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!

Happy Anniversary Kip

Kip and I celebrated our sixth anniversary on Saturday and this is the card I made for him. We have a tradition of doing something new and hopefully different every year and we alternate years planning. With an anniversary the week before Christmas we put more thought into our activity than our gifts. As far as the gifts so, we give each other something that somehow relates to the "traditional" gift for that year.

This was my year to plan our anniversary activity. I started thinking a while back and came up with dance lessons. I do not dance at all. Ever. I have two left feet and am not the most graceful person in the world. But Kip enjoys dancing. We have never danced together because I do not dance. I arranged to have us go in to a local dance studio for a private dance lesson together and unknown to Kip I have also taken a few lessons by myself so that I can feel more comfortable. He was very shocked that I had planned this because of my precious reluctance to dance at all. We haven't had our lesson yet, but I can't wait to show him what I learned.

Since our activity revolved around dancing, I wanted an image of a couple dancing. It took me forever to find one that I really liked. I found this one called As You Wish from Tiddly Inks that I thought was perfect. It is colored with Copic markers, papers are from my stash and the flowers and pearls came from Michael's.

The traditional gift for the sixth anniversary is iron or candy. Kip gave me a cast iron tea set with a tea pot and two tea cups. It is gorgeous. I look at these all the time but never with the intention of buying one. I love it though, it is the most beautiful shade of blue. I gave him a cast iron Korean BBQ plate and a copy of Iron Man 2 for his movie collection. His BBQ plate can either be used on the stove top or on the grill. We just bought a grill this summer and he has had a lot of fun learning how to cook on that.

Thanks for reading all about my anniversary!

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!

Coffee or Tea?

Good Morning! One of the main reasons I started my blog was to challenge myself to learn more and do more with a hobby that I loved. I saw all these challenges online that I wanted to participate in and thought that blogging would be a good way to do that. I know I have tried tons more techniques that I wouldn't have, just because they were a challenge requirement. And many of those things (like the center step card below) are things that I really enjoy and help me keep enjoying this hobby that I have invested so much into. I was not at all expecting the friendships that would develop from blogging. I would have never thought that people that I only knew online could end up being such good friends. I have met people that have encouraged me, wished me well, made me smile and opened their lives to me enough to allow me to encourage them, pray for them during hard times, send cards to their loved ones when needed and hopefully I have passed on a least as many smiles as I have been given.

A couple of online friends and I have exchanged little goodie boxes on occasion and this card is going into one such box. Most people I know are either coffee people or tea people. I love both equally. My friend that is getting this card is the same way, I think she loves both with the same amount of gusto as I do! So I have put together a little goodie box of some interesting teas and coffees I have found that I want to share. Since the box is full of coffees and teas, I wanted to use an image that went along with that and found this one that my real life friend Angela gave to me a long time ago for my birthday. It is a set from My Favorite Things called Tea for Two. The image was colored with Copic markers, the paper is DCWV I think, and I added some chipboard letters, and photo turns from my stash.

And I want to say a huge THANKK YOU to all of my online friends. In my last post I mentioned that I had hurt my back and I got so many sweet comments and emails wishing me quick healing and I wanted to let you know that they all mean a lot to me. I am recovering now and am almost back to normal.

Center Step Card

Good Morning! I almost never do alternate fold cards for some reason, but I am really glad that I decided to play along with the Riley and Company challenge this week. The challenge was to make a Center Step card and a link to this tutorial was provided. It wasn't that difficult and I love the way that it looks. I used Riley and the Christmas Tree image for my card, Basic Gray paper, buttons from American Crafts and the sentiment is from a dollar set I have had for a while.

Before I got my laptop, it was much more difficult to make anything that I had to follow multiple step directions. The computer is upstairs and the craft room is downstairs so I would try and balance my Scor-Pal on my lap at the computer desk which didn't really work all that well. Having the laptop, I can put it on my craft desk and it makes everything so much easier.

Samantha hung out with me on Saturday morning while her sister was at swim practice and she helped me get my tree up. She has helped me with this for the past couple of years now, but this year I had found a bin of ornaments that she had never seen before so she had fun ooohing and aahhing over all the things that were new to her. My tree is done in Elvis ornaments and angel ornaments. Several of the Elvis ones play music, but every time she walks by the tree she presses the button on the one that plays "Viva Las Vegas".

I haven't been around visiting blogs or blogging very much. I hurt my back last week and last night was the first time in about a week that I could sit at the table long enough to even color an image. I have spent as much time as possible horizontal on the couch, with pain meds and day time TV. I'm feeling better now, and am even attempting to go to work today.