Snow Globe

Good Morning! I have a Christmas card to share with you today. This is the first year that I am going to be going into the Christmas card sending season with cards actually done. I am quite proud of the stack of Christmas cards that have been completed. I just love snow globes, the real thing and images of them. This is one of my favorites too. The image is from Deidre Mosher Designs and was colored with Copics, paper is from The Paper Studio, ribbon from my stash and I got the glittery snowflake from Hobby Lobby.

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Thanks for all the comments on my canning picture! I grew up in a family that did some canning and I have done some, mostly jams and jellies on my own, but this year, I decided to try and learn to can a lot of new things. Buying a pressure canner has allowed to to do a lot more variety but I have been looking for things that I know we eat, but typically buy. I have made a couple of different kinds of mustard, chocolate sauce and pie fillings to name a few. We have been trying to eliminate overly processed food and foods with tons of ingredients that I can't pronounce so canning is helping me do that too.

Have a great day!!

Snowman Card

Look, another Christmas card! I really am making progress on filling up my Christmas card box. I know this is a first for me. Everyone on my card list might actually get a card that I made instead of a store bought one that I would end up buying at the last minute. For this card, I used a snowman image called Welcome Home Snowman from Pholkart Blessings. Image is colored with Copics, paper from DCWV (I think) and snowflakes punched with a Martha Stewart punch.

Thanks for dropping by today, I've got to run or I will be late for work!

Santa Card

See, more proof that I really did start my Christmas cards early enough that I might not have to buy them at the last minute! Because every year I say I am going to get them done and every year I find myself at the store buying cards. I am pretty proud of the fact that my box of handmade Christmas cards is filling up quite nicely. This is another stamp that I bought at Papertrix when I was there in June. They were having a sale on all their Christmas images so I picked up several. Of course, I liked all the ones that I bought, but I do think this one is my favorite. I love the vintagey look to this Santa. I really just like the way he looks, standing there with  his bag full of goodies. The image is from Great Impressions and was colored with Copics, the paper is Bo Bunny, there is some stickles on the magic dust coming out of Santa's hand and I added a little "Merry & Bright" sticker that I picked up at my LSS.

Have a great weekend!!

Penny Black Christmas

Every year I say that I am going to start my Christmas cards early and every year after Thanksgiving, I am rushing to get some done. This year, I have actually started them and have quite a few of them completed. When I was in Indiana a couple of months ago, my favorite stamp store in the world, Papertrix,  was having a sale on Christmas stamps, so I grabbed a couple, who am I kidding, I grabbed a few, including this cutie from Penny Black. 

I attended a class this weekend and made an awesome hand bound book. I was surprised how nice my first attempt looks. Normally when I am learning something new, I never show the first one, but this book has already been shown off!

Have a great day!

Christmas in July

Happy Friday! I am playing along with the Riley and Company challenge today, which is Christmas in July. Every year I say I am going to get an early start on my Christmas cards and every year I wait until the last minute. Except this year! Thanks to challenges like this and thanks to the monthly Copic class I teach wanting to do a Christmas card a month, I actually have a nice start on my cards. I used Snow Globe Riley for my card and colored the image with Copics. I used paper from Basic Gray, snowflakes from a Martha Stewart punch and some little acrylic drops from my stash. 

I am excited for the weekend to finally be here. No huge canning sessions for me this weekend though, I will be attending a family reunion. Poor Kip has to work so he will be stuck at home on his computer all weekend while I travel to South Carolina, after making a pit stop in Cleveland for my niece's birthday. Growing up, my family went to this reunion almost every year, and my parents still go, but it has been a number of years since I have been. When my Grandmother passed away in 2000, as many of us as possible went to the reunion with him that next summer since it was his first time to go in about 55 years without my Grandmother. Life gets crazy and since I live almost 7 hours away, so I haven't been since then. The timing worked out great this year and my boss was kind enough to give me an extra day or two off so I am able to go. I am excited to get to see people I haven't seen in a while!

