I wanted you to see this special mini-album that Laura Parks will be teaching Tuesday, Dec. 9 at 6 pm. She has created an album/storybook combination that can be read aloud to children to teach them the true meaning of Christmas. The inside pages will be pre-printed with a heartwarming story of traditional holiday colors, the Christmas tree, silver bells, candles, candy canes, and wreaths. There is also plenty of room to add photos of your family to these over-sized pages, in an album which will be sure to become a family keepsake.

The gang at Scrapbook Generation hopes that all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Many of us have been reminded in the past week just how short life is. Despite the gloomy economy, quirky relatives, a few aches and pains, and lack of time to do all the things we want to do, we still have so very much to be thankful for.

Then after Thanksgiving, get fired up about Scrapbook Generation's fourth annual Day-After-Thanksgiving sale. Karin and I will be here to open the doors at 7 am on Friday, and we have the best promotion yet! The first 100 of you to spend at least $10 will get your choice of Daisy D's paper (6-12 sheets), stickers, die-cuts, and rub-ons sets in themes like Christmas, winter, Halloween, boy, girl, autumn, birthday, love, family, and more. These kits are a great deal, valued at $12.99!

In addition, everyone shopping with us on Friday gets 30% off any one item, and we have tons of great totes, albums, album kits, and other items that will make great gifts for someone special (which can ALWAYS mean yourself, too)! All Scrapbook Generation page kits for general sale will be 10% off on Friday, so you can stock up on those as well.

We've had several new items come in the last few days that I haven't told you about yet...
-- Paper Crafts Gourmet: this hard-back binder book features over 110 projects combining delicious and easy to make recipes with paper crafting projects -- it's filled with great gift-giving ideas;
-- Best Creations: a new company for us -- we have over 20 glitter papers in themes of fall, wedding, Christmas, winter, Easter, Fourth of July, beach, and more -- add a photo or two and you're done;
-- Daisy Bucket: another new company for us -- we have two double-sided paper collections, and they have the same linen-type texture as the Black Market Paper Society papers;
-- Various vendors: we re-stocked our food section with papers and embellishments from companies like Flair and American Crafts, for ease in creating recipe books to give as gifts this Christmas -- there's also a great recipe book by MBI which comes with dividers and recipe cards for a super quick gift idea!

Should be here today, or Monday at the latest...
-- Scenic Route: the new Christmas collection, Garland, plus we re-ordered the popular Christmas collection from last year.

Retreat reminder...
-- On Monday, Dec. 1, we open up registration for our two spring retreats to anyone who wants to attend. Until then, only those who attended this fall can enroll. If you want to make sure to get in the date you want, act quickly. Choices are the weekends of March 13 and March 20. To sign up, pay a non-refundable deposit of $50.

Tonight, we celebrated the life of Linda Hoover. During the service, to my complete surprise, the chaplain read aloud an excerpt from my blog post the day Linda died. I don't know how what I wrote came to his attention, but I'm glad that it did. I'm so honored that my tribute was used at her service.

It was also good to see so many ladies at the service who knew Linda through scrapbooking crops and classes. Some of us gathered at a local restaurant afterwards to laugh, cry, eat, and share stories of the spunky, outspoken, and faithful friend whom we all started missing the instant we heard she was gone.

Services for Linda Hoover will be held at the Meadors Funeral Home in Republic. The address is 314 N Main Ave, and the telephone number is 417-732-2535.

-- Visitation is 4-6 pm on Sunday. (This is a correction from earlier today.)
-- Funeral service is 7 pm on Monday.

Please feel free to call if you need more information. So many of you have already done so, and it's easy to see how many lives Linda touched.

Our hearts are broken today. The band of sisters that is Scrapbook Generation's core has a missing link. Linda Hoover, the fiesty pint-sized dynamo who loved scrapbooking and creating cards, died in a car crash last night.

Karin heard about the accident on the morning news, and she has already confirmed it with Linda's husband David. Her car was the only one involved, and they believe it is possible that she died of natural causes, possibly a blood clot, prior to the wreck.

Linda was at the store yesterday afternoon, taking our regular third-Thursday-of-the-month Anna Griffin class. She came in early with a bag of McDonald's burgers and fries in one hand and a hot fudge sundae in the other and settled into the classroom area like it was her home -- which it was.

I met Linda before we opened our store. To get a feel for what was being offered, I attended crops at two other stores, and at both, Linda and I were seated at the same tables. I wasn't surprised when she was one of the first ladies to walk through the door the first day we opened in October, 2004. And the rest is history. She became a fixture at our retreats and Midnight Madness crops and at classes of every kind. And more than that, along the way she became a dear friend. Loyal, encouraging, supportive. So interested and concerned about others. A former nurse who listened to all our medical problems. A genuinely nice person who loved to tickle Drew and Jackson until they laughed out loud. A kind-hearted soul who had more medical problems than she could count, but who never complained.

