Happy New Year!!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to my dear crafty friends and your families! I wish you all a beautiful holiday and a happy, healthy, crafty New Year!!

Personally, I have already received the best gift I could EVER want... my beautiful Ava! :-)

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Introducing Ava Mary, my angel!!!

If someone had told me last Thanksgiving that by this Thanksgiving, I'd have a newborn baby, I'd call you lots of names and laugh at you. But guess what........ I have a newborn! LOL! It just seems like last week that I posted about our pregnancy and suddenly, it's almost December! My original due date was December 1st (which is tomorrow), but baby girl is already here!!! Due to some complications, my OB decided to induce me at 37 weeks on November 9th and baby was here shortly after!

(a few minutes after her arrival)

Ava Mary arrived at 8:08pm on Thursday, November 10. She weighed 7 lbs 12 oz and was 21 inches long. Healthy as can be and sooooo beautiful!!!

(getting ready to go home!)

The labor was not quite what I had expected and was a bit rough, but she is here and healthy and I am fine and healthy (though still recovering, so taking it easy), so it was worth it! She will be 3 weeks old tomorrow already (oh my goodness!!) and is growing so fast. I am still trying to figure out life with a newborn in my house. I was blessed to have my mother make it here to Florida from PA in time for her grand arrival, so I had some help for the first week that we were home. Then the rest of my family from PA (father, sister, uncle, stepdad) came down to meet her and to spend Thanksgiving with us all. Sadly, they all went back to PA on Saturday so it's just me and baby now. Someday I'll figure out how to organize my time with her, but for now, I'm just enjoying her!!!!!

Sooooooooooo, hopefully sometime soon, I'll get back to crafting and posting on a more regular basis. The past 9 months have been so hectic and crazy, so for that, I deeply apologize! I managed to get out on Black Friday to get some new supplies to encourage me to get back in my crafting room and I know that for Christmas, I will be getting some more neat crafting/scrapping stuff, so I just have to get to it, eh? :-)

I do want to thank you all for sticking with me through the past 9 months; for understanding why I've been MIA and for all of the sweet comments on my blog and on my FB! It really makes me smile to know that I'm surrounded (even if only virtually) by lots of love and support of all of you that I now consider friends!!!!

I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and are preparing for a beautiful holiday season and I can't wait to catch up with you all soon!!!

An Event for my northeast Florida/Jacksonville followers!

Hey everyone! I know I need to get back on here to do a real update soon, but I wanted to get on quick to share a really neat event that's going on in the northeast Florida/Jacksonville area for anyone who follows me and is from here or is around the area!

My great friend Shirley (follow her on Facebook!) (or her blog!)planned an event called "Community Card Making Event for Our Soldiers" that'll be this Friday, October 21 all day long!! Here is the info from her Facebook event page:

Time	Friday, October 21 · 10:00am - 11:00pm
Location	Journey Church 6225-2 Lake Gray Blvd Jacksonville, FL
Created By	Shirley Wright
More Info	Operation Write Home supports our nation's armed forces by sending blank handmade greeting cards to write home on, as well as cards of gratitude to encourage them. PLEASE SHARE AND INVITE YOUR FRIENDS!!!!!! I ask you RSVP by calling me at home: 904-771-9744. Please call by Tuesday Oct 18 so the snack boxes can be ordered and the space set up. Bring what you would like to work on, crop space is available for $15 or Drop off what you've made. Don't forget your extension cords!! Drop off at Journey Church on the day of the event or contact Shirley Wright to make arrangements. Cards will NOT be accepted after the event date. There are strict shipping guidelines to make sure our Heroes get the cards on time. Cards must be handmade, cannot have glitter, and be 4.25 x 5.5. No store bought or hand written sentiments. Click this link for more guideline information: http://operationwritehome.org/guidelines.html IF IN DOUBT PLEASE ASK. I would hate for you to spend time making cards and they can't be sent. Letters written to heroes are also accepted at the same location! The small fee charged at the door is to cover the costs of the church resources we consume and shipping involved for sending the cards to the distributor. All proceeds will be donated directly back to the church. The fee includes a Subway Sandwich, cookie and chips. Beverages are available onsite.

I think this is an AWESOME event and while I know that I cannot attend personally, I will be working on some cards to at least drop off on Friday!

If you are in the area, please try to go to this! And if you're not, but you know you have followers in the NE Florida area, please share this on your blogs or your FB pages! It's a great event for a great cause being organized by a great person, so why not!!! :-)

Never Forget

Hello! :-) I'm baaaaack!

First, my apologies. I've been MIA... again... for far too long. I still do read everyone's blogs and follow you all on Facebook, but the energy to type much more than a quick status update has been escaping me. Except on the days that I DO have the energy, I focus that on doing things around my home that need to get done in preparation for Baby Girl's arrival!!

Speaking of, I am FINALLY in the 3rd trimester! :-) Have had SO many ups and downs with this, my first pregnancy, but I am still so excited for her arrival. We have some new things that we are dealing with, but I am doing well and baby girl is growing well! We had an ultrasound yesterday and she is SUPER active and beautiful already! In less than 3 months (I suspect), she'll be here!!!!

So here's my update on crafting and on life in general since it's been almost 2 months AGAIN since my last update.

LIFE/BABY:

We are getting the house ready for Ava's arrival. This meant packing up my scrapbooking room/spare bedroom and moving the scrapbooking to the dining room.

This was my craft room (kinda before... the table and the storage units were already moved).

This is the dining room after the move, before the set up.

The new set up in the dining room...

Then, a couple of weekends ago, hubby and his dad painted the now-known-as nursery pink and set up all the furniture. I did a pseudo set up of the linens in the room to see how it looks (of course it's not done), but here are the results.

(I had some random character's made up from my niece's visit last fall, so I hung those on the door.)

I still have A LOT to do in her room, but I feel much better knowing that she has a room of her own!

Other than that, it's just been trying to keep up with the regular household stuff and trying to take it easy (since I've been threatened with bedrest... EEK!).

CRAFTING

Now, on to what I started this for... my crafting life!

Well, there really isn't one lately. Besides moving my room and setting back up (and getting organized), I haven't done much. I did a visit with a friend and made some cards back in July, but that's it.

But, in trying to get re-motivated, I did attend the Creating Keepsakes Scrapbook Convention that is here in my city of Jacksonville this weekend today with a great friend of mine! We didn't do any of the classes (we missed the deadline) so we just attended the vendor show, but it was still a great time! Got a lot of inspiration, found a lot of stuff that I wanted to buy (but refrained from.... I've got bigger things to spend my money on for right now and her name is Ava. LOL!), and seemed to have gotten the bug again. Not necessarily like I had it before, but definitely enough to want to get back in there and play some more. Especially with my favorite season and holidays coming up soon, Ava's arrival (and all that will come with that .... thank you cards, memory books for her, etc.), I think it's my season for scrapbooking/crafting!

I did purchase a few things that I haven't seen in any of my local scrapbooking stores or big box stores (clear acrylic albums, some awesome embossing powder, etc), so perhaps this weekend I may get to those.

I do hope to get back into this again soon to be posting videos and projects and photos for all of you beautiful people who have continued to follow me, despite me being so absent lately!! I appreciate each of you and I promise that I will be back VERY soon with something awesome to show my thanks!!!!! :-) So stay tuned!

Until then, my friends....