Shopped til we dropped!!

Ever since the outlet centers started doing Midnight Madness (opening up at midnight on Thanksgiving night) a few years ago, I've been going!!

My friend, Mimi, and I would head out to the VF Outlets for hours and hours. At around 2am, we'd get a $2 breakfast in the food court!! At the end of our "night", we'd redeem our receipts for a free Christmas wreath!! Can't beat a free wreath on top of tons of great deals!! Usually, I would have to be home by around 6:30am so Chris could get off to work. I walked in the house last year as he was showering! Chris did not have to work Black Friday this year, you know what that means!!

My besties Misty and Jen drove down from the Williamsport area to take part in the festivities!! Misty picked Jen up in Muncy around 10pm. I enthusiastically greeted them at the door around 12:30am and we headed off to the Philadelphia Premium Outlets this year!! We would meet up with Mimi, who, with her sister in law, went at 10pm. Seems as if the rest of the Philly suburbs decided to hit up those outlets! We got within a mile of our exit and into a standstill. As we finally made our way into the parking lot, we saw the creativity of some eager shoppers. Not only were cars were parked at ends of aisles where there were not spots, but they somehow got up over the curbs and parked in the grassy areas, some with their tires hanging partly over the curbs! I had my plan of attack, though. I just kept taking rights to get to the back of the parking lot. It worked. We ended up pulling up to a car as they were loading up to leave. We got a nice close spot too!

So, we shopped and shopped, made out with some really great deals and a few pairs of socks! Misty weighed in at 12 pairs of socks for herself! Columbia and Bass were the front runners, as usual! We fueled our search for deals with a stop into Lindt and their peanut butter Lindor Truffles (so NOT on the diet!) and a shared Nathan's hot dog! Mmmm, mmmm, good!! Got to see a high school friend while she was working at the Hanes store!! The news crews were there but we weren't lucky enough to be interviewed. That would've slowed us down anyway!!

We finished up there about 7 hours later, hands all cramped from carrying our bags. Biceps and hips just burning!! We headed back towards home and refueled at the Breakfast Hut (the best breakfast spot in Exeter/Mt. Penn area!), then headed into Boscov's for some more deals! Next was the VF Outlets. We scored a ton of deals including a $6.42 pair of jeans for the angel tree at Jack's school and a $4.42 soft flannel shirt for my dad! Spent a few hours there, Misty bonded with some of the mannequins while Jen bought her hubby some of his "dress" clothes!

It is now around 1pm ish. We headed to KMart for a bit, which was a bit of a disappointment. Everything that I wanted from there must've been a doorbuster that was not offered at that time of the day. Bummer!! We still made some purchases. Got a text from the hubby telling me that he thought I might consider heading home now! ha! I told him to order up some pizzas and we'd pick them up on the way.

So, we wandered in the house around 4pm, after 15 hours of shopping!! Gave the fam some hugs, had some pizza then went to relax in the family room! Misty and Jen were passed out on the couches at 6pm. Tucked the kids in bed at 7:45 then hit the bed myself and passed out while Chris was working on his homework!!

What fun!! So happy that the 3 of us could hang out!! Hoping the work schedule works out the same next year!! Glad that this is a once a year event as well. I don't know if my 35 year old hips can handle it more than once!! What a workout!!

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures! We were much to busy for that!!

Some new work

The Fall Fest Crop at Scraptacular was a hit!! There was a ton of creativity goin' on over there this past week!!

Here is my Make N Take for the crop. It's a wallet picture frame. I love making these. They are so easy and would make for great gifts! If you want directions, you can find them in the online crop section on the message board over there!


I also hosted a scraplift challenge. I lifted a layout of Liese's. I just had to scrap about getting straight hair for 2 days!! I embossed the chipboard and rubbed some metallic rub ons over top to bring out the pattern. Gotta love Fancy Pants chipboard!!


Here are some projects I did with the November Scraptacular kit, featuring Cosmo Cricket Nutmeg.








Thanks for reading!!

Online Crop This Week at Scraptacular!!

Scraptacular is having a big fall fest crop this weekend!! It's going on all week!! Lots of challenges, games, make and takes, fun and prizes!!! Come on over and check it out!!

I see that I have not fulfilled my goal of being a better blogger!! It's been over a month!! I must try to get better!!

October at Scraptacular spotlighted the new Fancy Pants lines. I challenged myself to use the Little Sprout line. I'm not much of a pastel kinda girl but it was fun!! Here's what I came up with!!






Thanks for reading and be sure to check out the crop!!

BOO!!!

I don't usually decorate for Halloween. I'm a fall decorator. That way, I can keep it up for 2 months! The kids are always begging to put up some Halloween decorations, so I made my own door hanging and they made decorations for their bedroom doors this year!

I made this out of a sheet of corrugated cardboard and a bunch of other fun scrappy supplies!




I used this as the project of the week at Scraptacular this week. For some directions on how to make this, click HERE!

