I’ve been trying to wrap up everything I need to do by the end of 2016.  Primarily this means that I want to make sure I document all of the discounts that crafting websites are offering currently, and make sure I document them on the blog for 2017, but early enough that people should be able to budget for their crafty wants and needs.  I didn’t know that so many different companies would have so many different offers and by keeping track of them, it will allow viewers to streamline their shopping.  For instance if they know simonsaysstamp.com offers a much bigger discount than another site, the shopper  won’t have to go from site to site to find the best offer.  It should hopefully be a time and money saver, at least that’s my goal.

I finished the video for the modified Dollar Tree weekly planner for 2017, and it should go online tonight.  I’m hoping it’s not too late for others to make one for themselves.  If they have already bought the supplies, it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours (and that’s longer than it should take) to make it.  I meant to add a pocket to the inside, but decided the zipper pocket I added should be sufficient.  I’ll ask my friend who I’m making it for to let me know if she wants the additional pocket, and I can always add it later.

I’ve been watching an older Jennifer McGuire video of a card with sea life, turtles, jellyfish, seahorses, and I started thinking about how cute they would be in an underwater card.  So I checked into the set of stamps she used and they were from Hero Arts.  Naturally they were from a kit Hero Arts sold last July and no longer had in their inventory on their website.  I looked everywhere online I could think of, and finally called Hero Arts directly.  They checked their inventory and had one set left.  (My luck doesn’t normally work like this).  So I ordered the set and am looking forward to getting them and making some underwater cards to send to friends and family.  The moral of this story is that I have to stop watching Jennifer’s videos, as I am powerless to just say no.

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had viewers ask for a video on different inks and one on the best small tape runner.  I have been buying the tape runners whenever I see a new brand, and I am working with my friend Elishia, to make sure I cover the best ink brands.  I have several types and brands of inks, but no hybrids and need to get familiar with them before I make the ink video.  Otherwise, I think I’m pretty well set with inks and just need to keep purchasing tape runners.  You would be amazed at how many different brands and types within each brand that I have found.  This video might make my wet glue video look like a walk in the park.

Oddly enough, when I looked into the origination of “walk in the park,” I couldn’t find it, only the definition, which is pretty obvious.  Walking in the park is easy and very doable.  With that being said, hopefully both videos won’t be extremely difficult to make, but I never know until I make them.  I guess we’ll wait and see how it goes.

 

I’ve been keeping track of the offers that companies are doing for Christmas and after-Christmas specials.  The one that really hit me is Stamp TV and Gina K, who are offering 25% off everything on their site until 12/29/16.  You’re probably saying, “what’s the big deal?”  I’ve never seen any site (and maybe I just never looked), that included MISTI in their discounted items.  25% off of a MISTI is a HUGE savings and if you’ve always wanted one, this is the perfect time to get one.  When I first bought mine, I thought I would use it every once in a while and now I find I don’t make a card without using it for something.  The things I like best about the MISTI is that if I make a mistake stamping (let’s say the sentiment is crooked), the grids on the MISTI prevent that problem from occurring.  Or my stamped image isn’t good, maybe I missed a spot.  No problem, I just stamp it again.  If you watch my videos, you know that I absolutely love to stamp my sentiments at least twice, because they are much more professional looking as the ink is really intense when stamped more than once.  I can’t speak highly enough about this product as it is a life changer in crafting for anyone with issues with their hands–weakness, shaking, or strength in only one arm.  I promise you, you will not be disappointed in this product.  You definitely need to purchase four of their magnets and I recommend the grid pad that comes with it as well.  The Novus cleanser they recommend is great, but not a necessity when you initially purchase the MISTI.

I also like to make sure I tell you that I don’t benefit in any way (financially) from this recommendation.  It’s just so important to me that when there is a product that comes at such a steep price, but will be so beneficial to you, I have to let you know when I find a discount on it.  And this is a really great discount.  If you are new to stamping, the MISTI takes the place of all acrylic blocks, and the only thing it doesn’t work with are wood stamps.  If you remove the stamp from the wood block, the MISTI will work with the red rubber stamps.  I hope this message will be beneficial to some of you and that you’ll let me know how you like your MISTI.

Merry Christmas (a day late) to those of you who celebrate the day!  We wanted to make sure we got the vacation video online so we could send one last thank you to all of you for the tremendous year we’ve had on YouTube.

Our trip was especially fun this year because we got to share it with all of you.  I love telling stories of our crazy antics and the things that happen to us when we travel.  The hurricane story could have gone on forever, but telling you about the pine tree was enough to give you an idea of the severity of the storm.

