Cheers to a New Year and another chance for us to get it right. Oprah

December 31st, 2011
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Wow – this is it – it’s almost over and Oprah couldn’t have said it better.  Let’s learn from what we have done in the last year to make this year a better one.

What are your New Year’s resolutions?  This year is going to be my year to get organized.  I’m talking major storage containers and my label maker will be put to good use and I’m going to know where to find everything – well that’s my plan anyway.

As I’m doing this post I’m sitting at my sister’s house watching and smelling her baking that she is prepping for the crop in January.  We are also eating everything in site – M & M’s, muffins, candy, chocolate.  This is the last big Hurrah.  I’m also sipping water while I’m here (another goal for the year).  We are heading over to Mandarin for dinner tonight as well and I’m wearing my “buffet” pants (you know the ones that have alot of stretch) so I can eat well tonight.

Tomorrow is reality check and the official end of my mini break – Younique is back up and running full steam ahead.  We are booked up for 2012 with very little spots available and in the next month we will be opening up 2013 so we can start booking up – hard to believe we are booking that far in advance.

We are 21 days away from the big crop and I’m no where near ready YIKES – so much to do in the next 3 weeks and we have 150 people so far – kits to do, goodie bags, table toppers, arrangements and so much more.  I’ll post some photos as I complete each product.

Jeff and I will be meeting on Tuesday to start the new year and meal planning for our January 6th weekend.  I’ll share a photo of his wonderful Beef and Beer stew and the recipe is on the web site.

 

Can you smell it?

Here’s another photo of one of our dinner’s in December

So good and yummy and love Jeff’s presentation.  We think you deserve it

H

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Happy Day Before New Years Eve

December 30th, 2011
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What have I done this past week?  Well other than Christmas I played a little on my scrapbooking projects, spent some time with family and managed to get to Buffalo to take 2 nights away from everything work related.  Funny isn’t it that I have to leave home to relax.  With home being my work, albeit my Wonderful work place – I can only completely get my mind off work when I am away from home.

As I usally do, I created a couple of layouts for my sisters.  Here are 2 that I did for Betty

 

Hard to believe but it’s over isn’t it?  How was your 2011?  Are you glad it’s over?

It was an “interesting” year for us.  Lots of changes at Younique in the last year including bringing Jeff on board full time to cook for us.  I have to say that makes Mr. Clean and I very happy that we can spend as much time as we do with our son, our only son and watch him grow in his Culinary skills and how he enjoys interacting with our customers.

It has been an “interesting” year for Mr. Clean and I as we have studied, reviewed, planned and tweaked what our 2012 will bring for us.  We are hoping for a very successful year in more ways than one – business wise we want to have the continued growth we have seen in 2011 and personal wise we want to continue to have the time together that we have had in the past year.  Mostly we want good health for all of us.  2012 will be the year to take care of us.

It’s so difficult, as I’m sure you all agree, to take the plunge and actually take some time for ourselves.  If we want to continue to be creative in our work and in our play we must MUST take time for us.  I think one of the reasons we sell out every year is because we offer a place to just be YOU – not mom, not wife, not coworker – but just you.  I hope you have signed up to spend a weekend at Younique in 2012.  Let us take care of you and I will work on taking care of myself.

So tonight I will think about my New Years resolution.  I don’t really believe in making a plan for myself only once a year because as things change – so do our ideas of what we would like to do but I like to start the year of fresh with a game plan and see where it takes me.

Have a good and peaceful night.

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If at first you don’t succeed…

December 14th, 2011
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I have been entering a variety of contests for scrapbookers and I was just informed that the the one that I really really wanted to be a part of I did not make.  Next year I will be better prepared for the competition.  Try, try again, correct?

As I always say “onward and upward” that is my motto and something we have always tried to incorporate into our business plan.  2012 will bring us into our 5th year of operating the retreat and we have “tweaked” many things over the years and we will continue to do our “tweaking” in 2012 to make Younique your ultimate scrapbooking retreat.

