Making a custom board book was super easy. You literally pick a plain and simple layout and upload the pictures that you want for each left and right page spread, and add text if you want. Our board book was composed of 16 pictures; 2 of those included the front and back cover image, so there were 14 interior pictures. I used a picture of Liam for the front cover, and a cute photo of him over Lucas’ shoulder for “The end.” The pages include mama and daddy, all of his grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, and a few (but not all!) of our closest friends that we consider family and refer to as “aunt” or “uncle” with Liam… like the best man and maid of honor at our wedding. I like that he will be able to learn all of the faces of the people he sees the most and who love him in a special book made just for him. Right now he is completely enamored with books and obsessed with faces. What a perfect gift for him, right?

When I placed the order I honestly expected it to take at least three weeks for the custom printing and shipment. To my happy and unexpected surprise, I ordered the book on January 28 and received it on February 3. No kidding. The pages are thick with a coating that makes them very durable against baby drool; the printed images don’t flake off at the corners when they get wet from constant chewing, unlike several board books that Liam has. I think some of the pictures printed a little darker than I thought they would, but they’re clear and decent quality. I admit that only about half of the photos I used were at their full, original resolution; some I was unable to find originals of so they were uploaded at 800 x 600 pixels, but they looked just as good when printed as the pages that were uploaded at their original resolution. Overall I was really pleased with the quality of our book. Liam LOVES it.

I also have to point out that Pint Size Productions sells a lot of exclusive Sandra Boynton stuff. We have quite a few of her books, and they’re a lot of fun to read aloud because they’re full of silliness, something we’re never short of in the Karpiuk household.

Seriously, a truly personalized board book is a fabulous gift idea. I’m thinking of doing something similar to the pictures-of-family-members idea for my nephew’s next birthday, and I’ve already got ideas for other books I could make for Liam. I’m in love! Here are all of the pages of Liam’s Family. And if you’re not in the book, don’t worry, we already have a part 2 planned. It was hard getting everyone in just 14 pages!

I saw a picture of a hand print Santa floating around Pinterest recently but there was no how-to, so I decided to replicate the idea and turn it into a special gift to celebrate Liam’s first Christmas. We even made the clay together, too! The best part? This project was “free” for me to make since I already had all the materials at home, and I bet you do, too! Here’s how we did it:

First you’re going to need some clay. Teaching 4th grade and making salt dough maps of Indiana in the classroom paid off; here’s the recipe I used to make the perfect salt dough clay:

Perfect Salt Dough
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup salt
1/2 cup lukewarm water

Mix the flour and salt thoroughly in a large mixing bowl, and add the water. Use your hands to combine it all really well and begin forming “dough.” Knead, knead, and knead some more until you get the right consistency. I found that if it was a tad too dry to form the perfect ball of dough that all I needed to do was wet my hands a little and get back to kneading.  You want a nice soft, smooth ball of dough to work with. Not too grainy or dry, and not too sticky.

Sprinkle flour on your work surface and grab a rolling pin. It’s kind of like making holiday sugar cookies now; roll your dough out to form an even, flat disc of dough. I didn’t grab a ruler or anything so I can’t tell you exactly how thick or thin we rolled our dough out to, but remember that you need it to be thick enough so that when the hand is pressed into the dough that the indention doesn’t make the ornament too thin in places, and thus super fragile.

Making the hand prints with a 5.5 month old took two sets of hands. (Not including Liam’s hands!) Lucas held Liam and I pressed his hand into the dough. With his hand down, I made sure to give a little extra (gentle) press of each finger and the heel of his hand to ensure a good impression. Then I just rotated the dough and we repeated the process until I had eight little hand prints. If the dough is a little sticky, rub some flour on your kiddo’s palm before pressing. It helps!

When the hard part was done, I used a sharp knife and cut out around the edge of each hand print, leaving a thin edge around the whole hand. Don’t forget to punch a small hole near the heel of each dough hand print so that you can add a ribbon for hanging later! Remember that the hand is going to hang on the tree with its fingers down, since the fingers form Santa’s beard.