The bakery car accident story was actually a lot more involved than “the man pulled in as we were backing out.”   It was Rich’s fault and we had insurance on the rental car (through our credit card), but the other driver wasn’t interested in waiting for his money and wanted it immediately.  He had a friend come to the site of the accident who was a mechanic and he gave the $200 estimate for fixing the car.  The cars on St. Maarten are pretty banged up in general, so it’s really difficult to determine what dent was from the current encounter or from a previous one.  The other part of the story that I omitted was that the man was about 6’4″ and broad, and although Rich is 6′ tall, he was dwarfed by the other man.  Let’s just say he was very intimidating and when he wants money from you for an accident, you give it to him.  Rich gave him the money (as the police wouldn’t help one way or the other), and shook hands with the man to confirm the transaction was complete.  The man wouldn’t let go of Rich’s hand and asked for more money for his “time.”  Rich held firm and said that they had agreed to $200 and eventually, he let go of Rich’s hand.  It was a very scary incident and one of those times you are keenly aware that you are not in the United States and there is no one to step in to protect you.

The same was true in the hurricane.  There was one radio station on the island that was operational and they kept repeating that Americans should contact the U.S. Consulate to let them know we were alive in case our families contacted the state department.  This was before the age of good international cellphones and no telephones on the island were operational so there was no way to contact the consulate.  I knew our families would be terrified (as my mother was a Weather Channel junkie), and we had to get word to someone that we were ok.  The staircases in the hotel were basically outside thus making them unusable during the storm.  Once the storm was over, we had to climb over sand bags and debris to make our way downstairs to the lobby that was boarded shut.  There was absolutely no way to leave the hotel until they decided to take the boards off of the doorways. In the meantime, we were frantically searching for anyone with a working cellphone.  As we were walking back to our room, I saw a man in his room holding a phone.  I went into his room and asked if his phone worked and if there was any way we could call home.  He said he worked for Norcom (a telecommunications company) and that his phone wasn’t currently working, but if I gave him my room number, he’d be in touch as soon as it was.  I thanked him profusely and went back to our room thinking I’d never hear from him.  He contacted me a couple of hours later and I called home, got my mother’s answering machine, and left a message that we were ok but not sure when we would be able to get home as we had heard that the airport had lost it’s radar in the storm.  It was the week before Thanksgiving when the storm hit, so we weren’t sure if we would be home in time for the holiday and people were really panicky about it.  The first day that the boards were removed from the doors, we ventured outside to check on the island’s damage.  We got a lot of really terrifying photographs of yachts on the road, overturned airplanes, and crushed homes.  We went to a local market and bought some food to tide us over for the short term and went back to our hotel.  On the wall behind the front desk was an 8 1/2″ x 11″ piece of paper that said US Air flight #blahblahblah, was leaving that day at 5:30PM and if you had a ticket for that flight, go to the airport.  Unbelievably, that was our flight and it was so lucky we looked at the sign, otherwise we would not have made our flight.  Oh, and that’s also how we found out about the hurricane.  There was a similar piece of paper in the elevator the day before the storm hit, telling us we should get food and water to prepare for it.  No announcements, nothing on the radio, just one piece of paper in the elevator.

When we got to the airport, there were armed guards at the gates and the only way to get past was to show our plane tickets.  We had several people screaming at us that they would pay us thousands of dollars for our tickets.. No thanks, we just wanted to go home.  Nothing can really prepare you for a hurricane in a hotel when you are in the room at the end of the hall.  The water came in through the outside wall and we had three inches of water on the floor (keeping in mind we were on the fourth floor of the hotel.)  They told us to put water in the tub and sink to use later.  Water came in through the ceiling and walls and filled the tub and sink for us, no need for us to do anything.  We had glasses of water to drink from, and the water in the glass would shake from the wind.  And we were the fortunate ones, because our hotel had a generator so we had electricity through the forty-eight hours of the hurricane.  It was definitely a birthday to remember and a trip that was unforgettable.  I downplay it in the video, but wanted to share a little more of it with you in the blog.  Oh, I sent a huge Hickory Farms basket to the man whose cellphone I borrowed, as it was the least I could do since he saved my mother’s and my sanity that day.

I’ve had such a great time this year making videos and sharing my ideas with all of you.  Rich and I have gotten so much enjoyment out of the process and the response we’ve received from all of you.  That’s why we decided while on our vacation to make it a small Christmas gift to all of you.  I recorded (with Rich’s help), a lot of the things that we love on St. Maarten from the Butterfly Farm, to Orient Beach, to Phillipsburg, to our favorite beach and sunset location.  I hope you’ll enjoy getting to see St. Maarten from our eyes and that you will love the scenery as much as we do.  The sad part of the trip is that you won’t be able to share in eating the pastries with us as that is one of the best reasons to go there.

I hope each of you has a very Merry Christmas and that you take a moment to relax and watch a tour of St. Maarten with us.  I’m hoping the video will be uploaded early Christmas morning.

I am really difficult to buy gifts for and it’s so much easier when I pick out the things I want instead.  My birthday is at the end of November, so I was able to combine my birthday and Christmas gifts.  I hope you enjoy the video.

We decided to do some last minute shopping today and I went to the only Tuesday Morning within a two hour drive of me.  I was really excited to see what kind of craft supplies they offered and didn’t really find much, but did find a huge pad of blank paper that will work really great for a background for my videos.  It isn’t a really white color, which actually works better on video, so I was glad to find it.  Not so happy to try to negotiate with it to try and get it to the car (where Rich was sleeping), but in the end, I outwitted the huge pad and got it into the car.  Score 1 for me!