We have recently added a new product to the store and I’m loving playing around with it.  It is the Ribbon maker from W R Memory Makers

The Sew ribbon is a great tool that allows you to add patterned borders with ribbon.  You can also add this pattern into the center of your page if you prefer

There are 3 pieces to the punch.  A top, bottom and the cutter section.  The actual cutter sits in the hole on the side of the punch when not in use and holds all 3 pieces together.  Great for storage.  You also have ribbon threaders (needles) with the punch

 

Opening up the 2 main pieces of the punch you can see little magnets on each piece.  You sandwich your paper in between the 2 parts of the punch and the magnets will hold your paper aligned and together

 

Here you can see how the edges are aligned.  I have used the leaf punch for this demo

Then using the cutting portion you insert the cutter into each section on the stencil and punch through your paper

 

After all the areas are punched you remove the stencil and are now ready to thread your ribbon through the punch.  This is a threader/needle that you use to hold your ribbon as you guide it through the holes.  It is a sticky piece of acrylic.  You remove the backing off the threader and attach it to your ribbon

Once your ribbon is attached to the threader it is so easy to pull it through the punched holes

And there you have it.  This is the leaf pattern.  I love all the patterns available and I’m sure we will see lots more coming out in 2012

Here is a layout I created and used one of the punches to create a section through the center portion of the layout.  I acutally punched out a separate piece of paper and attached it to the base of my layout.

 

We have the punches in stock and can be ordered online or you can visit the store and pick up one for yourself.

H

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“Every man has his price.”

December 4th, 2011
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Well to make a long story short I’m in the bribing stage with my brother in law. I am working on fine detailing now on our large Mega crop in January and one of things I took care of this week was costumes for the guys.  Our crop is Victorian themed so you can only imagine what I wanted to have the guys wear, and Mr. Clean was oh so willing to wear it but we thought ”what would Barry think”.  So we decided to make it simple.  I emailed my sister so she could break it to him gently and he wasn’t impressed however he did say he could be bribed….with cigars.

So it’s going to cost me for this decision LOL.   I’m thinking I really need to butter him up so I did a layout of him with his favorite pastime and I’m hoping it will work.  Fingers crossed.

 

 

 

 

 

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“I’d love to spit some Beechnut in that dude’s eye and shoot him with my ole forty-five.”

December 2nd, 2011
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It’s nice to wake up in the morning to see the fresh fallen snow – just a light coating which is enough to just whiten up the grass and cars.  Now I know that it’s not going to stay that way and soon I’ll be wishing it away but let’s face it, it’s just not a Canadian Christmas without the snow.

We did manage to get our tree up this week and the lights are all on and time to finish decorating it.  I’m hoping to have it all set up by the end of the weekend.  This actually puts us about a week ahead in the tree assembly department.  Nutcrackers are all out and look wonderful as usual.  I have to say that I love my nutcrackers and they make me smile.

I told Mr. Clean that I want a Nutcracker for Christmas.  Every year I ask for a Nutcracker for my collection but I never get one.  Mr. Clean tells me a Nutcracker isn’t a good Christmas present.  Hellooo….if I want Nutcrackers then wouldn’t it be a good Christmas present for me??  Usually when you ask someone what they want for Christmas and they tell you what they want then it means they really do want it….Maybe he will get the hint this year.

While we are on Mr. Clean I have to tell you a funny story about Mr. Clean being, well, not so clean Lol.  While we were at the Winter fair I wanted to go over to the Petting Zoo.  Mr Clean insisted it was for kids and I insisted it wasn’t.  I just wanted to get some photos of the animals.  So here is a lovely Alpaca

After I took this picture I turned around to take some shots of the goats when Mr. Clean came up to me and said that the “lovely” Alpaca just spit in his face.  My first words were “Darn it, I missed it – that would have been a great shot” and not missing a beat these two ladies looked at me and were laughing and said they saw the whole thing and it was hilarious.   Not to be outdone and not to miss a beat either I said to them – did you happen to get a shot of it with your camera” and they said No – too bad - it would have made a great layout.  While all this is going on poor Mr. Clean is standing there looking at us like we were nuts – but it was funny.  Mr. Clean said it smelled pretty foul and wanted to go wash his face.

