Meeting online people IRL--and a giveaway!

October Afternoon has a warehouse in Minnesota, and about every year they have a warehouse sale. I can't go every time, but I've been to a few, and this year's sale was memorable in many ways.

First: the line. My friends and I joked that we should order a pizza while we waited, and we should have because the line was L O N G. The sale coincided with Scrapfest, so tons of people were there. Still, good company makes the line go quickly, and soon enough we were almost at the door.

When we got there, the women in front, who'd looked familiar, turned around and asked me, "Are you Buffy fan?" These were former CK peeps from Club CK! It was so awesome to meet Christie and Michelle IRL. We took a picture when we got inside, and we spent a lot of time talking as we made the S L O W journey through the warehouse to pay, so of course I had to scrap it. Here's the page:

I used a lot of older OA products on this page, so this page is sort of a commemoration of my times at the sales in addition to meeting these ladies. Here's some detail:

I have a lot of the die cut cards, so I used the title on them, curled back, as a page accent.

And now the giveaway!

I knew this was bound to happen eventually: I bought something at the sale I already had: the 8x8 Make it Merry pad of patterned paper and the Travel Girl patterned brads. They don't go together, but they will be good scrapping supplies year round. If you would like to have a chance at winning this, leave a comment telling me how the change of seasons is treating you. (This weekend is supposed to get down to 0 degrees...girding my loins for that one here.) I'll leave the comments open until Friday, November 22 8 P.M. CST and announce the random winner after that.

October Afternoon Warehouse Sale (and a giveaway!)

Like most people in the scrapbooking universe, I have been a big fan of October Afternoon for a while. No matter what the line, I love it. Here's a page I made a month or so ago using an upcoming line, Sasparilla, to document our Road Trip out West this past summer:


(Most photos from my iPhone using Instagram.)

How delighted was I last year when I found out that their warehouse was in Minnesota and they were having a sale. That was a Mother's Day present I gave to myself.

A week ago, the universe put itself in perfect alignment: OA announced another warehouse sale, and I had the day off from work, as did my scrapping buddies, the Scrapping J's, Jennifer, Janet, me, and Sandra. (Her nickname is Jo-Sandra so she can fit in, LOL!) We went down and saw a line-up to get into the warehouse:

Darn fire code limited the number of people inside.

There were some new products since the last sale and some new pricing on old stuff, so we went to town (well, at least I did). The wait to check out was long, but that's known as a photo op for scrapbookers:


I withstood the cashiers' pushing me to spend a little more to get the Boarding Pass paper pack (I already had it, but I can't believe I had the restraint!). Here we were outside with our loot:


I had so much fun I want to share:

Here's some papers, stickers, and a mini-album that I got. If you would like to be entered for a chance to win it, please leave a comment on this blog post, telling me what you like to do on an October Afternoon. You have until Sunday, October 30 at 8 P.M. CST to comment.

Check out Joann's this weekend!

If you have a lot of chipboard hanging around and you're wondering what you could do with it, here's something for you:

I have started playing around with this lately, and it is loads of fun. Mix it with paint and mist too, and there's so much you can do! Check out the chipboard as well: See the banner and the borders? Nice.

Next week I'll be at CHA reporting for Ella Publishing. I'll be blogging and tweeting from there. If you want to follow me on Twitter, my name if Buffyfanlarson (amazingly, both Jennifer Larson and Buffy fan were taken, so I had to come up with a new name!).

Breaking my fast

Our week has been busy, so not much scrapping: my church, Advent Lutheran, is putting on Jesus Christ Superstar, and every night has been long rehearsals. I'm a Soul Girl. Here's a link to the song which I perform. I'm the one in the silver spandex.

Here's a couple layouts I did this week:


This was for the Write Click Scrapbook challenge this week. Fewer embellishments than I normally use, but I like the energy in the papers and the photos. (BTW, check out the title. One of the letters is "manufactured.")


This was a Studio Calico sketch challenge. The idea for this layout came from the leftover candy woolies I had. Plus my boys fighting from spending too much time together this week. I seem to do a page like this about every 3-6 months.

I ordered a couple add-on kits from Studio Calico today, the first time I've gotten new stuff since the new year started. Still, I found it pleasurable to dig into my stash, use old stuff, and use stuff up as well.

Now that my fast is broken, I do have my eye on a few things at Archiver's:

• Road Show from Fancy Pants. Gosh, I love that company's stuff.
• A Unity Stamp called Distressed Dots. I pray Archiver's also gets their grid stamp too. Please please please...
• Some of the Pink Paislee Tape--it's only 1.99!

That's it for my longing/craving right now. Note: I have stuff in my 2peas cart that's been there for a while. If I can find it at another LSS, Scrapbooks Too, I'll get it there. If not, next payday, it's mine...

So much for restraint.

Hello, January!

When we woke up January 2, the temp on TV said -15, which is the temp at the Minneapolis airport. That made my husband and I flinch, until I realized that is about 40 minutes south of us, so it's probably about 5 degrees colder here.

I was wrong: it was 6 degrees colder. Yep, you can see in the picture how cold it was this morning.

The evening news said we made it above zero--to one degree above--but I think it didn't get there in Maple Grove. When we got home from IKEA at about one o'clock, the same sign said -7.

So what does that mean? It means January is here, the month where we here in Minnesota insanely look forward to the temps reaching the single digits--below zero.

New year's is also a time for resolutions. I made mine last year--to edit photos before printing them. I also took a couple classes to improve my editing skills and got a newer version of PSE. So what am I going for this year? Mainly, to reduce--and to help that, I'm not buying new supplies (exclusing adhesive and white/kraft cardstock) until I create 100 layouts. I may give up scrap shopping for Lent again. That helped my creativity a lot. Finally, I will probably do this again. Doing LOAD in October helped me destash a bit.

To make the task of no-buy more difficult, I got a Sale-a-bration catalog in the mail yesterday. I found three things I love--two stamp sets and a punch. To get them I would have to buy $150 worth of SU supplies.

So my resolve entered in: The first set I really wanted to go with the curly punch--which I can get anytime. The second--a set of houses--is cute, but not essential. And the border punch? In small print underneath, it says that it will be available next year to buy.

I can resist.

To record this year's resolutions, I am taking inspiration from a notepad I got in Chicago.

I checked the stuff I want/need to do the most, plus stuff I already do that I think I should keep doing. I'll narrow it, then turn it into a layout for my album. Which means I'll take another extend-a-arm photo of me. Nice.