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Recipe Binder

Yesterday I told you about my some of my Christmas traditions. Another one is that I always take the girls shopping when it is time for them to give a gift to their mom. She has done an excellent job raising them to understand the joy of giving to others. She has always included them in the giving and having them select well thought out gifts. Both girls do get a lot of joy giving gifts to their friends and loved ones. Since she can't take them shopping and still be surprised, I take them shopping for Mother's Day, her birthday and Christmas gifts. I have so much fun doing this too. They usually have something in mind before we go out and this year was no exception. Samantha wanted to get her mom a cookbook because she is eating healthier and a more vegetarian diet so she was set on getting her a vegetarian cookbook. Jenna wanted to get her a charm for her bracelet, but she also pointed out that Judy could use a binder to organize all of the recipes that she has been given or printed off the internet. She knew she wanted a binder with dividers and sleeves to protect the recipes. This is the binder that I ended up making to hold all the loose recipes. I used paper from  Jillybean Soup, some buttons from my stash, a Sizzix alphabet and some Nestabilities. I wish I had thought to take the cover out of the binder before taking a photo, but I was in a hurry! I decided that the letters didn't stand out enough, so I took a white gel pen and traced around the letters. It made a huge difference, but I forgot to take another picture. 

 I also will take the girls for most of the day a week or so before Christmas so Judy can finish wrapping and do some last minute stuff. Sometimes that is the day that we do our shopping but we had already done that so we made and decorated cookies. We made sugar cookies, shortbread cookies and gingerbread men. 

 They take cookie decorating very seriously!

Almost every container of sprinkles that I have made it out for decorating.

Here are some of our final designs. The girls did almost all of the decorating, I did the "gingerdead man" ones for my zombie loving hubby. 

Frying Pan Cover

This was a very different project for me! First a quick backstory on our Christmas traditions: I met Jenna, Samantha and their mom, Judy when Jenna was three and Samantha was about eighteen months old. Judy's job situation changed and the new job required some travel so I became the girls' nanny. The first Christmas, she asked if I wanted to spend Christmas with them and I took her up on it. It was probably the best Christmas ever, other than the ones when I was a little kid. So spending the night with them became my new tradition. Kip and I got married the week before Christmas and it was late Christmas Eve when we returned from our honeymoon so we stayed in our home our first Christmas but after that, spending Christmas with the girls became our tradition. After being married a while, I gave up being the nanny, and so the new nanny is Ms. Faye. The newest tradition is that we all now spend Christmas with Judy and the girls! Ms. Faye wanted to give Judy a new frying pan (which is something she wanted) but because of the shape of them they aren't the easiest things to wrap. Even in a large gift bag, its awkward. She was watching something on TV one day and seen someone dress up the packaging on the pan to look like a Santa face. Ms. Faye is a quilter and does beautiful things but she doesn't work with paper, so she asked if I could pull something together for her. 

Since I didn't see the program she had seen, I just went on her description and this is what I came up with. The packaging had a large circle on the back with all the information about the pan. I traced that circle onto white paper to get my face. After that, I punched out a pink circle and two black ones. The Santa hat is covering the handle and after I glued down the eyes and mouth, I put down some tacky glue and then crumpled up some tissue paper for the beard and hair. I added some pink chalk around the cheek area too. I think it turned out pretty cute and Ms. Faye was happy with the wrapping. 

It's been interesting making these new traditions. I will be forever grateful for Judy for sharing her Christmas mornings with me,  and now my husband. As a single adult with no children, Christmas had lost a lot of it's magic. They gave me that back, and even as the girls are getting older, the magic is still there. The girls are old enough now that they can plan Christmas morning surprises and that brings another level of joy for all of us. I have learned that family can be the people that you choose to love, not just the people you are biologically linked to. 

