I rarely get into Boston, but this spring we went in a couple of times. This day was a celebration for Bob's birthday. We ate out lunch in the city and then we went over to the Aquarium for the afternoon. These are a few of the little guys we ran into. Laura, Vicki, Bob and I had a great time!! If you are ever in Boston you need to make this one of your stops!

Last week Laura and I went into Boston and took a day long workshop on digital photographing. Laura has had a lot of experience playing with her camera, but it was my first experience with the Cannon Rebel and I did not have any idea what a F stop was, or ISO of 100, or 400 or even what an aperture was. The entire morning was spent on the how to's and wht to do and not to do. We broke for lunch and Laura and I headed out to the cobblestone streets of Boston to find a place to have lunch. We ate at a neat little place not far from the Wang center and spent the time before the meal, playing with our camera.

We were anticipating the afternoon session. After lunch we had a live model shoot. It really was a lot of fun. We had several models that were in different costumes and outfits. They had all the lighting set up like in a professional studio and we had about an hour to shoot as many pictures as we could. After the shoot they critiqued some of the photos. This was followed by a well known author giving us a slide presentation of his works and studies in black and white.

I took well over 300 photos, but I have included a few so you can see the types of things we did. It really was a neat day, and pretty awesome that I got to do something I had never tried and also that I got to share something fun with Laura.

These are a couple of the shots that I took.

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WE ARE CELEBRATING HERE IN MA
SUPER BOWL SALECome Celebrate the Super Bowl with us! We are celebrating here in Ma with the New England Patriots going to the Super Bowl once again. We are having a sale starting today! Every unmounted stamp on our web site will be on sale for 20% off the listed price! We will include in this sale all of our unmounted clear sets as well. In addition to that for every $50.00 that you spend, we will give you a free gift of one of our med to large Unmounteds (our choice) . So if you spend $100.00, you will get 2 of these. Our cart is not set up for special sales so you need to put Super Bowl sale in the special instruction area. We will take off the 20 % before charging your card. If you are paying by paypal our Paypal account is Lasimppan@aol.com and we will give refund the 20% back to your paypal account. This sale will be over at the end of the Super Bowl game on Sunday. So go take a look at our web site and have your own Super Bowl Party at www.lasimppan.com . Cheer your favorite team to victory with brand new stamps! As a special bonus, if you spend over $150.00 after the discounts we will give you free shipping!! So tell all your friends and happy shopping!
EVEN OUR NEW CLEAR STAMPS ARE INCLUDED IN THE SALE
We have some great new Clear Sets of Stamps. If you have not checked out our web site lately, be sure to check these out. We will be adding new stamps to this area of our line, so check back often.
Click here to view our Clear Stamps perfect for Stamping and for Scrapbookers

A SMALL PREVIEW OF OUR UNMOUNTED IMAGES This is just a little sample of all of the wonderful stamps that we are offering to you at this GREAT sale price! Our images cover a vast line from a simple flower, to the zany and wacky stamps that make you laugh, or the wonderful sentiments that make your cards special. Check out our unique images here now!CLICK HERE TO GO TO OUR HOME PAGE FOR A LISTING OF ALL OF OUR IMAGES

OUR CREATIVE CREW HAS LOTS OF IDEAS FOR YOU
While you are visiting our web page be sure to visit our Creative Crew's Gallery. It is full of GREAT ideas on how to use your new Unmounted stamps! Lisa Sommerville is helping you get ready to pack for the Super Bowl or for that vacation to escape the winter with an inspiring card in her gallery. Check her gallery out today! CLICK HERE TO MEET OUR CREATIVE CREW AND TO GO TO THEIR GALLERIES

IT MAY BE SNOWING HERE IN NEW ENGLAND
Check out the wonderful sample card made by Creative Crew member Shari Oudt shows us what winter is like in New England! However, our thoughts this week are with Football and the Pats! Why not add some wonderful new rubber to the mix and make it a PERFECT SUPER BOWL WEEKEND!
click here

WANT SOME FREE RUBBER!!
We offer a $25.00 gift certificate to anything on our web site if you are published in a print magazine using all of our images, and you give credit to us as the manufacturer. Submit those great cards today and be one of our many customers who have their name in the limelight and are enjoying free products!
SELECT YOUR IMAGES NOW AND HAPPY STAMPING

It was 93 today! In all this heat Laura has been pressing rubber and getting ready for two shows that we are doing back to back. We will be at Novi in MI and Stampaway in Ohio. Check out our convention page on our web site at http://www.lasimppan.com/ to get a coupon for a discount for shopping in our booth at either of the conventions! Well the van is packed and we are almost ready to go! We have lots of new things and are excited about doing both of these shows.