Now let the hand prints dry for about 4 days. Just like cut-out sugar cookies, we used a spatula to transfer the little hand print cut-outs onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Don’t bake them, though! Just set the cookie sheet in a safe place and let the hand prints dry out. In 2 days, turn each hand over so that the back side can also be exposed to the air and the ornaments can dry out all the way through. The waiting is actually the hardest part!

Now that you have perfectly hardened little hand prints, it’s time to paint! I like to spray each with clear acrylic spray sealer first, just to give me a good, smooth base for painting. For painting, I didn’t use anything fancy, just acrylic craft paints in red, white, black, and flesh tone.

I painted our Santas in layers, that is, that I went through and painted the swipe of skin tone on all of the ornaments first, then went back and painted the white pom pom in the thumb and made the white fur trim of the Santa hat next, and then did the red hat. By the time I had finished painting the same layer on all eight ornaments, the first one was dry enough to continue to the next paint layer. Then I went back with white and painted the length of each finger and had them meet up with the face to form the beard; I also did a quick set of “bumps” in white that overlapped the face a bit to create a mustache at the top of the beard. Then I gave all of my Santas a red dot nose. Once noses were done, I went back with a little pink that I made from mixing my leftover red and white on the palette to add dots for blushing cheeks, and a dot for the mouth just below the nose. I let everything dry for about 10 more minutes, and then I used black and a super fine paintbrush to add in details like outlining the mustache area, adding eyes, and outlining a bit on each finger of the beard and the pom pom to make those parts of Santa really stand out.

Let the paint dry thoroughly and then get out your Mod Podge. I gave the fronts two coats of Mod Podge each, allowing for ample time to dry between coats. (Until the white of the Mod Podge had gone completely clear.) Then I flipped the Santas over and got out my black paint and super fine paintbrush so that I could put Liam’s name and the year on the back. Once the black paint dried, I then gave the backs two coats of Mod Podge, too.

I gave both the front and back of each ornament a final quick spray with clear acrylic sealer just to add a finish to the entire project. This gave each ornament a little extra protection and a slightly glossy sheen. I also feel like it helps keep the ornaments from having a bit of a tacky, sticky feel from the Mod Podge.

For the finishing touch, I strung up each ornament with festive red and green ribbon so that they could be hung on the Christmas tree. If the holes you made in the dough initially for this purpose are a bit clogged from all of the Mod Podge and spray sealer layers, grab something like the tip of a pen to punch through and clean out the opening so you can get your ribbon through.

And voila! Your child’s hand print is forever preserved as an ornament for the tree, and these ornaments make great gifts for grandparents and other family members. Don’t want to do Santa? No problem – just follow the steps to create the ornaments and when it comes time for painting, paint the whole thing a single color or decorate them another way. No matter how you paint, you’ve got the memory of your child’s hand print to keep.

I’m thinking of making these Santa hand print ornaments every year so that we can compare how Liam’s hand grows as he gets older, what do you think?

Happy holiday crafting with your kids!

Last weekend we went out and bought the first round of frames for the artwork we’d received so far and began hanging it on the wall. Call me crazy, but we have around 8 weeks left and suddenly it seems SO CLOSE, and somehow, hanging dinosaur art on the nursery walls helped me to feel like we were being productive towards getting “ready” for baby.

I posted the updated photos online to a special Flickr gallery we’ve created for the project when I finished, and shared the project’s progress on Twitter. @ThinkGeek, who gave us a shout out on Twitter the first time the call for submissions went out, posted about our project for us again on Twitter this past week AND promoted the project on their Facebook page to encourage submissions, (thank you!) and suddenly a whole slew of new submissions came rolling in fast. So fast, we had to run out to get more frames just to keep up! Here is a quick look at the gallery; the photos go in order from the first inspirational piece by Katie Doyle that gave us the idea in the first place, to where we are today. The order tells a story of the things we’ve been sent and the stages of hanging to show the wall’s growth over time so you can see the project’s progress. As of today, we’re currently on “Stage 2″ of hanging art.