Samantha's Christmas Card

This is the Christmas card that I made for Samantha. She loves the color yellow and Riley. Of course I had no problem finding a cute Riley image for her card, but finding yellow in Christmas paper was a little harder. I found the yellow bell paper in the same pack of paper from Cosmo Cricket that my pink card came from. Samantha keeps up with the Riley releases, so I knew she would recognize this Elf Riley as one of the new ones from the last release. She hasn't even had a chance to play with these yet either. She was very happy with her card and loved seeing yellow on her Christmas card.

I hope everyone had a safe and Happy New Year. We normally stay in, in part because I have a hard time staying awake past 10:30! This year another couple had invited us over for dinner and a game night. It was still pretty low key, but we had a good time. And I managed to stay awake to ring in the New Year!! I am off work today so I am doing my yearly tradition of cleaning out closets and drawers and trying to get rid of stuff and organizing what I am keeping. I am making pretty good progress and have gotten rid of stuff that I didn't use at all last year. Next area? The craft desk, and that will take a while!

A Very Pink Christmas

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. Ours was pretty awesome. Hectic, but lots of fun too. We managed to see most all of our family and still had lots of time for friends too. After I get my photos downloaded from the camera, I will post a few of them. 

 I usually make Jenna and Samantha cards to go along with their Christmas gifts and Jenna had a special request for hers this year. She wanted a pink card with some sparkle. Really though, that is her preference for just about everything!! I told her that I think that this is the pinkest card that I have ever made. Even the writing on the inside is pink. I started with Cocoa Riley and colored it with Copics and then added some Stickles to the hat for some sparkle. The ribbon I used is actually some ribbon for gift wrapping, but in person, it has a lovely sparkle that most of my other ribbon didn't have. I added the rhinestone for some extra bling and ended up with a card that made a twelve year old very happy!

Thanks for dropping by today!

Snowman Card

This time of year is just so busy!! I think the time from Halloween to Christmas keeps getting shorter and shorter too. Or maybe that is just an effect of me getting older. I have a quick little snowman card to show you today. I have had this image for a while and it sees a lot of use at this time every year. Several years back I went to a stamping convention thing in Chattanooga and won a prize, which was the set that this came from. The little sign he is holding is actually blank and there are a couple of other sayings that you can stamp in there. I love the size of this image too, it is the perfect size to make tags. The image is from Darcies and was colored with Copic markers, paper is DCWV, the snowflake is a Martha Stewart punch.

I think most of the shopping is done now and I have most everything wrapped. Other than a couple of days of cooking most of my holiday prep is complete. I try and get it all done as soon as possible so that as time gets closer I can just sit back and enjoy Christmas. Kip and went shopping last night. I have to give him some love here. He isn't much of a shopper, normally he is good for a couple of stores and that's about it. I wanted to go shopping at a different shopping center that I had never been to before and he was game with that. I navigated while he drove. I did get him to a shopping center, it just happened to be the wrong one for the store we were looking for! He was a good sport about it though and was able to get us to where we were trying to go.

Have a great day!

Christmas Recap + lots of pics

We woke up to a white Christmas. This is the first time in seventeen years that the middle Tennessee area has had snow on Christmas so it was a pretty big deal for us. Where we live it was perfect, lots of snow on the grass and trees but the roads were pretty clear. The plan was that we would travel to my parent's house to celebrate Christmas with them. We were going to head out around lunch time, but got a call from my Dad and they had a lot more snow than us and everything was a mess. We weren't able to go there as planned so our celebration with them got canceled until this past weekend. I wanted to share some photos of my Christmas but wanted to wail until we were officially over Christmas! 

We started out on Christmas Eve at my in-laws. We always have dinner over there on Christmas Eve. It is always fun, we have a core menu that is planned and then mu SIL and I bring over a sampling of all the different things we have been making and baking. I think we both got carried away, we had so many sweets, but everything was just delicious. 

My niece and nephew opening presents.

I caught this sweet picture of my MIL and FIL holding hands while we were all opening presents. I love this picture and going to have to do something with it for their anniversary or something.