The goats were so cute and I wish I could have got into the penned area with them but we weren`t allowed.  I`m taking a photo of this guy when all of a sudden he takes off with my lens cover.  I have it attached to my camera with an elastic so I can just remove it and let it dangle instead of putting it in my pocket or holding it in my hand.  I guess he thought it looked like something to eat so he stole it.

And here it is – in the pen – in the …er…well…dirty stuff.  We had to call someone over to get it for me.

Can you see it?  It’s just under his tail.  The little rascal grabbed it and took off so quickly I couldn’t believe it.

I’ll finish off by sharing a layout with you that I did of my two sisters.  I actually did 3 of these so that we could each have one.

I had alot of fun working on this one.  I used some older Bo Bunny paper – Mamarazzi and added some Tim Holtz film strip and did my little embellishment using some Glubers in the top left corner.

So I shall sign off for now as Mr. Clean just told me to get off the computer and go to bed.  He says “You aren’t much good to me if you are dead” – then adds “well, maybe you are, hahaha” – now that’s true love isn’t it.

Ta

H

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When you know what you want,and you want it badly enough,you’ll find a way to get it .

November 28th, 2011
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My quote today is for Mr. Clean.  He never gives up on his dreams and that’s why he’s my rock.  Sometimes I feel that when you hear No so often it’s just easier to give up but not Mr. Clean, he will look at everything every way he can before he will give up.

Monday, Monday….for most of you it’s your first day back at work but for me it’s my Saturday – the day I should be taking off and relaxing and doing nothing but why do I feel guilty when I do that?  As a business owner there is never a shortage of work to do and sometimes it’s hard to know when to turn off the “work” mode and kick in the “play” mode or “relax” mode.  Well today I didn’t do a whole lot.  I did sleep in and went out for breakfast and checked out a couple of new stores in town so it was nice to take the day off.  But now here it is 9:00 at night and I’m thinking I wasted the day – see what I mean. It’s the guilt kicking in.  So tomorrow I’ll work longer hours – all paperwork tomorrow.

I finally prepared my layout to enter into the Spellbinders Design team contest and I can’t show it to you as that is part of the agreement when you enter the contest.  I’m feeling lucky lately so I’m hoping my first entry will be a hit.  Won’t find out until mid December if I get to move on to Round 2 of the competition.

I thought I would share a couple of the cards we did for our last class.  The girls enjoy working with the House Mouse stamps so we completed 3 of the 4 cards using the House Mouse

Of all the cards they created this one seemed to be the most popular.

This was probably my favorite one.  I loved the aperture card and creating the illusion of looking through the window ot the mice.

Here is a side view

I created the roof so that is could be folded down to fit into a 6 x 6 envelope with ease.

What do you think?  Which one do you like?

H

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The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up. ~Mark Twain

November 27th, 2011
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I have been pretty cheery this past week.  It’s been a good one.  First Canadian Scrapbooker informed me that they will be attending our event on January 21st.  They donated a gift for everyone and then later called to tell me Katharina Doyle and Cathie Allan will actually attend the event.  Cathie will be do demos with the Position It.  Can’t wait to have them at the event.

Also this past week I found out that one of my layouts will be in the March 2012 magazine.  I have NEVER been published so I feel so honored to actually have them like my layout enough to put it in the publication.

I’m hoping I get more exciting news like that this week coming up – I can handle this kind of news anytime.

Mr. Clean and I went to the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto a couple of weeks ago and I haven’t had a chance to share some of the photos I took.  Look at the beautiful apples all perfect in a row just waiting to be sweetened and baked

Add some brown sugar and butter and bake.  I love anything to do with baking apples but I was a good girl and didn’t eat any of these

STEP  AWAY FROM THE BAKED APPLES….Do you know how hard it is to resist something like this.

H

 

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