Are you feeling the warm and fuzzies like we are? I am so in love with the way the dino wall is turning out it gets me all teary-eyed. I can’t help but gaze at it when I’m in the room and reflect on just how many different people are involved and the level of kindness involved to make the wall a success.  It’s somewhat of a “mural”, but every piece is by a different person and no two pieces are the same, so the wall seems to have this personality all its own. It’s exactly what I pictured in my head when the idea came to me, which gets me all sappy; even more so as your stereotypical emotional pregnant woman. Truly, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We now have not a single piece of art by one person, but a large collection created by many that comes together as one cohesive and stunning piece of artwork that means so much to us. THANK YOU! Whether you mailed us something or emailed us a digital piece to print, every single submission has filled us with joy. Every piece has added its own personality to the wall, and we can’t wait to explain the making of the dino wall to our geekling as he grows up surrounded by its awesome.

I’ve been asked a few times about a “deadline” on this project. Baby Liam is due June 29, but truthfully there’s no real deadline; we’re always up for adding more to the nursery’s dino wall. (Find out how you can contribute, here!) As I mentioned in the original call for submissions post, I even picture myself one day sitting on the floor with Liam and a box of crayons or finger paints making dinosaurs to add to the wall ourselves. The best part is that the core of the project started with all of you, and will continue to build out from there over the years. We are so appreciative of everyone’s generosity; thank you for taking the time to add to our project! We’ll continue to update the official gallery as new rounds of artwork are submitted and added. Credit to the appropriate people, whether by name, Twitter handle, or link to their websites or Deviant Art sites will be in the description for each photo in the gallery, so please be sure to go and check them out! Digital art posted to our gallery with credited link to the artist’s site were posted there with permission. Those of you that submitted something to us via snail mail should have received (or will be soon receiving) a thank you card that I made, and a little sketch in thanks to reciprocate the love. If you’ve sent us something digitally, I will be emailing you back a digital version with a note in thanks as well. I really can’t thank you all enough, though!

Want to contribute? Check out the details here!

The Official Operation Geekling Dinosaur Project Gallery

In other somewhat-related news, Lucas and I are doing the March for Babies next weekend with my 8 month baby belly on May 7, 2011. It seems fitting that we’re doing a walk to raise money for babies with my baby belly on Mother’s Day weekend, no? It’s a 2 mile walk and I’m really looking forward to it; helping to raise healthy babies and support premature babies who need the right start hits close to home, and is such an important cause. Read all about our progress here! (And hey, if you’re in the area and want to join Team Karpiuk on May 7, please let us know!) Thanks for your support :)

Lots of love,
Lucas, Lesley, and Liam (the geekling) – aka @thekarpiuks on Twitter

(Update! Read the follow up blog post: Update on Geekling Dinosaur Project)

So I had this crazy idea.

It may have a huge turnout, it may flop. But no matter what happens, I think it would be a really cool way to decorate a room.

In this case, I was thinking about the geekling’s room and how to decorate it. Our “theme” is dinosaurs, but we are renting right now so painting is out of the question. That means the décor is dependent on the wall hangings. Last week our friend @katiedoyle mailed us a painting she did of a dinosaur for us to hang in the geekling’s room. (That’s her artwork pictured!) Inspired by this fantastic piece of original artwork made with love, I started to think… wouldn’t it be cool if ALL of our friends and family each made us some kind of dinosaur art for the wall?

I then had this amazing vision of one entire wall of the room covered in dinosaur artwork, all by different people in our lives. And not just one kind of artwork, but dinosaurs made from all different kinds of mediums, too. Some dinosaurs were painted, some were sketches, some were prints, some were done in colored pencils or crayons, and some were dinosaurs composed of fabric shapes.

The wall was covered in this variety of dinosaur artwork, but the pieces weren’t all the same size or orientation, either. Some of the pieces were landscape, some were portrait, some were large and some were small. They were arranged in a fun way like puzzle pieces on the wall, not in straight and perfect rows. Each piece was in the same simple black frame to tie everything together.

It was beautiful, and that’s when Operation Geekling Dinosaur Project was born. And for it to be successful, I need YOUR help.

How can you get involved and help? Make us a dinosaur for the wall! You don’t have to be an “artist” or even feel like you know how to draw to get involved. All forms of art are appreciated and  beautiful! You can use any medium or style you like and feel most comfortable working with, even if it means you print out a dinosaur and color it with your Crayolas. Pick your favorite dinosaur or do a scene of several dinosaurs; it’s all up to you. The only stipulation is that you work in a size that can easily be framed, since I’ll be tasked with trying to get the same style of frame for all of the artwork. The collection together would form a mural of sorts, except this mural would be made up of individual pieces of awesome from awesome individuals.

