Where to begin??

What an amazing trip!!!

I honestly don't know where to begin--which is why it has taken me so long to post!  I had the most amazing time on the Crop and Cruise and am overcome with great sadness at how fast it all ended!  Crazy, I know, but this was such an amazing adventure for me and I wanted it to last forever.

so where to begin.........

Friends--wow!!!  I have meet so many amazing people that I truly hope to stay in touch with and hopefully hang with again!   A HUGE thanks to the amazing team of instructors that I had the privilege and pleasure to work with--Trisha, Leica and Jill.  You all made this trip so much fun and I love ya all!  and Allison--you rock!!  you put together a super fun group and I am forever grateful that you chose me to be a part of your "dream team"!

I feel so lucky to have meet so many scrappers from all across Canada--how cool is that!  I loved getting to know each and every one of you and even in some cases your hubbies and kids! It was so much fun to be on the cruise and everywhere you went, you saw one of the group!  I have also decided that going on a trip with scrapbookers is the ONLY way to go--let me tell you how many photos everyone takes!!  LOVE IT!  and no one thinks you're crazy for taking 5 or 6 photos of the same thing!

Classes--so much fun!  This was such a fun opportunity--really, how many people get to teach on a scrapbooking cruise??  It can, as some of us found out, be a little tricky too!  All of our classes were on "Sea" days which typically means that we are riding the waves a bit more.  On the Thursday classes, I finally had to kick off my sandals as I kept falling over!  But the view!  you could not ask for something more spectacular--we even saw whales outside our classroom window during the classes!

And this is the "Flamingo" group just before my class--aren't they cute!

Sponsors--I can't even begin to express my thanks to all the amazing sponsors that believed in our cruise and gave so generously to make this a huge success.  My feature class was with Making Memories and it was a fabulous--so much YUMMY product and perfect for our cruise layouts! And the SLICE machine was a hit of course--two lucky winners even got to take home one each! Crate paper was also super generous and donated a ton of product for the Technique Treasures--what a fun layout to do and I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did!  Marvy rocked it out with trimmers for everyone and Clipper Street donated two blades which we all got to play with during my layout class.  So many, many sponsors to name and no donation was too small--every one made this cruise the best it possibly could be!  I'll be getting a complete list together and will post very soon.  

The Ports of Call--these were all so very fun and unique--we had an amazing excursion booked for each one:

Samana, Dominican Republic

Here Geordie and I went kayaking thru the Mangrove forest and then exploring in the caves of the Los Haitises National park.

Then we went into Samana for a walk around--


St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands

This is a jewelry shoppers dream island!  tons and tons of jewelry stores!

We went on an island tour and spent a couple of hours at Megans Bay--beautiful beach!

In the afternoon we went to Blackbeard's Castle and then walked around the city before heading back to the ship.

Tortola, British Virgin Islands

This port was probably our favourite--we went to Virgin Gorda and it was absolutely breathtaking!  How I wish that we could have spent several more hours here--we both loved this place.  We arrived at "The Baths" and then took the hike thru the caves to Devil's Bay--

This was such an amazing day--didn't want to leave!

Great Stirrup Cay, Bahamas

This was the NCL private island and I had such a fun and relaxing day here!  I had the privilige of taking the photo excursion with Allison--SO MUCH FUN!  I teamed up with Jill and Buffy and we had such a blast taking a bijillion photos!

I'm just going to share a few of my favs for now.  

Allison took this one of the three of us:

One of our "assignments" was to capture "Pure Joy"--I think Kim rocked this one--it is my fav photo of me from the trip--PURE JOY!

and this is one of our entire team at the end of another PERFECT day:

LOVE THIS!

well hopefully you've stayed with me this long! I do have several, several hundreds more photos, but they will have to wait! If you are on facebook, look me up--I have a ton more there!
Again-thanks to all that joined us--I truly hope you had as much fun as I did! For those that didn't get a chance to set sail with us this time, watch the Crop and Cruise Blog for Allison's next cruising destination in the fall of 2010!!

don't forget to say HI!
wow--epic long post!  
dee

p.s. My Mar 23 and Apr 4th classes at Clipper Street are SOLD OUT! There is only one more class available for Sugar and Spice cards (see previous posts for samples) and that is on Apr 25th in Langley!  Hope to see ya there!!