I am sooooo lucky!!!

I received the absolute best Secret Sister swap package in the mail!!! My very sweet and wonderful SBS2 sister Becky sent me the greatest happy mail ever!! I was so excited to tear open the package and find all of these wonderful goodies! The stamp set is awesome and the paper is gorgeous! (Cannot wait to use that stuff!!!) She chose pink (my absolute favorite color ever!!) for the ribbon and there were a ton of vellum quotes in there! I really love those! Something about vellum is just so soft and sweet! The whole package is just screaming out Valentine's Day! The absolute best part of this package though was the card! It is sooooo pretty! I have shown it off all over the place! Thank you sooooooooooooo much, Becky! You ARE the greatest! I loved everything!! : ) You made my day!






Happy, happy New Year's Eve!!! Be back soon! : )

Hello and Merry After Christmas!!

I hope that everyone had a very wonderful and Merry holiday! We had a very nice Christmas! We woke up to the smell of baking ham (I cook a ham all night long Christmas Eve!) and we had our traditional morning breakfast of ham biscuits, cinnamon rolls and oj! There was wrapping paper flying everywhere and lots of love and laughter in the room! It truly warmed my heart to be spending the morning with my wonderful family! We had a giant dinner later in the day with our extended family which was nice as well. : )

Thought I would share a couple of Christmas projects that I made but haven't been able to share until post holiday! I made this cute coaster calendar for my step dad! It is full of Riley Moose from Hanna Stamps (LOVE those cute moose-y guys!) They are always telling me about the moose that wander into their yard, so I have spent most of the year collecting enough moose stamps to make this calendar! I stamped and then my youngest colored the moose and then we assembled the whole thing using my comb binder. The front and back covers are made from coasters and I used my Publisher program to make the little months!

This post is followed by a second one!

Calendar Part 2

Calendar Part 3

...and the last two!

Post #2 today!

I made my mom and step dad these notebooks with matching post it note holders! They ask for these cute little notebooks every year because they are so practical to have laying around! They normally get them 'undressed', so I thought it would be fun to dress them up this year! : ) I added the matching Post it Note Holder to each one and they became sets! This is how they came out! They live in Alaska so the deer and snowman were perfect!









Hope that you are able to be with your family this weekend and that things are going well for you! I am learning as I get older just how important that sort of thing can be! Enjoy your weekend! I will be back soon!

Big hug!

Here comes Santa Claus!

Good Friday morning! : ) I have a to do list that is longer than I am tall today, but I wanted to share a couple of things with you guys! How are you?! I hope that everyone is having a wonderful week and not stressing to awful much about the QUICKLY approaching holiday madness! I still have about a bazillion and two things to do, but I am trying to keep stress to a minimum! (mostly because I do not have time for it! ) Giggles and a grin!

I had my monthly demonstrator meeting last weekend and had such a nice time! The group of ladies that I meet with are so sweet and I just love getting together to bounce creative ideas off of one another! We had a great meeting full of excellent food, lots of laughs, tons of cookies (yummmm-o!!) and a super fun project! We made bracelets from SU!'s Build-a-Brad set and I just LOVED that project! (Thank you Kaye for a wonderful meeting!) I will share the bracelet that I made soon!

I wanted to do a little something for these sweet ladies to wish them all a Merry Christmas and so this is what I came up with! I saw this cute Santa face punch while blurfing one day and saved the idea! I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE punch art and this was too cute! He was originally going to be an ornament, but I decided he needed to be 'more'! I cut my 8.5 X 11 paper in half and used a simple 2, 4, 6, 8 box pattern for the body and gave them all a little personality by adding the white trim and belt buckles! I bradded on a handle and filled these little guys with chocolate and boom...all done!! Soooo cute! I made a couple of extra ones to send to my folks too! : )
This is my Santa Box! How cute is he?!


Santa from the side!


I lined a few of them up for this picture! The rest waited in the house because it was windy out side! LOL


In keeping with the Santa face theme, this was my recipe card for the Cookie exchange we had! I made good ole' fashioned chocolate chip cookies! Eight dozen of them! They were yummy! Love those big guys!! We decided as a group that this would be our last recipe card exchange for a while! We made a ton of them and have quite a full little cookbook now! : )

I will be skipping the recipe due to my time budget today, but if any questions arise I will be happy to answer them! : ) I have several more things to post and will be back soon! Have a wonderful day! Ho! Ho! Ho!

Woman survives chocolate overdose!! *giggles!*

I am still here! I have been really crazy busy with life stuff and as much as I would like to blame my lack of blog faithfulness on the holidays, that would be a fib! I actually haven't even really gotten holiday started yet! **GASP!!** I am a procrastinator by nature, but I am really pushing the Christmas card stamped envelope this year! LOL I have made a few things and done a few little things here and there, but for the most part am just now starting to get it together! Quite honestly, I just don't think I am 'feeling' it this year. Don't get me wrong...not really in a Grinch sort of way! I LOVE Christmas! I am just having a tough time getting motivated this year!

