It's been a long time!

Almost a month to be exact! This has been such a busy several weeks - where to start?

I spent a wonderful weekend with my artsy girlfriends in Atlanta (one of the girls moved there a few years ago and we've kept in touch - she invited us all to her house for art time!).  We arrived on a Thursday and everyone left Monday late afternoon, except for me! I had to stay until Tuesday since I travel non-rev and flights were booked until then. (I didn't mind though!)

Karen treated us all royally. She drove us around town to several favorite spots - we visited the most wonderful stamp store (Impressive Ideas I think was the name - in Roswell), then Archivers and, of course, a few quick stops to local Hobby Lobby and Michael's stores, along with a few antique malls and shops. 

She had many gifties for us - totes made by her sister from Tim Holtz fabrics, an entire shopping bag for each of us filled with all kinds of odds and ends and goodies - and several projects for us to work on.

Handmade tote from TH fabric

Here are some of the fun things we created.

Tiny pincushion from a vintage mold

"Ghoulie spoolie" I'd seen on Pinterest and took supplies for all to make

Paper mache witch's hat

And our "big" project was this fun chipboard house which we each decorated with papers we brought. Three of us did a Halloween house; one was a spring house; one was Christmas and one Thanksgiving.  This was sold by Stampin Up several years ago and they took it off the market since it was very difficult for most consumers to make. Karen scarfed them up at a great deal on clearance and shared how to make them with us.  It took all of one long day for us to do and none of us are novices!  I still might put a little fence around the base of mine, but I've run out of time to fuss with it now. The windows have vellum in them and a little tealight sits inside to light up at night.

Love the bats coming out of the chimney

There was an abundance of laughter, reminiscing, girl talk and just the relaxing with good friends.

A fantastic time was had by all and we've vowed to make it an annual affair!

On my way home I stopped in Austin for a few days to visit this little guy. And then he also came the next weekend for us to babysit while his parents went to Chicago for a wedding. We love every opportunity to spend time with him. He's at such a darling age now - talking in short phrases and really cute!

Once home, I hit the ground running!  The LBH Fall Open House was held the Saturday while I was gone, revealing all the new fall and Halloween class projects.  So we started prepping kits in full force and teaching new projects. And now we are planning and designing Christmas for the Holiday Open House in early November!

Hopefully I will be able to blog more regularly now. I'll be back soon to share the projects I created for fall classes.