Today is going to be hard. So will the next days and weeks and months. And not just on us, but on the many of you who knew Linda through this bonding experience we call scrapbooking. As we say so many times in our lives, I can't believe she's gone.

Scrapbook Generation's December/January newsletter will reach you some time next week, but I wanted to give you a heads-up about a new Saturday class we are starting December 6. I explained the concept to the people at our classes last Saturday, and many of them have already signed up, so I thought I should give our faithful blog readers an early chance to beat the sign-up rush as well!

Just because the economy is gloomy doesn't mean that people have to give up their favorite hobby! I've always believed that beautiful pages can be made using a few papers and embellishments, and here at Scrapbook Generation, we're ready to show you how.

"Super-Saver Scrapbooking" is the latest addition to our popular free Saturday classes. Here's how the new free class works. We'll design THREE 12x12 double-page layouts using 6-7 sheets of cardstock, 3-4 sheets of coordinating patterned paper, 1 sheet of letter stickers, and a few embellishments like jewels, brads, buttons, and ribbon. We'll put together packets of the supplies. When you register for the free class, just pre-pay $9 (plus tax) to cover the cost of your materials (unlike sketch sessions, substitutions in papers will not be available -- and I've promised to stay away from pinks and other colors that would limit the topic to a specific gender!)

Using our classic designs, you'll be able to create THREE photo-ready double-page layouts in less than an hour and a half, all for under $10!

The times will be the same as sketch session times -- 10, 11:30, 1, or 2:30. To sign up, just stop by the store, or call us. Remember that this new free class requires pre-payment of $9 plus tax to cover the cost of your materials.

We have lots of new goodies at Scrapbook Generation this week!

-- Doodlebug: a new style of letters (not pictured) called Shindig, in both glitter alphabets and flocked alphabets -- really cute!

-- KI Memories: tons of stuff, including five collections of Love, Elsie (sports, camping, home, pet, and Christmas), plus the Pop Culture collection of bright papers and Taglines (matching journaling quiz-type blocks -- very fun!), and nine colors of "Cookie Cutter" cardstock alphabet stickers;
-- K & Company: new and stylish Amy Butler totes;

-- Cropper Hopper: vertical paper organizers and extremely practical bins to store stickers;

-- Crafter's Workshop: a variety of both 6x6 and 12x12 templates, including some letter sets - all will be great for inks, paint, pen, even for use as stitching templates!

Normally I don't have my Saturday Seminar pages done before midnight Friday night, but since I'm really, really early this weekend, I thought I'd show you the simple and easy paper piecing pattern page we are doing tomorrow. We're going to accent the paper piecing with a small amount of stitching, and end up with a super-cute accent that is relatively quick and easy.

As always, the Saturday Seminars are totally free. You'll make a 6x6 double-page spread like the one pictured. If you aren't already signed up, you can still join us! A couple of the sessions are already closed, but there is room for a few more in the classes at 10, 1, and 3. We'd love to have you join us.

Wow! The papers and die-cuts arrived from Graphic 45, and they are totally different than anything we've ever had! Gorgeous double-sided vintage papers and matching die-cuts -- truly stunning items that will make great scrapbook pages. I also think that many of the papers lend themselves to cutting out images to use on cards.

Top photo: Times Noveau -- images of fashion, clocks, typewriters keys, even Route 66;

Middle photo: Playtime -- images of toy catalogs, dominoes, trains, toy soldiers, paper dolls, and even tinker toys;

Bottom photo: Botanical -- images of butterflies, fruits, sea life, dragonflies, flowers, and music.

Are you ready to go "Girl Crazy?" I have the sample done for my new Girl Crazy Page Kit Club at Scrapbook Generation, and you can see the real page when you stop by the store. This club starts January 1, and we are currently in the process of taking registrations. So that we know how many kits to prepare, we are urging people to sign up by Dec. 15 if at all possible. The billing of $14.99 doesn't take place until January 1! (If you want to see the Boy Crazy page kit for January, just go to Allison's blog -- allisonrdavis.blogspot.com).

With three page and card clubs, it was easy to do money-saving combo pricing by listing all the possible combinations. All you math students know that when you try to do that with five items, it gets crazy. Here's how we plan to make it easier on everyone now that we will have five page and card kit clubs!

You will pay full price for the first club. Any additional clubs are as follows...

-- pay only $10 for every additional $12.99 page or card club;

-- pay only $12 for every additional $14.99 page or card club.

Trust me, that's much easier than a list of zillions of combinations!