Julie

Julie is the one that travels the farthest to our weekend getaways. She has moved to Iowa and still joins us twice a year. Julie and Matt have a son "E" who is 18 months, a dog Chip and a cat Jack. Julie tells us that "E" is into everything and goes nonstop all day. Julie and her family love anything Disney, Nascar, giggles from "E" and spending their evenings together watching their favorite shows. They love to travel to Disneyland, the beach and to visit her fabulous scrapbook friends in Texas. Julie works for Professional Sow Farm Management Business as CFO.

Autum

Autum is one of the friendliest girls I know. She comes in greets everyone and gets to know you with the greatest of ease. Autum loves to bake and would love to own a restaurant/bakery someday. She is obsessed with beautiful cakes.(the next up and coming Cake Boss) She also loves paper, especially adorable cards, stationary, and invitations. Here are a few of her favorite sites for paper:
http://www.polkadotdesighn.com
http://www.bhglifephotos.com
http://tinyprints.com
Autum met her husband at Texas A& M and they have two of the most adorable little girls (4& 6). Autum was the first of our group to start a blog ( www.autumawalt.blogspot.com) and digital scrapbooking. I am truely in awe of her talents.

Betty

Betty is the twin sister of Wendy. She is also very talented. Her cards are awesome and she can whip them out in no time. They look so professional. Betty loves teaching and has taught in the HEB ISD. This keeps her pretty busy. She has taught 3rd grade for 9 years and 4th grade for 3 years. Betty has a dog Freeway (this is her baby) whom she rescued from the freeway. She is also the aunt to 3 nephews and 2 nieces with another on the way in Mid February. Betty is also a huge Dallas Stars fan and she also likes to cook.

Sandy

Sandy is our fashionably late girl. She is always wearing the cutest and the latest. Sandy is loads of fun and is always laughing as she is the most social of the group. She is always on the go and never slows down. Sandy and her husband Rusty have two grown daughters and two adorable grandsons. Sandy loves to travel and is always a blast to hang out with her.

Andrea

Andrea is one of the most gracious women that I have ever met. She is funny, clever, and witty. Andrea is also a great photographer and scrapbooker as well. She is a paralegal at Kelly Hart & Hallman LLP and has been there 14 years. She is also very involved with her church, the youth group and also attends all her kids activities as well. She met her husband Bill on a blind date 24 years ago. They have two wonderful kids who are very involved in their church and school. Zach is a junior at L.D. Bell and is active in football and track. Ashlyn is in sixth grade and is on the safety patrol and plays basketball.

Wendy

Wendy makes the most beautiful quilts. She also enjoys scrapbooking and embroidery as well as other crafts. She also likes to blog even though she is new to it. If you haven't noticed she has an identical twin sister named Betty. They both have an infectious giggle that will get you going. She also has two other sisters that live in Austin and San Antonio. Wendy is currently a stay at home mom to her 8 month old son Alex who is adorable. Wendy and her family are huge Dallas Stars fans and attend as many games as they can. Even Alex has a stars jersey and helmut! Wendy loves chocolate kisses with almonds, sweet tea, and is a huge fan of Sonic's strawberry cream slush.

Connie

Connie is a fabulous scrapbooker and her albums are a work of art. I love going thru her albums and checking out the different techniques and styles that she demonstrates. Connie is also a amazing photographer. Her pictures will inspire you to get out there and look for those amazing shots. She is also a Master Gardner in case you didn't know. Connie is the mother of two grown children Kyle and Lauren and the grandmother of three georgous grandchildren. She likes to travel and spend time with her family and friends. She continues to take classes to broaden her horizens. She does all this and works incrediably long hours. She will really inspire you.

April Srapbooking Retreat

Our next scrapbooking retreat will be April 23-25. Looking forward to seeing everyone.

Gabby of the Week - Gizmo

This little guy is just too cute. He decided all on his own to join our group picture {see him to the right of Julie T's head}. We were quite happy to let him join, too. Want to know his super trick? He can take the lid off of a bottle. He took the lid off this water bottle in about 5 seconds.

April Scrapbook Retreat

The April Scrapbook Retreat will be April 23,24,25 and we decided to do a Easter theme. So get out your Easter Bonnet girls. Also put your gift in a basket for the Chinese gift exchange. I will send out a detailed letter the first of January as the first half of everyones payment will be due by January 15th and the second half due by April 16th. It is getting harder to top each retreat and I don't know how we do it, but we have more fun each time.

Anthologies is always a great place to get together for a crop night, so anytime anyone wants to go give me a call. We can always get a group together.

What a Weekend!!!!!

