s only 30 or so layouts. That means in a month, I could conceivably be almost caught up! I’ve been working on Baby Allan’s pics as we go, so I’m not too far behind with him. By March, I could be working on pictures AS WE TAKE THEM. Radical!

Here are a couple of the newest layouts I’ve done:

Papers and elements are from “Cute Christmas” and “Falling Snow” kits by Heather Roselli. I created the bow on the present using her papers, and I re-colored the snowflake on the top of the tree, from silver to gold.

Papers and elements are from the “Falling Snow” kit by Heather Roselli.

So, I’ve been having SO much fun with my new hobby, that I decided it was time to turn it into a part of my business. (Doesn’t that almost always happen for me? The answer is YES!) Creating papers, elements, graphics, etc. for digi-scrappin is really a perfect extension of what I already do. It’s just one more “branch” on the ever growin tree that makes up Delight Design. (It’s almost 1 a.m., so forgive me for the silly cliched talk tonight!) I mainly want to use this new venture as a way to keep the creative juices pumping. It’s really more about keeping my business fun and interesting, as it is about making money. There are some amazing designers out there, doing some terrific things. There are a few who I’ll mention in a future post, for those of you interested in checking out the digi-scrappin world.

I mainly want to have an outlet for the few things I put together. So, with the dawn of the new year, and the beginning of a new adventure, I made some goals for 2006. They are:

- Finish the creation of several already started kits and mini-kits
- Begin submitting layouts for publication
- Become a more regular member of various scrappin sites
- Find my place on two or three Creative Teams
- Begin giving away freebies and selling my kits and other designs
- Use the new blog/site as a way to inspire and help others to do all of the above!*

* The new blog/site is coming SOON. It’s actually up already, but I’m doing a lot of tweaking and figuring out how things will work best. I’ll do an official announcement here, and on my other sites, once I’m a little more happy with the overall feel of it. I expect that it will be sometime AFTER the Bridal Show I’m doing at the end of this month. I need to set aside the digiscrappin for a few weeks and FOCUS, FOCUS on wedding, wedding, wedding wrappers! Oh yea, and CLEAN my house, since my Mom is coming in THREE days!

Off to sleep for now… more soon!

One of my new year’s “goals” is to write in my blog regularly. Since I haven’t updated since Christmas, I guess I’m a little behind on that goal! I need to update both boys’ websites with all the fun Christmas pics, and I need to write Baby Allan’s 8 month update. At the rate things are going, he will be 9 months before that happens!

This is going to be one very busy January. We have several “home improvement” projects going on with the folks, and I’m participating in a “Bridal Spectacular” show at the end of the month. I’ve done several shows with the HeavenlyPromises products, but they’ve been “generic” craft shows, or the Tulsa Workshop booth where the focus was more on Christian products overall. This show is the first one I’ve done that is specifically “Bridal”, and it’s really a BIG deal, considering how much it cost to be a part of it and how much potential there is in this town to get wedding business. Between getting orders from the florists, bridal shops, and wedding chapels… and doing business with the brides coming to Vegas for their wedding, there is HUGE potential. My mom is coming next week to help out before the show, and to visit. She is going to help me man the booth at the show, and I’m looking forward to that. We always have a great time together when we do shows. We’ve been doing them for as long as I can remember, in one form or another. I guess I really AM my mother’s daughter when it comes to this kind of thing!

Uh oh.. baby just started crying. More later!