I did some of my part of getting ready (cutting the rubber) outside. It is so nice to be able to spend some time in my yard enjoying all the flowers Bob has planted! Last year we were on the road most of the summer and I missed a lot of the blooms!

Here are a couple of photos of his flowers!

Where has the summer gone? I can't believe it is almost August! Bob and I did manage to get away for three days. We spent them in Maine. We mostly did exploring as the weather did not cooperate! It still was relaxing to get away from work for a few days! Laura and I spent the rest of the month trying to get ready for the Novi and Stampaway shows. We will be out in the mid West for two weeks so trying to press enough rubber and make enough of everything for two shows has taken us all of our off time. It will be nice to see some of you while we are traveling this summer. This is a picture of one of the light houses that Bob and I found when exploring. It has to be the smallest lighthouse I have ever seen, but I am sure it is not the smallest one out there! We also went to a light house museum and that was kewl! The other picture is a veiw from the hotel. Neat!

We spent all of this week getting ready for the Manchester, N.H. Rubber Stamp Convention. Laura pressed tons of new images and I spent a lot of the day outside on the patio cutting out the unmounteds and getting them ready for the show. Today we packed the van and tomorrow is set up. We are finally ready! My sister arrived today from NC with her two girls to visit with my dad at rehab and my mom at her house. On Sunday they are going to drive down to Manchester to see us. It will be nice to see them all.

Our yard has been a real delight this summer. We have many new families of birds making homes in our birdhouses. One of the families is a pair of Red Cardinals. So far we have only spotted two little ones with them. Laura and Bob were out and Laura spotted this baby one at the bird bath. He waited until she came back into the house to get her camera so she could snap this picture of him.

Father's Day

This is where we all went on Father's day. Laura took this picture of the Nubble Light House in York, Maine. It was the perfect stop after taking Bob out for seafood. The lighthouse sits on an Island, high on the cliff overlooking the ocean and the waves hitting the rocks. It is typical Maine. It is one of our favorite places to go when we want a outing that is fairly close to home. The other is a great picture of Laura together with Bob taken on the rocks.

Bob's Garden

Bob's garden is finally in bloom. We never thought that summer would get here! Last year was the first year he planted this type of flower. We loved them so much that he planted them in a couple other places in the garden for this year. These are Alliums. They are very large. We dried the ones he grew last year and they were awesome as dried flowers as well. Our roses have just started blooming on the trellises and lots of flowers are almost ready to open.

I know I have not posted on here for what seems forever. I am going to try to work harder at keeping this up and adding more post. This is Mattie! He has really grown and just turned 1 year old last week! Here he is doing one of the things he loves to do--crawling in under the covers. This time he is home, but we did take him on the road with us to a few conventions and he did this at all of the hotels. He just made himself right at home. His longest trip was to the Allentown Pa conventions. It was his first road trip and he was a real trooper! He loved traveling in the van. He got to meet lots of our vendor friends as well as our customers. He loves the way Amy makes barking noises and barks back at her and he loves to play with John. He has several dog friends at the conventions as well. For now he will be staying home, but we will be on the road to the Manchester NH convention this coming weekend. Hope to see some of you there!

My Dad will be 90 years old on March 22nd! Can you imagine all of the changes he has seen in his life. He is still married to his high school sweetheart, Polly! Together they have 3 children, 8 grandchildren, 7 greatgrandchildren! This is a old black and white picture I found of him when he was serving in WWII. He was a true hero and still is a hero, role model, protector and friend to me. I am proud to have him for my father and very lucky to have him in my life for so many years! Happy Birthday Dad!

Denyse