I was in search of dog toys and treats for Christmas.  Since we don’t have kids, our dogs are just a tiny bit spoiled, or maybe more than a tiny bit.  Tuesday Morning did have some really unique toys and Rich and I had a great time playing with them.  I haven’t decided if we bought the toys for the dogs or for us since they were so much fun.

I found another Dollar Tree and it’s a really large store.  If you watch Lindsay’s videos (and let’s face it, who doesn’t,) she talks about how she always finds photo paper and the big packs of mailing labels at her Dollar Tree. I found the photo paper and thought, “this is it, I’m finally going to find the labels she says are standard at her Dollar Tree.”  No such luck.  It’s like looking for the holy grail, impossible to find unless you’re Indiana Jones (or Lindsay.)

Last but not least, I went to a larger department store to buy a pair of jeans that are so soft and stretchy, you have to love them (but of course the only store where I live doesn’t have my size in stock).  I went to the women’s department to pay for my purchases and there was a line, so I walked to their shoe department where the counter was used as a dump, so ventured to their cosmetics department where I heard the employee say something like “I’m overwhelmed, there’s just so much to learn.”  I took this as a bad sign and went back to the ladies department where the line had not changed and the same woman was still paying for her purchases.  So I waited, and waited.  By this point, one of the ladies in front of me said “there’s got to be another check out, but I came here from the men’s department as the employee there didn’t know how to handle gift receipts.”  In my mind that eliminated the last cash register in the store.  I waited a total of 52 minutes (yes, the whole line was timing it.)    When I finally got to the cash register, another employee came over and our clerk asked her why none of the other registers were open.  She said “they are all open and there’s not a soul at any of them.”  She wondered why we were all in this lady’s line, so the clerk and I told her.  She said to me (which I find pretty funny), why didn’t the man call for a manager if he didn’t know how to process gift receipts?  How would I know?  She also said if we had walked around the store, we would have found available clerks.  Really, isn’t that what we did?  If I hadn’t been standing/sitting on a display for so long, I would have given up and left, but after the first fifteen minutes, I feel committed, and going to the car empty handed is more than frustrating.  I’m not sure why our clerk didn’t call for a manager to find other cash registers open, and I don’t know why it took so long to handle five customer transactions, but it did.  I can tell you this much.  I’m not shopping there again any time soon, but I do love those jeans.

I made two videos tonight.  One was to show the great gifts I got from my friend Elishia for my birthday and also let viewers see some of the great handmade cards friends and family have made for me.

The other video was one that I’ve promised I would make for a while and finally accomplished.  I did a haul from Dollar Tree and showed a weekly planner for 2017 and said I would be making a planner/command center for a friend for next year.  I have been so far behind on my videos, trying to get all of the Christmas ones done, that I have been postponing this video.  Tonight, I finally finished it.  I’m actually pretty happy with the results and even gave people some options.  I made a section for post it notes and paper clips and another for a zipper pouch that will hold washi tape and a pen and decided maybe I also needed to include a matching pad of paper.  So I took a thick pad and cut it in half and put the same paper on it to act as a cover.  The agenda got so thick, I had to add a belly band, but that only adds to its charm.  I think this is a great last minute Christmas gift project as well as something people can make for themselves while on Christmas break, so their calendar is ready to start in the new year.  I do feel badly that it’s taken me so long to put the video up, but that’s how things sometimes go for me.  Oh, well, at least I have the video done and more importantly, got all of the Christmas family gifts wrapped and delivered today.  It was a very good day and I accomplished a lot.

I was asked by an Etsy seller named Ma’at Silk, if I would be willing to use her digital images in a video.  Here’s what I came up with to use her images on.

I got a serious amount of wrapping done today and feel like I almost have a grip on everything that needs to be done for the rest of the week.  I also did a couple of videos I’ve been meaning to get uploaded, now we just need Rich to edit them.  I did some shopping as well (for myself mostly), but it was nice to get out and accomplish some small tasks, like taking things back that I’ve had in my car for a few weeks.  I’m not sure about all of you, but I’m one of those people who finds things I should have returned months after buying them.  I kick myself when that happens, but I blame it on my medicines.  They unfortunately make me very forgetful, so forgetful in fact, that I can watch an entire movie and not remember seeing it.  It’s frustrating and a little bit embarrassing.  I’ll tell Rich that I saw a promotion for a movie and think we should watch it and he’ll say, “we just watched it last weekend.”  It’s crazy how much I forget.  It’s just one of those things, though.  I can’t live without the medicines, so I have to accept the side affects that go with it.  I do think sometimes people think I use it as an excuse when I forget something important, like a birthday or a lunch date, but I swear I don’t.

I’ve got more wrapping to do tonight, so I need to get serious about it and make sure it’s finished before tomorrow as I have to deliver everything then.   I really hope the family are pleased with our gifts and that someday, when they are in a better financial position, they’ll remember that someone was there for them when they needed help, and they will pay it forward to someone else in need.  It’s a great thought and gives me a lot of hope and faith in others..