Then we went to my friend Judy's house. We always spend Christmas night with her and her girls. Santa's elves always bring us all new PJs to wear. Jenna and Samantha made individual bags of reindeer food for each of the reindeer, complete with labeled bags!

They were so excited before bed, but finally calmed down enough to go to sleep. The fist time the woke up and asked if it was time to open presents? 2:30 AM!

All of our stockings lined up, even the dog and cat has a stocking.

Samantha checking out Kip's new puzzle from me. He can't decide if I buy him these things because I love him and know he loves puzzles or if I do it to drive him crazy! That large wooden snake will (supposedly) fold back up to make a solid cube.

Kip opening his big gift from me. 

Jenna had asked for Prisma pencils so we got her those and a sketch pad.

Samantha got her own die cutter. I have had this for a while because I know she wanted one, but was waiting for her to get old enough that I didn't have to worry about her mashing her fingers. She was very excited! 

Then this weekend we finally go to have Christmas with my side of the family. In an earlier post, I showed the box of cards that I had decorated for my niece. She was so excited with her box of cards. It made me feel good to get such an excited reaction from her because it took me forever to decorate 50 card fronts for her! But they are ready to go, the cards and envelops are all there, all she has to do is stamp and color her image then add them to her cards. 

And this was her stamp kit. She has some stamps, some ink pads, adhesive and coloring pencils that she can use to make her cards.

Thanks for sharing part of my Christmas with me! We had a wonderful Christmas and hope you did too. 

Merry Christmas! And here's what I have made over the past 24 hours.

First off, I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. Hopefully yours is full of family, friends and lots of love. Remember too that family are the people that we chose to surround ourselves with, the people that we love and who love us, support us and encourage us. Not all of those people are related by birth or even marriage. Thanks to all of you for the gift of your friendship over the past year. Some of you I have had the pleasure to meet in person, and the rest I would love to meet in the future. I appreciate all the comments you leave for me. they really do encourage me. It has been a rough year personally and the comments have meant even more than you could possible know. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the gift of friendship and the time that you spend reading my blog.

This is our Christmas tree this year. I love Christmas trees and ornaments and have been collecting them for many years. Most all of my ornaments are angels. The rest are Elvis. That alone says so much about my personality!

I thought I would share with you what I have been making for the past 24 hours in my kitchen. This is a pan of homemade caramels. They are to-die-for delicious, but not quite firm enough to lift out of the pan. But with a spoon they are great!

Chex Mix Muddy Buddies. I sent a bowl of this and some coffee to work with my husband yesterday.

Traditional Chex Mix.

Chocolate Mint fudge.

My almost famous twice baked potatoes.

Sausage balls.

A triple batch of laundry detergent. Not for Christmas or anything, I was just out of detergent! I do make my own and usually make a double batch when I make it.

I have been working on this for the past couple of weeks, I just finished it yesterday. My niece lives about 3 hours away from me and she wanted A stamping kit for Christmas. She specified that she wanted to be able to make cards for lots of occasions, birthdays, get well, friendship, holidays and such. I bought a pack of cards and envelops and decorated them for her. Since she doesn't live nearby she doesn't have access to a lot of craft supplies. 

Now she has a box of 50 pre-decorated cards, ready for her to stamp her image and then add it to the card. There is also a rainbow selection of card stock for her to use.

This is her "stamping kit" that I put together for her. I have a few more stamps to add, but she will have a few for every occasion she wanted to be able to make a card for. I also added some colored ink pads, a black ink pad, some coloring pencils and a pencil sharpener. I think she is set for a little while!

And now let Christmas begin!!! I won't be around online for the next few days, I will be hanging out with family and friends. They are predicting a white Christmas for us which is a very rare thing. I've got my fingers crossed!!

Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!!!

