Getting organized!

Hello!  Hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday season!  We sure did! Lots of fun, chaos and wonderful food and family!  I decided in an attempt to get and keep myself organized this holiday season I would make a simple little book to keep everything in one place!  Here is what I came up with:

I used paper from the holiday mini for the cover and added my initial with a Big Shot die.

The first several pages were for food!  Shopping lists, cooking times and notes!  

Next couple of pages were to keep track of Christmas cards that were made, sent and received!

Then there were pages to keep track of gifts.  Each person got a page to keep up with what was purchased, where it came from and to make notes about sizes and wants etc.

I added a plain old envelope to the back and covered it with matching DSP.  I cut off the top before binding it into the book so it could hold all of the receipts from the shopping madness.

Here is a close up of the Rudolph on the receipt holder.  I colored a Rhinestone for his nose!

On the very back page I used the leftover piece of the envelope to make a pocket to hold gift cards and wish lists.  I added matching DSP to pull the whole thing together.

I am kind of an organizational nutball and am always trying to find new ways to make sense of my chaos (which I usually have in spades!)!   I am happy to say that this little book worked like a charm!  Christmas came and went and I am still relatively sane! :)

Hope that you have a great day! :)

Sweet Secret Santa Sister!!

   Hello!  Happy middle-of-the-week-it-is-almost-Christmas-day!  I have such a fun goody to share with you today!  I  belong to a wonderful blogging group called the Pink Pajama Blogging girls!  They are such an amazing group of ladies and we have a lot of fun together!  We recently had a very fun Secret Santa Sister Swap hosted by the fabulous Athina!  (Hiya Athina!!) and I was lucky enough to have very sweet Dorlene as my Secret Santa Sister!  Boy oh boy!!  Did she ever spoil me rotten!  Today is the day we are supposed to reveal all of our fun goodies so here they are:

Look at all of these fun goodies!!  I was in awe!!!  Dorlene, you are the greatest!!

I loved everything, but here are a few of my favorites:

She made me this beautiful paper bag album!!  It is gorgeous!!  Pink all over the place!!

Also, this gorgeous wall hanging!  I just love that stamped image!!  This thing is even more beautiful in person!!

I just loved these!!  They are a set of magnets (which I LOVE!!) and a yummy candy bar dressed up like a snow guy!  I LOVE snowpeople!!!

Just look at this sweet card!!  

Dorlene, you really are the best!  I cannot wait to play with my goodies!!  Thank you from the bottom of my pink pajama wearing heart!  *Big hug!*

Have a great day! 

Good bye, sweet girl.

Hello, I am back.  I have been taking a much needed break  from crafting and creating and blogging. Although it is normally very good therapy for me to create and blog and share, my heart just hasn't been in it lately.  We recently lost our very sweet dog of 8 years.  She had a very serious heart condition and we have spent the last 4 months in and out of the doggie ICU and vet's offices with her.  She has been a part of our family since she was 8 weeks old and had truly stolen our hearts.  She had a very fun and quirky and sweet personality.  She would suck her paw to go to sleep and had this funny little way of wagging her stubby little tail.   She was the sweetest puppy I have ever known. She brought us a lot of joy and happiness over the last 8 years.  It amazes me how deeply embedded an animal can become in your heart and how very, very difficult saying goodbye can be. 

 She went into heart failure several times and each time we took her to the ICU to spend the night in an oxygen cage and basically stabilize her.  She had her own cardiologist and we became pretty well known at the vet.  She was a very popular patient!  All of the student aides (it was a teaching hospital) loved her too.  We decided that if she went into heart failure again that we were not going to put her through spending the night in the oxygen cage again as it was very stressful for her.  On Dec 9th (only 9 days after her last episode) she went into heart failure again.  We drove her to the vet knowing it would be the last time.  Although she was still perky and happy and playful her quality of life was beginning to diminish.  Her lung capacity had decreased greatly and even going down the front steps was leaving her winded.  

Her cardiologist was kind enough to come in at 11:30pm on a Sunday night to be present and say her own goodbyes. We were very fortunate in that she received amazing care by very loving people.

After a lot of discussion we decided to donate her to the hospital so that they could learn from her disease and hopefully help other sweet pups with the same condition. 

Zoe, you will be missed more than any silly words could even begin to express.  You will forever be present in our hearts sucking your paw and wagging your funny little tail.  Lots and lots of love, sweet girl.

Zoe Bryant

  October 12th, 2004 - December 9th, 2012

A chance of snow...

Hello! Hope you are having a nice day!  I have a fun project to share with you today.  It is not stamping related, but I just couldn't resist showing you!  A while back I saw a similar idea on Pinterest.  I just LOVE it there!!  Anyhow, one day while bee-bopping around on the site I came across these cute snowmen made from 2 x 4's!  We happen to be eyeball deep in about 23 different  house projects right now and so I knew scrounging up some 2 x 4 bits and pieces would be super easy!  I found some scrap and my very sweet son cut them up for me and just look what I turned them into:

Are they not the cutest things ever?!!!  

I wood painted all of the individual pieces and then wood glued them all together!  I coated them all with a spray finish to protect them from the weather since they will be spending this Christmas season outside!

I am just head over heels in love with these cuties!  I had the best time making them!

I am  on the fence about giving them smiles, but will probably wind up adding some silly smiles with a sharpie marker!