I may only have 5 people take this on or we may have none, and that’s ok. I’m still going to try! I’d ideally love to have as many people involved as possible. You don’t have to use any fancy paper or canvas or anything like that; plain paper will do. I’ll be throwing it into a frame anyway! I just think it would be amazing to have a wall full of dinosaurs in all different styles to represent all of the different people in our lives. And if you sign your artwork somewhere we’d have a lasting memory of who made each piece to share with the geekling as he gets older.

As artwork comes in, I plan to photograph it individually and post it to a special Flickr gallery with credit to the artist so that their part of the project can be shared. Think of it as a photo journal throughout the project’s progress, including photos of the finished result, too. And going from start to finish, you can see the wall’s growth over time as pieces arrive and get hung.

And maybe over the years new pieces can be added; I imagine the geekling and I in a few years spending a rainy day with finger paints or crayons making new dinosaurs to add to the wall. But the core… the heart of the project begins with all of you and builds from there. How special and how meaningful would a wall full of dinosaurs made by so many different people be?! And your artwork would forever brighten the room of one special little boy, who will grow up surrounded by your original creations and learn from an early age to appreciate art and the value of handmade.

I’m starting to get sappy here, but if you’re interested in donating a piece of dinosaur artwork in any medium digital or physical, big or small, to our project, we’d love to have it and frame it and hang it and share it with our geekling and the world. Your contribution would be one piece in a unique collection to make the décor in the geekling’s room grand and special. I will personally draw a little something in return and mail it with a thank you note to every single person who contributes via snail mail, in addition to posting you and your piece in our Flickr gallery and sharing it on Twitter and my craft blog and this blog for all to see. If you send something digital I have a digital version of the thank you note just for you, too. :)

So the Call for Submissions is officially open; let me just say thank you in advance to anyone who participates in our project. I truly appreciate the time and effort put in to make something for someone else. Long live handmade and long live art! <3

love,
Lucas, Lesley, and the geekling (Liam)

• Want to Contribute?
• Email us if you need to snag a snail mail mailing address. YES, we accept digital art if you prefer! Just send it to us via our email address.

• Common sizes for framing:
• 24 x 36
• 20 x 30
• 18 x 24
• 11 x 17
• 8.5 x 11
• 8 x 10
• 5 x 7
• 4 x 6

Thank you! <3 (and thanks, @thinkgeek, for promoting our geeky nursery project on Twitter!)

Read the follow up post here: Update on Operation Geekling Dinosaur Project

Amongst all of the other craziness around here, you (and I) may have forgotten that I also spend a fair amount of time digital scrapbooking, too! For each of the past 3 years I have created a big, single digital scrapbook that encompasses the entire year in its pages. I’m excited to have finished album #3 this weekend! Family Life 2010 is finally complete. Featured is an example page, check out the full album on Flickr.

Previous years: Family Life 2009 | Family Life 2008

The Family Life albums are each between 40 and 50 pages of digital scrapbooking goodness, showing off major milestones and events that took place throughout the year for our family. In addition to the Family Life albums, I have also created scrapbooks for other things; my nephew’s first year, my wedding, and other family albums for gifts and in memory sentiments. Not ALL of them are online, but you can find a few other completed albums over on my family Flickr account… such as our Wedding Album, the album I made as a wedding gift for Lucas, and our Christmas 2007 album; my first digital scrapbook ever.

So what on earth do I use to digital scrapbook? Ever since I purchased it over three years ago, I have been in love with My Memories Suite, the greatest digital scrapbooking software of all time. Literally. As a quick backstory, I learned of My Memories Suite back in 2007; I had moved to Canada and was waiting (patiently) on my immigration status and then finding a job. This meant I was home during the day a lot, and one day in October, I got sucked into an infomercial for this amazing new digital scrapbooking software. I’m normally pretty skeptical of infomercials, but My  Memories Suite looked like the real deal. It just so happened that I had been physically scrapbooking for years prior, and was currently in the middle of scrapbooking my Canadian adventures since moving to the great white north. The problem was that I’d run out of supplies or glue or cute embellishments or paper and just hadn’t gotten around to buying more. I had taken over an entire cabinet of drawers in our basement in Calgary with scraps of papers and various scrapbooking supplies and it was a mess. The idea of digital scrapbooking and using digital products that I could design myself or download from others was intriguing. By the end of the infomercial I had already ordered. The only problem then was that My Memories Suite was new and only available in the U.S. No worries; we were planning to visit my family in Indiana for Christmas. I had My Memories Suite shipped to my parents and patiently awaited for December so that I could get my hands on it.

