Carol Burnett Theme Song

Anyone doing something they truly enjoy realizes that the time you spend doing it, no matter how long, goes by far too quickly.  Weekends . . . days off from work . . . vacations . . . time spent with loved ones . . . weddings (all that planning, and the celebration is over so quickly).

My weekend was a perfect example.  I was attending a mardi gras themed scrapbooking crop in Litchfield Beach, South Carolina.  All of the planning and preparation to get the car packed, a 15 hour drive, and the weekend begins.  I was so looking forward to a weekend with my friends, Julie and Linda, and in a blink of an eye it is over.

There were some raffles, a "scrappy bear game", a mardi gras mask decorating contest, a secret pal activity that ran throughout the weekend (where you secretly left gifts and supplies for your secret pal).  Prior to the event, I was contacted by my friend Linda's secret pal via e-mail.  I dutifully answered the e-mail answering all of the questions so her pal could do some shopping.  There were about 30 croppers at this event . . . 29 women and John.  John had introduced himself to all of us via a message prior to the crop.  When I arrived at the crop, my husband helped me bring my things into the cropping space, and John came over to say hello to us.  When he heard we were from Connecticut, he became very excited and mentioned he had been e-mailing me.  I realized that this was Linda's secret pal.  John suddenly looked over my shoulder to where my husband was standing and said, "It's strictly scrapbooking."  We all got a chuckle out of it.  Throughout the weekend, Linda had absolutely no idea that John was her secret pal.  It was an awesome reveal on the last day. 

My first gift from my pal was an awesome stuffed snoopy (holding a mug of root beer) and a six pack of root beer.  I was in heaven!

I had vowed now to do the mardi gras mask contest, because I felt so far behind in my scrapbooking.  But my Twinkling H2O's were calling me.  We were provided with a plain white mask from Oriental Trade which we could decorate anyway we wanted.  I went with traditional mardi gras colors and painted sections.  I then took some seam binding and ribbon in "the wrong colors" and colored them with those same H2O colors and stapled them around the rim . . . added some dew drops and jewels and I was done.  My creation took the prize!

We had a Close To My Heart rep who set up a corner of the room with all kinds of great items.  The crop was not run by her, but she was absolutely AMAZING.  She made the weekend so special providing designer paper, cards and envelopes for us to make cards for the military.  She also surprised us all with some little gifts throughout the weekend, including a fabulous two-page layout.  I even took two classes with her, one was an amazing card class using buttons.  So cute.  

We took a ride to a local scrapbook store, and I absolutely fell in love with the "Save the Hooters" stamp they had in the store.  I passed it by at least three times, talking myself out of the purchase.  I checked out.  I was done shopping and then suddenly I was making a last minute purchase to get the stamp.  They also had some great paper called Fight Like a Girl by Glimpses.  I used one of them to create the shoe design below.  Way too cute.  I also bought some confetti in black, pink and white to make the shaker in the card.

 But the real prize for me was time spent with friends and meeting some new friends.  We had some laughs over the weekend.  There were some phrases that will be repeated!  But the fact that it is over so quickly is reminds me of the theme song from the Carol Burnett show . . .

      I'm so glad we had this time together,
      Just to have a laugh or sing a song,
      Seems we get just get started and before you know it,
      Comes the time we have to say, "So long!"

Goodnight everybody!