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. 

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. 

Sketch Challenge

This is the card I made using the sketch from SCS today. This was a very fun sketch to play with. I used CTMH's set Rustic flowers. The flower is colored with Copic markers. Paper is DCWV and ribbon is from Jo-Ann's and the decorative accent in the middle of the flower is from Michael's. Quick post tonight!

Added later: I only had about an hour or so this afternoon to craft and that included helping the girls with their project. I stamped and colored a little and went to church with stained hands. I was playing with my friend's daughter and she kept telling me I had beautiful fingers. She also pointed them out to several other people! Little ones are so funny!

Jenna and Samantha (my friend's daughters) are hanging out with me today because Jenna needed to make a birthday card for her friend that is having a sleepover this weekend. Some days we stay at their house after school and some days they want to come here and raid the craft room. It really depends on how much homework there is and what time their mom gets off work. Jenna made this card all by herself, the layout was her idea and everything.

Valentine Treats

This is a sample of the treats that I help the girls make for their Valentine exchange at school. We made about 50 of these little triangle treat boxes and filled them with Hershey Kisses. I bought a giant stamp from Inky Antics that has the cutting and scoring lines on it so all you have to do is stamp it and then cut it out.  They decided to use white paper and then stamp with various heart stamps. Every treat box is an original work of art, I don't think there is a duplicate in the the bunch! I am not sure where all the heart stamps came from, we just picked out all the small hearts from their stamp collection and mine. All inks are CTMH and ribbon is from JoAnn's.  You can't really see it in the picture, but we made tags with a small circle mounted onto a small red scalloped circle. Once again, I was so happy that I have a Scor-Pal now. I have used mine far more than I ever thought I would. When I first got it, I had a place for it, but I use it so much that it just stays on my desk all the time. Kip uses it and the girls like using it too when they make cards and mini-books.

The girl's mom thinks I am a little crazy that I enjoy making things like this. She is not a "crafty" person. She provides the girls with art supplies but they still love coming over to my house because I have more stuff. I am proud to say both girls know how to use the Scor-Pal, can cut their own die cuts with my Sizzix and know the difference between wet and dry embossing! Have a happy Valentine's Day. My hubby and I are going out for breakfast which is my favorite meal to eat out. 

Exercise in Patience

This is the card that I made for Jenna for Valentine's Day. I couldn't decide what to make her, but she really loves the Rileys from Hanna Stamps. Even though this isn't really a Valentine stamp, she will love it. She is a typical nine year old girl and loves pinks and purples. The paper here is DCWV, brads are from Making Memories and the ribbon is from Hobby Lobby. I colored the image with Prisma markers and then went over the knitting needles with a Spica gel pen. Notice the pink and purple yarn?

Are you wondering about the title of this post? It ties in the with card and my afternoon. Samantha has been begging me to teach her to crochet and for months I have been saying "one day" for about six months now. Tuesday we were in Wal-Mart and happened to be in the craft area (I know, shock, right?). She saw the yarn and sighed like only a six year old can and said "I guess I will ever learn how to crochet" and then sighed again. It was quite dramatic but it did the trick. I explained, again, that it would take a little while to learn. She was one happy little girl picking out her bright colored yarn. Today was our first lesson. Samantha wants to make a blanket for one of her Web-Kinz and Jenna wants to make a scarf with her pink and purple yarn. So that was my day, hope you had a great one too!

Teacher Gifts

This is what I ended up making for Jenna and Samantha's teachers for Christmas. This particular set belongs to Jenna's teacher and Samantha's teacher got the pink and black ones that I posted earlier. Each teacher got a composition book, 2 RSVP pens, a coaster box, a paperclip bookmark with their monogram and an altered binder clip. Can you see it behind the composition book? I took a 4x6 piece of white card stock and edged it with a silver paint pen and then had them write their teacher a note. Then I took (2) 41/2 x 6/12 sheets of the patterned paper and adhered them together and then mounted the note onto the patterned paper. I let the girls pick out the colors and then they gave me suggestions on what they wanted to give their teacher. Oh yeah, each teacher also got a jar of lotion because I made a little bit more than I needed. Okay, way more than I needed!

This is my cooking and baking weekend. Judy still needed to take the girls shopping to get their gifts for each other so she brought each one over here for an hour or so today so that she could take the other one by herself. While Samantha was here we made marshmallows. She has always enjoyed being in the kitchen and trying new things. I told her what we were making and she was very excited, until she found out that they have to sit until the next day! I have never made them before, but our spoon taste test was impressive! Have a great weekend!