The rest is history; I fell in love with My Memories Suite at Christmas of 2007 the minute I got my hands on it, and was able to quickly and elegantly scrap our Christmas trip home with family. When we got back to Canada, I got caught up and busy with a teaching job, so MMS took a backseat for a few months. But then I began working on a 2008 Family Life album with the software, determined to leave physical scrapbooking behind from that point forward. The only problem I had was that there wasn’t a lot of info out there on the software; even with the huge wealth of info on the Internet, My Memories Suite was so new of a product that there just wasn’t any good resources out there for it; no tutorials, no tips & tricks, and no additional info on usage. I decided in May of 2008 to write my personal review of the My Memories Suite software after using it for several months, and then I began creating my own My Memories Suite video tutorials on how to get the most out of the software. Over the years, I have made 5 video tutorials for My Memories Suite, which have been recognized by the company itself with great praise. (I even had the president and CEO email me over this past winter holiday as I was putting the finishing touches on a gift album I was making.)

Something interesting to note is how my albums have gotten better over the years. I’ve been using My Memories Suite since December 2007, and every year I use it to scrap my life I get better and better and there’s more and more awesome digital scrapbooking resources out there to use with the software. DigiFree, which I talked about in my review back in 2008, has since moved to Craft Crave, but they are still out there and full of awesome downloadable digital scrapping freebies every day that you can use with My Memories Suite. Not to mention, My Memories Suite itself has designers that create beautiful new kits and templates that you can purchase via the online store. I’ve got a few bookmarked in my wish list until next month when we find out whether we’re having a boy or girl so I can get started working on my baby book.

Speaking of expecting our first child, that’s what’s inspired me lately to get moving on finishing my Family Life 2010 album so that I could begin work on baby stuff. Call it nesting, call it me being organized and/or OCD, but I can’t wait to include the geekling in our Family Life 2011 album and create a separate brag book album for my family to celebrate the birth of our first child. I’ve fallen in love with dinosaurs as a “theme” (boy or girl!) and found some really fantastic scrap kits out there last night that I purchased to use with My Memories Suite. I can’t wait to start working on those layouts!

Interested in My Memories Suite? Read my review and then go and purchase it – due to my affiliation and recognition from the company for my tutorials (and I literally help a handful of people daily via email with MMS questions!), I’ve been given the ability to offer a discount if you are interested in purchasing the software! What are you waiting for? Time to get scrapping!

We planned the trip to Vancouver over our wedding anniversary so that we could keep up with our tradition: spending our anniversary at a bed & breakfast on the ocean. Last year we stayed in a fantastic little B&B off the coast of Nova Scota in Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. It was heaven. This year we’re staying in a honeymoon suite of a great little  B&B off of Victoria Island. We’ll spend two days there and explore Victoria before heading over to the mainland. I am seriously pumped! It’ll be great to see family and friends and grab a few of the Canadian things to bring back with us that we miss. Like more Tim Horton’s coffee & some Cadbury 100 cal bars. There are also a few restaurants I want to be sure to hit before we come back, too. I’ve been craving a calamari salad from Moxies and can’t wait to have eggs benny from Shades on Main when we’re in Penticton. Yum!

We’re not the best at keeping up the family blog, which is too bad because we’ve had SO much happen in the past few months and a bunch of stuff coming up! Let me see if I can recap it all briefly:

1. Lucas got a formal job offer and is officially employed! (He just posted about it on our blog here.) He was offered a sweet full-time web development position with Southpoint Media. They’re based in Georgia, so that obviously means Lucas gets to work from home, which is awesome.  So he and the boys code websites for clients all day. I suspect that Oliver and Winston do more sleeping than coding, but they’re all enjoying it very much. :)

2. I started making and selling handmade geeky soap on the internet at http://www.geeksoap.net – it has been a huge hit and is keeping me very busy! Small business and handmade FTW!