The Day Before Christmas Eve

And if you are a crafter like me you are frantically trying to finish up all your homemade Christmas gifts! I have a couple of more to finish and am in the midst of my holiday baking. So far I have made caramels and am starting a few other things. Not on the menu? Fruitcake! I am not a fan, but I love this S2G image anyway. In addition to my Copics, I used some Spica markers and a little bit of Stickles. 

My twelve year old niece told me all she wanted for Christmas from me was a card making/stamping kit. I fond her an organizer and have filled it full of supplies for her. Since she is a novice, I have  been working on making her some card fronts. I will try and get some pictures of them and posted.

Have a great day!!

12 Days of Christmas Day 10

The Simply Betty 12 Days of Christmas is still happening! Our challenge for Day 10 was to use a Simply Betty image and turn them into carolers. When I think of carolers, I guess I think of Victorian era or something from Dickens. I used Darcy and Timothy from the Victorian beauties digi line. Don't these guys look like they could be out caroling?

I have been so busy for the past few days! I have been hard at work in the craft room, but don't have much to show yet. Most of what I am working on is either Christmas or for my husband for our anniversary. I will show you when I can, I don't want to give anyone a preview about their gift!

We did have a snow day on Monday so I was able to spend the day at home. I kept Jenna and Samantha and except for lunch, they crafted all day long. They made stamped and made cards, played with clay and play dough and painted some ornaments. All in all, a pretty great day. Thanks for visiting!

Day 9 of Christmas

What do ya mean ghosts can't be elves?? Our challenge from Simply Betty Stamps is to use one of the digis to represent the Ghosts of Christmas past. I think Elfin' Miller is a little upset that Santa doesn't need a ghostly elf this year. I left Miller's face white to make him look more ghostly, everything else was colored with Copic markers. Papers are DCWV and the ric rak is from the stash. I have been using lost of things from my stash lately, they are showing up like embellishments from shopping trips past! Since I have been working on moving my craft space, I have found tons of stuff that I bought and never used so I am working on either using it or giving it away. I have a friend that teaches kindergarden that loves getting boxes of craft stuff to use in her class. 

Guess what?? It snowed!! I am like a kid when I see snow. It is pretty rare for us to get very much of it here in Tennessee and even rarer to get it this early in the year. Unless something changes overnight, I think I will be staying home tomorrow. After my spill earlier this year in my driveway, I think it is better for all if I stay inside when there is any potential for ice! 

12 Days of Halloween--Day 8

It is Day 8 on the Simply Betty 12 Days of Christmas. And today the challenge was to use a SBS image as our version of "Sandy Claws". I cannot tell you how many times that I have seen The Nightmare Before Christmas. When my nephew Cole was younger this was his absolute favorite movie. Not too long ago, Kip surprised me with a Blu-ray copy and I just watched it again the other night. So this challenge was very fun for me to do!  I used Bahumbug Christian for my card. I thought this swirly paper would make the perfect background for my Sandy Claws. His beard was made with Liquid Applique and the fur on his suit was done with some white flocking. I thought he definately needed some skulls floating sound somewhere so I pulled out this skull border from K&Co.'s Halloween line. Finishing off the card is some silver accents in the corners. 

I have had a busy day today. I got caught up on some house cleaning (boring!) and then played in my craft room for a while (FUN!). I finished my Christmas shopping yesterday so I wrapped a few gifts. After that my friend dropped off her two daughters (8 & 11) so they could hang out over here for a while. We goofed off for a bit then I took them shopping for their mom's Christmas gift. This is a yearly tradition that I do with them every year and I enjoy it as much as they do, if not more. It is always interesting to see what they pick out. Sometimes they know what they want and sometimes we wander around stores for a very long time. Today wasn't too bad. One year for Mother's Day, Jenna decided to buy some flowers. I swear we were in Wal-Mart for hours! She inspected every single leaf on every plant before making her choice. We had so much fun shopping. Kip was meeting us for dinner and after we finished what we needed to do we had a little bit of time to kill so they talked me into going into Bath and Body Works. They had to smell every scent in the store before picking out what they wanted to buy. After a sushi dinner we took them back home and then Kip and I went and saw the new Narnia movie. It was pretty good, but now it's late and I am going to get in bed. Thanks for stopping by tonight!