They all have their own little personalities!

I originally wanted to give them all hats and scarves, but am worried that it they get rained on the fleece might  bleed.  So only one got clothes! If she weathers the weather well then the others may get winter wear too!

The hats are made from wood scraps too!

So cute!!  So easy!!

I really like the way these long ones came out!

I made as many as I could find scraps for, but as soon as another project leaves some bits and pieces laying around I plan to add to this little snow family! : o)

Here they all are waiting to greet visitors on our front steps!  I had such a good time making these!  I really, really like snowmen and these were so easy to put together!  Win, win!

I have a bazillion things to do today so I am off!  Hope you have a wonderful day!  I will be back soonest with more to share!

   

Elf Feet!

Happy December 1st to you!!  Time to get the Christmas festivities rolling!!  I have a cute pair of elf feet to share with you today!  I have seen a similar version floating all over the internet so I don't know who the original credit should go to!  It uses the Top Note die, but I needed to make a smaller version so I broke out my super, awesome Decorative label punch to see if it would work and it did!    I was so excited!  I made a little box and added the elf legs to the front.  This would be a super cute stocking stuffer or a quickie gift!  It will hold hot chocolate packs, large packs of gum, a pair of fun socks, candy canes, pencils, candy bars.....!  Lots of possibilities!    Little bitty confession........I had a candy bar to add for the picture, but well...it was delicious! :o)  Here is my elf leg adorned box:

I used the decorative edges framlits for the box top and the box itself is made from a half sheet of card stock.

This picture shows the depth of the box.

I added silver glimmer pom poms to the little guys shoes and colored rhinestones red for the fronts.

                             

This is all popped up with pop dots!

Here are the directions for making elf shoes from the Decorative Label punch.

Time to start making your lists and checking them twice!  I have lots of Christmas projects in the works to share with you! So meet me back here soonest!

Have a great day! :o)

Challenge #14 Holiday Tints

Hello! :)  I am here today with the very last challenge for the Color Me Beautiful challenge blog.  It is a little sad to me to be wrapping it up.  I have had the pleasure of working with some very sweet, wonderful and extremely talented artists over the last three months.  I am really going to miss them!  Today's challenge is called Holiday Tints and here is the inspiration picture:

The colors work beautifully together!

Here are the Stampin Up! colors that we ask you to use:

Here is my project:

I made a gift card holder using one of the coolest Big Shot dies ever!  I just love this sweet stocking with the little toe and heel!

I placed the fold just inside of the cut out to create a folded card.

The gift card slides out to reveal a little hidden message!

I only managed to squeeze in 4 of the five colors this time!

  It has been a fun adventure!  I sure hope that you will stop on by and play along with our last challenge! 

You can find it here.

Have a wonderful day!

Quick hello!

Hey there!  We have been busy up to our eyeballs around here lately, but I wanted to stop in and at least say hello!  I do not have anything crafty to share today, but I do have a couple of cute pictures of some of our fur babies!  We have several animals and although we love them all very much one of them in particular has stolen our hearts!  One of our dogs is a giant love bug!  Her name is Zoe and she has been with us since she was a tiny puppy.  She is eight years old and sadly has been having some health issues.  She has her own pet cat and today while they were outside sunbathing together I snapped a few pictures!  Here are Zoe and her kitty:

They were just hanging out enjoying the pretty day!

Makes me smile every time I see them together!  Hope this made you smile too! 

I will be back tomorrow with something crafty!

Have a wonderful day!

Color Me Beautiful Challenge #13 Christmas Sweets

Hello!  Happy Saturday!  Since Thanksgiving fell right in the middle of our challenge schedule this time we decided to move it to Saturday...so here I am with another Color Me Beautiful challenge!  Today's challenge is called Christmas Sweets and just like all of the ones before it is an awesome combination of colors!  Here is the inspiration picture:

Here are the colors we ask that you use:

Here is my card:

I used all five colors this week! 

We would love for you to come play along with us over at Color Me Beautiful!  See you there!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello!  Happy Thanksgiving to you!  I know it appears that I am a day late, but we celebrate Thanksgiving for three days here at my house! * Big grin!*  It is one of my very favorite holidays!  I just love that the whole family gets together and enjoys a nice visit and good food! :)  This year two of my four  kids live away from home so I was a little worried that we wouldn't all be able to be together, but things worked out and both kids made it home!  Yay!!  We had a wonderful day yesterday with family and will be having another get together tonight with more family and one final one tomorrow with all of my kids! Soooo happy! :)

Thought I would stop by and share a couple of goodies that I made for the holiday with you!  

I made a one layer card!  I two step stamped  and added a few score lines for interest!  I usually have a hard time with one layer cards because they never feel quite finished!  I was pleased with this one though!

This is a Gable box and is one of my very favorite projects to make!  They hold a good amount of chocolate love and go together smoothly!  Plus they are just darned cute!

Thanksgiving foliage! 

Crumb Cake, More Mustard, Cherry Cobbler and Soft Suede.

This is a little 3 x 3 card to accompany the box!  I used the spritzer tool to add some color to the background.

This is a different kind of goodie!  This is one of the desserts for one of our gatherings!  Yum!

Hope that whether you have one Thanksgiving or three...that you fully enjoy the holiday! :)

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!