The kids like to make projects to hang on their bedroom doors, so we got out the Paper Dolls Cricut cartridge to make one for Halloween. We did this after baths one night last week, hence the jammies and wet hair!



Thanks for reading!! Have a great week!

Wedding!!

I've been bad with my blogging lately, I know!!

Guess I'll start off with the wedding. As I said before, my last best friend from college got married last weekend. It was wonderful having the four of us back together again!! We are going to try our darnedest to have an annual girl outing!!

The wedding was all hunting/fishing themed. Where Misty got all of the stuff for it, I don't know. We're talking about:
an antler with a bullet pen attached to it for the guest book
a silver antler unity candle holder
a camoflage garter
a camoflage rehearsal dinner cake
a special candy bar for the kids at the reception with gummy bears, worms and swedish fish
mannequins dressed up in wedding attire and camo
a deer couple cake topper
beautiful brown/orange camo wedding cake
fish mugs and plates for favors
empty shotgun shells filled with Reece's Pieces for favors

I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot too!! It was all really well put together and just shouted Misty and Ron!! The reception was held outdoors at a pavilion by a river too. Really beautiful setting! Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of those things as I was too busy with the other wedding preparations.

Here are a few pictures. Luckily Chris got a few of the ceremony.
The new Mr. and Mrs.


Me and my groomsman. Don't know his name! lol


Here are some others:






Macy was the hit of the dance floor with all of her smooth dance moves!! She did the Thriller dance too!




Here is the view from the pavilion.



When the girls and I get together, we have this standard picture we always take. I'm not real sure how it ever got started but it seems each time we take one, we are all a little bit wider! The bench was so narrow they had to hold on to me really tightly!



Love these girls so much!!

Photo Op!

Just about all of the main attractions on our Chattanooga trip took family pictures as you entered. Rock City on Lookout Mtn in GA had little photo op spots all set up for the visitors, which included the month and the year! What a neat idea!! I did this layout for the pic we had taken there. Thanks to our friends for taking it for us!


The fall weather has been continuing here. We can't wait to get out and do the hayrides, pumpkin picking, cider sippin', etc! As soon as October 1st hits, I'll be climbing up in the attic to get the fall decorations. I can't bring myself to decorate for the season until the first of October! Although, I did cheat yesterday and started burning my Yankee fall candles! Mmmm!! I was at the hairdresser this morning and she used pumpkin products on my hair, so I am really itching to decorate, not to mention, eat some pumpkin pie!!

This weekend is my friends wedding. There are four of us best friends from college and she is the last to get married. We are sort of spread all over the place now and don't get to see each other very often, except for when one of us gets married!! I just cannot wait to be with them this weekend!! I miss them so much! I'm hoping I can get some really great pictures! She had our dresses handmade and they are gorgeous! A lovely brown with pretty beading. Can't wait to show them off!

Not much other fun stuff is going on here. The kids are enjoying school and I am enjoying some free time again! Lots of coffee and lunch dates and scrapbooking time! It's amazing what a few hours sans kids will do for my sanity!

I hope everyone is having a great week!! Thanks for visiting!

Not much going on this week!

It's been a rather tame week around here.

The days are getting shorter, which means less time for play outside. Not to mention, it's getting cooler. It's definately long pants and long sleeves weather again. Pretty soon the leaves will start getting some color! My favorite time of year!! I'd love it to be fall forever. I like the cool, crispness of it and all the activities that go along with the season!

I managed to get one layout done this week. I wanted to do something about how we are showing the kids (and ourselves) our great country! That was the purpose of us buying our camper! Here's what I came up with. I'm happy with how it turned out. Plus, I used a piece of paper (the background) from a Stack that I bought quite some time ago, probably over a year! Gotta love when you can use some of the stash!!



As always, thanks for reading! :)

Ocean City, NJ

Amazingly, I've never been to Ocean City, NJ. Growing up, we would go to Wildwood or the Delaware beaches. I thought our September camping trip would be a great time to check it out, especially since it was after the summer season!

We headed out on Friday afternoon to Whippoorwill Campground in Marmora, NJ, which is only a few miles from Ocean City. It is a really nice campground. Gotta love camping in the sand plus being in the woods! We thought it would be the perfect place for a huge gathering of friends!


It seems like we find interesting mushrooms on many of our camping trips!! This trip was no different!


They had a really great playground there. Lots of fun things for the kids to clown around on.


And for me to climb around on!


After exploring the campground, we relaxed. The kids watched a little bit of tv before we headed to bed to get rested up for the next day.


Saturday morning went for a bike ride up on the boardwalk. There was also an antique car parade going on.


After that we headed back to the campground for the pig roast/luau! Mmmm, quite a yummy spread!!



After we pigged out, we headed back up the the boardwalk for rides, games and boardwalk pizza!!






Like I said, we had a blast!! I got a good shot of the Philly skyline on our way back home too.


I just have to post this picture of Jack and his birthday cake. Look at the joy on his face!


I haven't done any new layout since my last post, but here's a picture of a camping wallhanging I did a few weeks ago!


Thanks for reading!! Have a great week!!