So Much For A Quiet Evening At Home!

June 5th, 2008

So I decide to leave work early to go get Mom and take her grocery shopping, only to to make a frightning discovery when I came into her door to her apartment (my moms apartment is attached to our house). I was struck by the very strong odor of propane gas! Holy Cow! I quickly rushed to get Mom & Morgan out of the house. I thought it was my Mom’s propane heater giving us issue so I turned it off. Then I preceded to turn off the propane tank and didn’t know which valve to turn so I called Bradley and he wasn’t sure either. So Brad calls our heating oil provider and they call me back and give me the low down for shutting the tank off. Meanwhile, Morgan and Mom are hanging out in the yard. So we open some doors to let the place air out.

I didn’t check the rest of the house because I wanted to get going to take mom grocery shopping before it got too late. Just as we leave Mom realizes Morgan was playing with the stove knobs earlier in the day and kept getting after her about it. So she decides to check the knobs on her stove to discover one was turned up but was never turned to light so the gas was really coming from mom’s stove! Needless to say, we’ve removed the knobs on the stove at this point. Oh, you are probably wondering why mom didn’t smell the fumes. Well she was the last to get our cold and could not smell.

So, the house was filled with gas fumes because naughty little Morgan was playing with the knobs! So I figure we better stay out of the house awhile and so we take off to go grocery shopping. Brad closed the stores early and rushed home to open the rest of the windows and let us know when the fumes faded.

After shopping and dinner at Green Peppers we got the ok to come home from Brad and the house was back to normal! The only sad ending to this story is Picaso, my mom’s parakeet, died during the night last night. Probably because of the gas fumes. Luckily Quincy was ok and so was Snicker.

The best news is our house did not blow up. Geez! We are so lucky! Let’s hope calmer days lie ahead!

Little By Little We Are Making Progress! Oh, & did I mention fudge!

June 1st, 2008

I have so many things I still want to do to the store to make it the best it can be. I have many large projects that need to be done to get the store looking exactly the way I want. It’s such a long process to organize and display the store just the right way. I want my store to be one of the best in the area! Little by little we are making progress with a little help from my friends.

I had two little elves helping me at the store today (two really good friends Angela & Linda)! With their help we now have scrapbook page samples hanging on the wall and new bins, in our bargain section, full of new die cuts, embellishments, ribbon & stickers! Of course, it helps to feed my helpers fudge while they are working hard to help me get my store in shape! LOL!

Oh, did I mention fudge? That’s right, we now carry delicious, creamy, awesome fudge in the candy portion of our store. We have chocolate, chocolate walnut, maple, maple walnut, peanut butter & pecan puddle. The pecan puddle is to die for! It is a thick chocolate layer of fudge drenched with caramel on top and sprinkled with pecans! YUMMMMY! It’s like a pecan turtle! You have to come into the store and try some of this awesome fudge! Oh, if you like salt water taffy, we have that too now!

As for my virus or flu or whatever the darn thing is, I am better. I feel the best I have felt all week and can actually use my nose to breath once again, who’d a thought! LOL! I thought my severe congestion would never go away!!

My poor Bradley had to go all the way to Newport tonight to pick up a Uhaul truck for a big rental tommorrow. Poor thing, he has this virus too so he isn’t a 100% either. He is going to drive up and back tonight which is 6 hours all together. Ouch! Luckily he left a little after 4pm and will hopefully be back by 11pm tonight. He is such a sweetie. He bought flowers for my mom and I to cheer us up last night because we have all been feeling pretty lousy. Got to love him!

Well it’s gettin’ late and “Untold Mysteries of the ER” is getting interesting. I will end my ramblings now. I hope everyone is having a good weekend!

Blanca :)

A Little Fun, A Little Sun & The Flu?

May 28th, 2008

Well the whole family has a cold right now. I stayed home today with Morgan since she is not feeling well and neither am I. Poor Brad is not feeling well either but went to work to cover both stores. He’s such a sweetie! The store has been slow ever since the weather has been nice. This is typical for this time of year, so it wasn’t such a bad day to take off.

We have had a few people sign up for our retreat and are about a 1/4 full already! We have stamp club tomorrow and Saturday. You can go on our bulletin board to see the current projects now.

Well I just wanted to check in. I will post again in a few days.

Blanca :)

Girls Adventurous Late Night Out!

May 22nd, 2008

I realized yesterday that it was May 21st!! May 21st you ask?? Well, to any die hard Indiana Jones fan, it was the day before the premier of the new Indiana Jones 4 movie!! Anyone who knows me really well, knows I love Indiana Jones. They are my favorite movies!! I’ve waited 20 years for this 4th movie to come out! I hadn’t really had time to think about when, who and where I was going to go to see the movie but I knew Brad and my Mom wanted to see it with me. I also knew I wanted to see it on a huge screen!

So my lovely husband suggested last night, “Why don’t you and your Mom go to Williston and see the movie on the big screen at midnight tonight?” I thought about it for a brief moment…what a great idea! Now mind you I’m not normally a late night person. 11pm maybe but after that it gets questionable! So Mom and I discussed it and thought it over and figured we could swing it!

Off to bed Morgan went at 8:30pm, kissed hubby goodnight and off Mom and I went into the car. Stopped at the local Maplefields for a snack and diet coke with caffeine to keep us lively! We of course had to stop at not one but two Blockbuster Video stores because I discovered early this week they carry Indiana Jones memorabilia! The first stop we discovered a cool Indiana Jones baseball cap, had to have it! The second stop we discovered what I was really after…an Indiana Jones fadora hat! Got to have it! Now we had our official gear including our fadora to take pictures with for our fun girls night out!