The scrapbooking weekend was a blast. It was great to see all my friends. Connie, Catherine, Melissa and I went out Thursday night and enjoyed a great dinner at the Fireside Grill. We had a fabulous dinner and the laugh was on me as I went to pay for my dinner I whipped out my credit card and a few minutes later the waiter returned looking over his glass at me with his hands on his hips and siad, "REALLY....Dillards!!!!" I burst out laughing...it was dark and my Dillards and Mastercard are both black. I gave him the right card and we were out of there. Our waiter had a dry sense of humor, but was alot of fun. We arrived at the Covered Bridge Inn around 9:00 pm. We leasurely unpacked and got our stuff set up. Friday everyone arrived and the fun began. Lots of laughs and catching up with everyone. It was Shannon's B-day and we sang Happy B-day as she arrived. We had lots of door prizes and made a trip to Nana's to buy the latest and greatest. We took a group shot of everyone in their Gabby Sweatshirts. It was a late night and back up early on Saturday to begin another fun day scrapping, shopping and laughing. Katy came out to visit with us as she was unable to attend the weekend. Robin's husband brought out their new baby Bella and she was the Belle of the ball. Saturday night we had a Super hero night and some amazing costumes.

Sue was Super Grammy
Cari was Super Blogger
Julie was Incredible Mom
Lauren was Super Boss-y
Connie was Super Sunglasses Senorita
Andrea was Scrapologist Dr. Trout...cure for scrapbook addiction
Melissa was Sir Knight Sweats
Catherine was Flash...Hot Flash
Susan & Sandy were Super Freak

Connie was the Grand Winner

We did our group photo on the main stairway in Pat's house....thanks Pat. We also took a group shot of our bendable people and it was just hilarious. Also had our chinese gift exchange which makes for more laughs. We have such a great bunch of women who are so full of life, caring, energetic, great sense of humor, compassionate, intelligent,and are so giving. It is such a pleasure to spend a weekend with this wonderful bunch of women. The food was fabulous as usual and the weekend wrapped up on Sunday as we said our goodbye's until the next weekend in April. We missed Autum and Angie as they were unable to come as well. But we were glad to meet Terry and Rae-ann and hoped they had as much fun as we did.

Gabby Scrapppers

Well our weekend is fast approaching.... and I have lots of goodies...laughs... and prizes for everyone. So look out Weatherford the Gabby Scrappers are coming to town.

Honorary Gabby of the Week - Pat

Pat is our amazing hostess and fellow scrapbooker when we are at the Covered Bridge Inn. She is an amazing scrapbooker; we all love to scraplift her ideas. Thanks for making our weekends so wonderful Pat! See you in a couple of days.

Miss ya

Hi everyone, its Autum. I wanted to tell everyone that I am going to miss all of you next weekend at the retreat. This is the first time I am missing one of our Gabby Scrapper retreats since this all began. Please make sure to have a great time. Eat lots of Julio's chips. Enjoy Pat's cooking. Finally, please get lots of great pictures of the Super Hero weekend.

Until next time

Gabby of the Week - Sharon

Sharon's nickname needs to be Mrs. Creative. She is a Stampin Up distributor and always has great classes and ideas. We also need to get her to attend more crops so we have more pictures. This is the one and only one we could find, but it sure is a good one!

Gabby of the Week - Julie B

Chips, yum, chips, yum, yum, yum. Julie brought the first bag of Julio's chips. They are made in Del Rio where Shannon and Julie's husbands were stationed in the Air Force. What can we say? Our hips are forever sad, but our taste buds are forever grateful. Julie has four young children {2 are twins} and has their scrapbooks caught up. How amazing is that? She used to complete 10 pages to only one of mine before I turned to the digital world. She is super speedy.

Gabby of the Week - Sue

Sue is the most well organized "collector" of our bunch. She has pulled out the perfect item to complete some of my pages on more than one occasion and completely filled my "high maintenance" need. Sue and Connie also went to high school together. Isn't it a small world? They reconnected at a crop all these years later.

Gabby of the Week - Dede & Dottie

Dede and Dottie are sister-in-laws, and I think it is just great that they get along well enough to get away and spend the weekend together.

Dottie is one of the new Mommies in the Gabby group, and she always does amazing projects. Just check out the cross below. If memory serves me right, she sold it before the weekend was over, right Susan :-)?


Dede, well she is the life of the party as you can tell. I still don't know how on earth she came up with the Bear Breasted Biker Chick costume...sooooo funny. There was one retreat I was able to make where she couldn't, and it just was not the same. I think I said more than once that it was just too quite. Dede is also one of the first ones to start blogging. I can't wait to get her started on her first blog book.

Gabby of the Week - Anna

Anna has a huge servant's heart and loves her kids and grandchildren. It has been so much fun getting to know her.

It is OPEN

Update: Both Susan and Dede were in line waiting for it to open!

Yep, Anthologies opened up in Hurst {corner of Harwood and Norwood}. Lauren and I went to check it out this evening, and these two below went yesterday. Does it really surprise you that our ringleader and shopping queen would arrive on opening day? I heard that Dede was actually in line waiting for the doors to open. You go girl!

The store was great, and it was so much fun to see so many faces that I remembered from Recollections. So many of the same great people in a new happy place is just well, GREAT!



Hmmmm. I wonder when my posting privileges will be revoked so I can't hijack Susan's blog? :-)