We went this weekend and got our tree! That was fun! That is actually one of my favorite parts of the holidays! We go to a local tree farm and pick out the world's most perfect tree (We do that every year! Good trick, huh?!) My oldest son was able to come with us so that was especially nice! (seems like he works all the time now) We had a great time! We came home and ate mini eclairs and cheese and crackers while we decorated the tree and started to decorate the house, but only got midway through. My youngest is under the weather and just didn't have the ooomph to get all the way through. Our plan is to get everything up, out and lit over the course of this week!

Thought I would share some photos from our day with you!


Here are my girls! Aren't they adorable! : )


This is our perfect tree eating my son! Augh! LOL



My oldest two! : )




Everyone watches as Daniel does the hard part! : )


We all scrunched in while my oldest took the picture with an outstretched arm! Too funny! I sure love these guys! : )


Hope that you have a wonderful holiday day today!

Big hug! : )

A box to house your goodies!

Hello! How are you today?! Hope everyone is having a wonderful Thursday! : ) I wanted to share this adorable house box with you! You can find the pattern here. It is from Score-Pals new ezine! I had so much fun making this cute little house gift! It is a slender box perfect to hold candy bars or hot chocolate packets or tea! I am toying with the idea of making homemade chocolate dipped pretzel rods and think this would be the perfect gift box for them!! What do you think?!

This little box went together in no time! I used the SU! hostess level 3 set Window Dressing. The cute little snowmen were the perfect addition to the snow-y scene outside the window! I stamped snowflakes on the outside and added a Stickles glitter center to each one! The snow is chunky glitter from Martha Stewart. I was super excited when I spied this in the store, but was a little disappointed with it once I used it. It was not quite as chunky as I hoped it would be, but is still pretty! : )

Think I will play around with this template and see what kind of fun changes I can make! I think a pink house would be cute!

I spent quite a while playing with my blog colors and style the other night. I settled on this all green for the holidays, but think I want to make some bigger changes in the future. What do you think of the all green background?!

I have a bazillion things to do today, but wanted to stop by and say hello! I will be back soon!:)

Have a wonderful day!



Recipe:
Paper: SU! Baja Breeze and Whisper White and generic patterned paper
Stamps: SU! Window Dressing
Ink: SU! Basic Black, Bold Bright markers
Extra: Chunky glitter, silver brads, Baby blue ribbon, Sparkle gem and snowflake punch

Awwwww! Thanks Catherine!!

**2nd Post today! Please scroll all the way down! : )

I am all warm and fuzzy! Guess why?! I just received my very first blog award ever from my very sweet, wonderful SBS2 Sister, Catherine!! She is such a warm, nice, funny person! We have become friends on line and I feel so lucky to have her! Great big hug, Catherine!! Thank you! I love visiting your blog and seeing all of your wonderful creations! You're the best! : )



I am supposed to pass this award on to 10 folks that have super blogs and so I choose:

Catherine (Because I love your blog too!)
Crissy
Lynn
Lori A
Bonnie
Tracy
Becky
Kristi
Roxy
Hannah (my daughter who just discovered how to blog!)

You are supposed to acknowledge this award and pass it on to 10 folks too! : )

Have a great day!

Help!! I cannot stop making stockings!!

LOL Hello! So, I have to be honest! When I first saw this pattern I thought it was cute, but I had NO idea how addictive it would be! This is another stocking made from Lauren's Timeless Templates pattern! I am in love with this pattern! I plan to make a ton of these things for Christmas (don't worry! I will not bore you with all of them!! Just a few more! Giggles!!) How can you possibly go wrong?! They are just too cute and will hold all kinds of fun stuff! This one is for hubby's ex step dad! He is still a very welcome part of the family despite the title! He is one of those impossible to shop for guys though so this was the perfect solution for him! I will fill it to the brim with candy for the big day and I am done! : )

I ran the pieces through my Cuttlebug Swiss Dots embossing folder and did some faux stitching on the heel and toe. I cut out an embossed image (also from a Cuttlebug embossing folder) and punched out a snowflake and added red behind it to make it stand out. I added the green dots and pop dotted it up from the stocking! I added the punched out snowflake on the top cuff of the stocking and used my white gel pen to add polka dots as trim! The two sparkle gems came from Target's Dollar spot and add that little extra sparkle!

Have a great day! Be back soon!




Recipe:
Paper: SU! Whisper White, Handsome Hunter and Real Red
Stamps: SU! Whimsical Alphabet (retired)
Extra: Cuttlebug folders, snowflake punch, white gel pen, stickles, pop dots and sparkle gems