We get to the Majestic 10 in Willistion at 10:30pm to discover that there are already people waiting outside to get in. We bought our tickets online before we left home to ensure we got seats! We were allowed in just before 11pm, got our physical tickets (that was a snap, ordering online is definately recommended!), grabbed a gihugic popcorn and sodas and got back in line AGAIN!

Finally, they let us in about 10 or 15 minutes later. Since we got there early we had great seats, smack dab in the middle! There were lots of Indy fans there wearing there brown leather jackets & fadora’s. It was fun to see!

You are probably thinking, she’s rambled on enough, how was the movie?? AWESOME! I loved it. I was afraid I would be disappointed but was not at all! For 65 years old, Harrison Ford still gots it! After 20 years he was able to bring the same old Inday back and that was a joy to watch!

After 2 hours in the theater and drinking gallons of soda to stay awake, we managed to wait until after the movie before rushing to the ladies room! We got out at 2:15am, got home at 3:15am and I managed to get 4 hours of sleep. I’m feeling pretty awake right now, believe or not. I’m sure it will hit me later! Below are some pics we took last night while at the theater. Brad and I will go on a date soon and I will be able to see it again! YAY! Well I hope you enjoyed my ramblings and I didn’t boar you to much! If you have a chance, go see the movie. It’s action packed!

Night Out With Indy

Morgan Gets Invited To Her First Birthday Party!

May 21st, 2008

Morgan was invited to her very first birthday party last Sunday! The party was for Ben Seeley who just turned two a week ago! Heather (his mom) invited us to come for cake and ice cream on Sunday and we had a great time. There were two other boys there around Morgan & Ben’s age too. Morgan enjoyed swinging on Ben’s new swing set, chasing chickens, blowing bubbles and seeing Ben’s baby chicks in the chicken coop! Morgan really enjoyed the party! Thanks Heather! Here are some photos:

Ben's Birthday

Updates To My Blog & Comments

May 16th, 2008

I have made some changes to my blog to personalize it better. I hope you like the changes. I also have added music (thanks to my friend Angela who showed me the cool site to set it up on!).

To turn the music off, just hit the pause button on the player.

I also added a register button to my sidebar so if you want to register and leave comments on my blog you can. I would love to hear from those of you who have been reading my ramblings!

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly…

May 16th, 2008

Yesterday started out to be a great day until I got to work….

The Bad…
I get an email from my friend Cheryle saying that I have links to porn sights on my bulletin board. What The…??!!

The Ugly…
So I go on my bulletin board to not only discover links to porn sights on my bulletin board but very very graphic pictures too! AAAHHH! Holy COW!! (I could use different words but I will refrain!) I was soooo mad! How can these creepazoids do that! Dirt bags they are!

The Good…
I immediately deleted all the posts, deleted the user names from 5, YES 5!, unauthorized usernames, from Greece, The Bahamas, etc and tightened up my registration process. Some good came out of all this since now I have learned how to make it harder for these scum bags to post on my site! So I spent yesterday reading user manuals for my bulletin board to help keep it safer. I want our bulletin board to be a place we can share ideas, chat and have fun. Not worry about garbage like that! So I am fairly confident this should not happen again.

When you register on our bulletin board you will be sent an email. Then you will be sent an email to confirm it is valid. Once you click the link in that email your confirmation and registration will be complete. It’s an extra step for everyone, but it will help keep the nasties out!

On another good note! I told Morgan I loved her this morning and in her little mumbly way she said “I Love You Too”. Now that just melted my heart! What a great way to start the day!

Retreat Registration Is Now Open!

May 15th, 2008

We opened up our retreat registration this morning! So you may now sign up for our retreat! Check out all the details at:

http://www.scrapbookparadise.net/scrapbookretreat.html

We already have 8 seats taken!

What A Big Day!

May 13th, 2008

I hope everyone had a great Mother’s Day! We certainly did. We did meet my mother in law Mary and my sister in law Karen at Oakledge park in Burlington. Karen won an auction for the benefit of public television last year. She won a 6 foot sub from Kountry Kart Deli in Burlington. It feeds 40 people!! It was made up of 3 sandwiches. Karen’s certificate for the sandwich was about to expire at the end of this month so she decided to use it for our picnic. Brad is holding one of them in the picture below. We enjoyed the sandwiches for our picnic, needless to say, we had tons of leftovers. We hardly put a dent in the sandwiches. To end our day we went to Friendly’s and had a 12 scoop ice cream sundae. That is also in the pictures below. It seemed to be a day for big things! We had fun in either case and were definately stuffed by the end of the day!

Mother's Day Picnic

Happy Mother’s Day!

May 11th, 2008

It is a beautiful day out today. I hope all my customers, friends and family have a great day today! Morgan will be turning 2 years old on 6/7/08! Here is a picture of her the day she was born! I thought it would be fun to look back so many of you can see how much she has changed!

Morgan's Birth

      About Me!

      My name is Blanca and I own and operate Scrapbook & Rubber Stamp Paradise& Sweet Surprises Down Candy Lane (a candy shop) in Vermont. I was born and raised in San Francisco and ended up in Vermont by accident. I've been here over 12 years and love it. I met the love of my life here in 2003. Brad and I were married 6 months after we met and now have a daughter named Morgan. We both have our own business and are very happy and feel so fortunate to have each other and the wonderful life we have built together.

      Blogroll
    Just A Few Of My Favorite Things!
    Besides scrapbooking & stamping, I have many favorite interests. I am a collector of a few different items such as M&M Dispensors & Products Theme Monopoly Games M&M My favorite musician is Rick Springfield! My favorite movie is the Indiana Jones Series!
    Indiana Jones
    Number Of Visitors Since 6/11/08