3. A good friend and I (and our husbands) recently starting putting together an online geeky crafting community called G33Kmade! It’s going to be a hugely fun project, and together we’re going to be selling at an Exhibitor’s Booth at the biggest 4 days in gaming… Gen Con Indianapolis in August. Lots of geeky handmade goodness (including GEEKSOAP!) will be available from us… stop by and see us on Entrepreneur’s Avenue at booth #2732!

4. The 2009-2010 school year is almost over. Like, we have less than a week left now. I’ve been teaching the computer class at the middle school and it has been fantastic. My position for next year/which building I’ll be in is still up in the air with budget cuts looming, but part of the fun is not knowing what I’ll be teaching next year, right? ;) So the summer is almost here, and I’ll be relaxing and spending it prepping for Gen Con, making lots of geeky soap, trying to stay out of Lucas’ hair since we’ll both be working from home for a few months, and getting ready for vacation time in Canada. Oh, and Michelle is coming to visit us all the way from Calgary! Yay! Cannot WAIT to see her!

Whew! Did I cover it all? Some good things going for the Karpiuks in 2010, and even more good stuff on the horizon. :) Be sure to check our gallery for all of the photos when we return. Take care!

It didn’t occur to me until today, but I’ve never owned a scarf. For that matter, I don’t believe I’ve ever worn one – certainly not within my scope of memory, at least.

Now that I’ve been wearing it for a few days (it got cold this last week), I can’t even fathom how I went my whole life without it. Now every day when I’m walking on my way to work, it’s like she’s there with me – giving me the biggest warmest hug I’ve ever had.

Some mornings when I get to work, I don’t want to take it off; I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m still wearing it every morning come June.

Thank you for the best birthday present ever! <4

Oh, almost forgot – some pictures:

Over the weekend we had a tiny wave or two of very light snow; enough to dust the ground and cold enough overnight to form little patches of ice on the sidewalk. As proud as I am of the fact that I am quite capable in heels and haven’t fallen or tripped since re-entering the business world after becoming a Permanent Resident, I don’t really want to tempt fate. There’s no sense in ruining my perfect record, right? Heels and ice with as much walking as I do back and forth to work doesn’t sound like a winning combination to me, and suddenly the business suit and tennis shoes approach makes sense. I should have been doing this ages ago anyway — forget dealing with ice, it’s just easier on the feet!

I of course discover this just in time to finish up my job downtown… I start teaching again on November 19 and will be driving back and forth to the small private school that has hired me to teach pre-K and assist in curriculum writing as they plan to expand and include school-age in their program. And besides… business suits and young children don’t really mix! I am so excited I can barely contain myself — I get to write curriculum and teach an entirely different age level than I’m used to. I worked on curriculum mapping when I was teaching in Indiana so that part won’t be entirely new, but I can’t wait to experience the younger age group of kids that I’ll be teaching now. There is a library that shares a courtyard with our school and a performing arts centre nearby, so there will be no shortage of inspiration and resources for reading to my new kids or helping them learn and develop through the arts. I’ve been busy collecting as much information as I can and even plan to take a free course through Bow Valley College to refresh my memory on early childhood development since it’s been a few years. I took early developmental psychology at IU as part of the bachelor’s in education degree program, but with as often as education trends change, it’ll be good to take advantage of this class and have it under my belt to accompany my new position. That starts soon and will keep me busy for a couple hours each weekend for the next several months, and I’m already looking forward to it.