Simply Betty's 7th Day of Christmas

It's Day 7 of the Christmas celebration over on the Simply Betty Challenge Blog. The challenge today goes along with the Christmas song "all I want for Christmas is YOU" and Betty says "all I want is my Emos". So we were to use an Emo image and the colors lime green, purple and turquoise.  I used Candy Cane London and of course colored her with my Copics. This is not a color combo that I would have thought of for a Christmas card, but the more I look at it, the more I like it! Papers are from Making Memories, the snowflakes are some buttons that I have had for a long time and the shapes behind the image were cut out using Nestabilities.

Twisted Thursday--Glitter and Bling

Welcome to another Twisted Thursday! Our challenge this week is to use GLITTER and BLING. Shirley's 2 Girls have got some great Christmas images, Isn't that little mouse peeking out of the stocking just adorable? For my bling I added rhinestones onto the stocking and for glitter I used some glittery Spica marker on the stocking and my poinsettia has been misted with Glimmer Mist. We would love for your to join our Glitter and Bling Challenge, just create your project and link it to our challenge blog.

I just bought my first bottle of Glimmer Mist recently and I do not know what took me so long! My LSS carries this and I had looked at it over and over again and never took any home until about a month ago. The last time I was at the LSS, they had restocked and had lots of new shiny colors. Hmmm, maybe I need to tell Santa that those would make great stocking stuffers! I know Santa reads my blog sometimes so who knows? I may have a very glittery Christmas.

Steampunk Christmas

It's Day 6 of Simply Betty's 12 Days of Christmas challenges. Here is the challenge: "the children were all snug in their bed while visions of steampunks danced in their heads." I have to admit that if we hadn't been challenged to make a steampunk card, I would have still be just admiring these images too intimidated to try coloring them. Even after I printed it off, I still sat staring at this image for a while before starting to color it. After I got started though, it really was a lot of fun! My image is from the Steampunk Gang at Simply Betty Stamps and was colored with Copic markers. The paper is from a Hobby Lobby Christmas pack and the letters and buttons are from a Making Memories pack from a while back. You can't really see it, but the letters spelling out "JOY" were added using foam tape to give it some dimension. The gear is from a digi set from My Grafico. Even though these images intimidated me a little, I had fun with this one and will be getting the rest of the set!

Copics used: Hair Y11, Y21, YR14, YR23, E07

Skin: E000, E00, RV02

Shirt & Scarf: E40, E41, E43, E44, E47

Dress: R35, R37, R39, R59, R89. C7

Boots: E44, E47, E49

Mo's Glitz and Glimmer Challenge

Hello! I just love this image from Mo's Digital Pencil. As the owner of (or servant to, depending on who you ask) three cats I can so relate to this picture. The cats and I are at constant battle over the tree. The cat's quest is to climb it, undecorate it, run off with the tree skirt and generally make me crazy. It is getting a little better since we have wrapped some gifts and placed them under the tree. When I saw this image, I also knew it wold make a great card for some of my cat loving friends with the same problem. I am entering this card in Mo's Glitz and Glimmer challenge this week.  It's a little hard to see in the photo, but in addition to coloring everything with Copics, I used Spica markers on the ornaments and star and added a glittery border to the tree skirt. My glittery paper is from Hobby Lobby, and the ribbon is too and the buttons are from my stash.

Speaking  of tree skirts, every time I see one or hear those words together I think of the funniest episode of Designing Women. That episode was just about one of my top episodes of any show on TV. It is nearing Christmas and all the women are going to a Christmas party. Their friend Bernice came downstairs to join them and she was wearing a tree skirt as her party dress. throughout the rest of that episode she was still wearing a tree skirt in place of a real skirt. That still makes me laugh, and almost just as hard, all these years later. Thanks for dropping by!