COPIC CERTIFIED DESIGNER

WOW! It has been a month since I last posted and a lot has happened. (I will try to catch up on posting my recent cards later today.) As some of you know, we spend our time between our home (of 23 yrs) in Apple Valley, MN and our condo in Oshkosh, WI (where our son, his wife and our 2 precious grand daughters live.) Usually it is about a month here and a month there scenario. The travel time is 5-6 hours depending on our stops.

We came back to MN the middle of November, had a quiet "ham" Thanksgiving, just the two of us, and on Dec 3rd, I left for New Braunfels, TX to visit my mom who is 88, widowed a little over a year now and still trying to live in her home. I enjoyed my 10 day visit and also reconnected with two HS classmates and had a 4 hour lunch with them at Los Barrios Mexican restaurant in San Antonio. (I bought the cookbook the restaurant was selling and hope to try some of their dishes at home.) They were named one of the top 100 restaurants in America and have been on Good Morning America, Food Network, and the Today Show. It was a memorable place with excellent food. Thanks Jim Bailey for a lovely lunch. You are such a sweetie!

The next day (after spending the night in the Airport Double Tree), I attended the Copic Certification class with 26 other ladies. I was thrilled to have been accepted for this class. WHY you might ask? Well, it is usually reserved for people who are designers and design team members, craft store owners and their employees, artists, art educators and other art professionals. I don't quite fit the "professional artist" category but I wanted to learn exactly HOW best to use them in my card making and possibly other applications. To make a long story short, they had so many applicants for the Dec 13th class, they made a second class and my degree in education and art, and my having taught art at a Junior High for a year, and teaching card classes for Seniors was enough to be invited to attend the class. AND I was going to be in the vacinity anyway visiting Mom. Funny, how things work out sometimes. So I AM now a Copic Certified Designer and I am SO happy about it that I have a perpetual smile on my face. I learned SO much about all their products, and techniques and my brain was full to the brim with information that I hope to utilize in my cards. Sally Lynn McDonald was a fantastic presenter...so knowledgeable and funny, too. She is a wonderful representative of the nice people I met during class. I also met Carol Condos, owner of Stamp Antonio who gave me a ride to her store at lunch. What a great stamp store and kind person she is. She even sent someone out to pick up my fav burger for lunch while I shopped a little, and we shared a little about my cats and her dogs over lunch. Thanks, Carol.

AND to top it all off, I came home that evening (after a foggy departure), to a winter wonderland. Woo Hoo! We had 8 inches of snow while I was gone and here is a picture of our home nestled in the white blanket of beauty that God provided. Oh, He is SO good to us, if we only had eyes, and ears, and hearts to listen to Him and a desire to appreciate Him. Thank You God