Here’s a scary thought: There’s less than 2 months until Christmas! Lucas and I have been getting our list of gifts-to-get-or-make organized and I’ve been knitting and crafting like mad already; we’re going to be spending a week in Indiana for the holidays, so I want to get everything done for our families with plenty of time to spare so there’s no stress or last minute things to worry about before we go. That means handmaking a lot of items on top of a fairly large set of Christmas cards that I need to get cracking on. Michelle and I are planning to hit the Calgary Festival of Crafts fair that’s coming to town November 29 – December 2. I’m hoping to find a few little items for my grandparents while we’re there and maybe even get some inspiration for future gifts that I can try my hand at making… after all, I’ve taken the ‘buy handmade’ pledge this year! And somewhere in between now and then is American Thanksgiving, which we are planning to celebrate this year. We missed Canadian Thanksgiving when we went back to Indiana over that weekend to be in Herman’s wedding, so I’m making sure we don’t entirely miss out on a homemade turkey and pumpkin pie. ;)

And speaking of Herm and Holly’s wedding, today I got the website link that the professional photographer gives out to the family so that they can check out the proofs of the photos.  They are absolutely stunning!  I saved a few of my favourite proofs and have added them to the gallery (or on facebook) along with the other photos we took.  Enjoy, and have a happy November!  :)

“You may now apply for an open work permit, which will allow you to work in the occupation and location of your choice.”

I got the two letters yesterday and finally got to read the words we’ve been waiting eight and a half months to hear… Canada has decided they like me enough to keep me! Now the bulk of the process is behind us and I just have to wait for the Calgary office to contact me and set up an appointment for me to go in and get my card. Once that card is in my hands I can officially travel again. I can’t wait – we plan to take a nice long vacation to Indiana to visit my family and friends as soon as we can. Yay!

And as if the first week of May wasn’t already exciting enough, my store website is up and running now! It’s completely functional; we plan to make some minor tweaks and adjustments to photos and formalities in the next few weeks to further polish the site’s functionality and make it even more user friendly, but it’s officially open as of today! Check it out here: http://shop.thepinktoque.com :)

They say good things come in threes, and that’s definitely true this week. The UK exhibit opened today that I am participating in; my plush food will be on display with a short bio about me and business cards for the entire month of May into the beginning of June at Cafe Kino to celebrate its first birthday. I sent a plush cake and two plush donuts and was told that I’d receive 100% of the price of anything that sells, and my cake sold before the event even opened! That takes care of covering my shipping costs… ;) So I’m starting off the exhibit already ahead and will get even more exposure as the month wears on. How exciting! I sure hope they take some pictures because I’d love to see all of the fun plush food on display.

Congratulations to my little brother who is graduating from college tomorrow. I wish I could be there to see you, Herm. I’m so proud of you! Because it was so unexpected, (he didn’t think he’d be graduating until August and just found out this Monday that he’d be graduating this Saturday, lol) my family is going to wait for me to come home to throw a party.

I guess that makes four good things this week instead of three. Whatever. The more the merrier! :)

Alright, I know why you’re really here reading. You’re looking for an update to the Billy Blanks fiasco from last week. While I know you’ve been waiting on the edge of your seat, (thanks, Kurt) I’m sad to report that the exchange yesterday between the Customer Service representative and I was very uneventful. I called in, gave the basic info to help her find the account, and then told her to cancel the order completely. I explained that Ivan told me last week that he would put a temporary cancel on it for me and that I was to call in today to make sure it was fully canceled, but it appeared that she knew nothing about that after looking over the notes on the account. She told me that she canceled the order and that we wouldn’t be charged, and then I asked for a cancellation confirmation code just in case. Hopefully the string of numbers that she came up with weren’t made up just to make me feel better. And that was it. I’d still like to send an actual letter of complaint about the entire ordeal and the way Customer Service treated us to send to the Taebo/Billy Blanks headquarters in Colorado. At this point I’m just tired of the whole thing, though.

What else? I made a small army of new little triangular shaped pouches that I plan to call the “Canmore”, including mini versions that are great as a small coin purse. I really think I should put a ban on myself from Fabricland for a bit, though. It’s Tuesday and I’ve already been there twice this week. Hello, my name is Lesley and I’m a Fabricland-aholic. I can’t help it. I’ve got to take some better pictures of demo bags and purses and stuff because I’m not happy with the ones I have. The store site is coming along nicely, and we’re trying to get it mostly functional by the end of this week. Not only because we’re going out of town this weekend to British Columbia, but also because the playoffs are starting and there will be hockey games to watch every evening. GO FLAMES GO! I’m participating in a Stanley Cup Craft Along with a Colorado fan on the Craftster forums, so be on the lookout for my plush Stanley Cup coming soon ;) If I can ever stop making these little pyramid pouches….