CRUISIN' RIGHT ALONG...

Take a hint from the title, I'm goin' on a cruise! Yeppers, in October I am going on the Artful Cruise in Mexico with Tim Holtz and guest teacher Wendy Vecchi! This cruise is sponsored by ScrapMap and I am BEYOND excited, I had a blast in Tim's class at CHA in July so I thought a whole week of Tim would be even better. I've been hinting at the hubby for the last three or four months about the cruise. He did a really good job of ignoring me. Finally, he was nice enough to give me the green light to go, after I pestered him to death. How else does a woman get what she wants? Does that count as a green light? It's just icing on the cake that Wendy is going to be teaching too. I am an absolutely HUGE fan of her grunge flowers. EVEN CLIFF admired her grunge roses while we were touring the Ideology booth at the show. Cliff wasn't going to let me go by myself, however, so I convinced my friend Tammy to go with me. Luckily, I only had to ask once, right Tammy? Yes, I can hear your head shaking from here. A whole week without cat hair, what will I do with that extra hour every day that I'll gain from not having to roll my clothes with a lint roller? Sleep or stamp? Now that I've spilled the cat kibble, on to other news...

I AM working on my list of classes for the holiday season. You all know how much I LOVE Christmas—Christmas papers, Christmas stamps, Christmas cookies, Christmas parties and Christmas cards. Oh and Christmas Kitties! So I am making my list, probably making it twice, gonna find out who's... oh, did I mention Christmas music? LOVE Christmas music. I think I have more Christmas CDs than regular music CDs, or maybe I should say more Christmas DOWNLOADS with the advent of iTunes (see how I worked in the word "advent"? uh-huh, it almost slipped by you). Glad you all were paying attention. :-) OK, yeah, I was saying something about a list... hmm... uh... yeah, a list of classes! That's it! (It's really hard getting old, hear what I'm telling ya?) So classes are in the works. I'll have the October schedule here shortly, with a big hole in the middle because I am...going on a CRUISE! Oh yeah, I told you that already. :-)

We'll be having classes in several locations again this year. First off, as usual, classes at the north side Hobby Lobby on Tuesday nights and Thursday days, and at the south side Hobby Lobby on Friday days; classes here at the Conquest Keepsakes Paper Studio, Craft Night at Northbridge Baptist Church and some additional classes scattered around Springfield (details as they develop). As an aside, my husband informed me that there was a CK—S and a CK—N, Conquest Keepsakes South (my craft room downstairs, which is at the south end of the house) and Conquest Keepsakes North (the breakfast area upstairs, which is on the north side of the house), so now I am telling all of you that all the classes at CK will be held in the M location, the room midway between my craft room downstairs and my breakfast area upstairs, which is the living area downstairs. Are we all clear now? Hmm, maybe I'll draw a map. Coming soon to a location near you...

Keep the faith!