Have a seat and enjoy the season!

Hello!  The Christmas count down is on!  I woke up feeling a little bit panicked this morning!!!  Christmas is about 5 minutes away and I am soooooo not even close to being ready! LOL I have barely made a dent in my shopping, my cards are not addressed and I do not even have my decorations up yet!   I had a coffee date with a very good friend this morning and we talked about how Christmas has gotten to be so stressful. We discussed how people have started to lose sight of the important things and that we all get so wrapped up in rushing to get everything done that the little things go unappreciated.  That very thought inspired my card tonight:

The tree is from Lovely As A Tree and the bench sadly is retired.  (I LOVE that set!!).  I used markers to color the tree and then decorated it with Cherry Cobbler and Silver Dazzling Diamonds. The wreath is made from the 1 1/4" circle scallop punch and the 3/4" Circle punch.  The bow is made from 2 hearts from the owl punch.  To me this card says, "Sit down a while and relax!  Enjoy the twinkling tree lights and the pretty wreath!"

Close up of the tree.

Closer -upper! LOL  

My wish for you this Christmas season is that you will find or better yet make the time to sit and enjoy the little things.  Worry less about the gifts and the deadlines.  Sip some hot chocolate or yummy apple cider and listen to the music.  Go for a drive and check out all the pretty Christmas displays. Play games with your family! :)

Have a great night!

Believe trio!

Hey there!  Enjoying the weekend?  I had a few minutes this morning to sit and make a little trio of cards to pop onto gifts this season.  Thought I would stop in and share them with you guys!  They are quick, simple cards, but I think they would dress up a package!

I stamped a snowflake from Snowflake Soiree in Tempting Turquoise and then stamped the sentiment (also from this set!) on top with Soft Suede.  The card bases are Soft Suede and Very Vanilla.  I added a Rhinestone to each one and I can now use them individually or even package them with envelopes for a little gift themselves!  Fun!

How are you doing with your Christmas preparations?  Lots left to do still! :)

I am off for a dinner and movie date with hubby and some friends!  Hope you have a great night!  I will be back soonest with more to share!

Awfully gross out, but I can make my own sunshine!

Hello there!  I made a project for my blog today, but it is just too gross and yucky out to get a good picture, so I thought I would share something even better with you! This is a picture of our beautiful little grand pumpkin!!  She has started smiling and just this morning found and managed to get practically her entire little hand into her mouth! LOL  Here is all the sunshine I need to make my day complete:

She is just the sweetest little thing! :)

Ok, well despite the gross and yucky out we have a full day planned so I better scoot!  Have a wonderful Saturday!  I will be back soonest to share something crafty with you! 

Let's make some plans!

Heeeeey there!  Are you a planner person?  I sure am!  I would be lost without my planner!  Every year I try to find a new perfect planner for the upcoming year.  I want one that is pretty and will hold all of my oodles of notes and dates and lists etc.  I decided that this year I was going to treat my planner as both a planner and a place to keep a light journal of the year's daily happenings.  I searched and searched for one that I thought would be a perfect fit for me (because lets face it, if I don't love it I won't use it?! LOL)  I have decided to try to really pretty up the insides with lots of fun washi tape (woooo hoooo!) and cute little colorful  stickers!  So, I needed one that had both a monthly calendar and daily pages.  I also wanted it to be mostly plain on the inside.  I didn't want to have to compete with pre-drawn designs or doodles.  I also hoped to find a pink one.  Despite my best efforts I wasn't able to find one that fit all those criteria, so I settled for two out of three!  Here is the planner I bought:

As you can see, the thing I sacrificed was the pink.  This was almost a deal breaker for me because I really, really do like pink. This one, however, was perfect on the inside.  All of the pink ones were way too done up on the inside.  I felt pretty confidant that I would be able to pretty this one up enough to make me happy so I went for it!

Here is it after I added some things!  I used white Stazon and a couple of Stampin' Up! stamps.  After I stamped them all I went back and added rhinestones to every single daisy!!  Hard to see it in the picture, but it just sparkles and shimmers! 

Here is a side view.  It is dressed up so dang pretty now!   This was the first change I made to my new planner.

This is the second!  I took one of my very favorite pieces of paper from all time (been saving this for a special occasion!) and covered the intro page with it.  It was a page that said the planner company name and the year and I figured I would much rather look at this pretty page every day.  I added a piece of thick plastic to cover and protect it and made a Washi tape border around the edge.  I am going to treat this page as my catch all.  If I can stand to cover it up (I may use the inside cover instead! LOL) to add my endless collection of post it notes to with my immediate To Dos and Don't Forgets!  This is the beginning of my planner to be for the upcoming year.  I know we still have a couple of weeks, but I wanted it to be all pretty and ready for 2014!  

I hope you are having a nice Friday!  Do you have plans for the weekend?  I will be back soonest with more to share!  

Tags, tags, tags, tags, tags....

Hello!!  I just finished up making a handful of Christmas tags and thought I would stop by and show them to you!  They are nothing fancy mind you, but they will certainly get the job done!  I started out thinking about ribbons and bows and sparkly things, but then it occurred to me that these little guys are probably going to wind up on the floor in an overflowing heap of wrapping paper aftermath, so I might as well keep them simple (cute because why not, but simple!) Want to see?!

I used the stamp set Jolly Bingo Bits for these tags.  I cut them, clipped their corners, stamped the picture and sentiment and then I was done!!  I only had a few minutes to make these, but plan to sit down and make a bunch more!!  Anyone want to come over and drink hot chocolate and make Christmas tags with me? :)

I will be back soonest with more to share!  Have a great day everyone! 

Santa's suspenders!

   Happy Wednesday to you!  I have a fun little project to share with you today!  I needed to make a quick little gift so I threw together a pair of Santa's suspenders!  They went together so quickly and I think they are the cutest little Santa pants ever!  What do you think:

I made the box from a 6" x 6" square.  I scored it at 2" and then 4" and turned it and did the same on the next side creating a scored tic-tac-toe grid.  I cut into the intersecting score lines on two sides and then folded it into a box!  Easy peasy!

It is perfect to fill with little treats!  Silver foil hershey's kisses would have been ideal to match the belt bucket, but I went with what I had!

Here it is all full up with goodies!

This would be a great little gift to keep on hand to pass out to folks that drop by or the nice lady at the bank or post office or your mail guy! 

I hope your middle of the week is going well!  I am only about 1/3 of the way through my To Do list today, so I better scoot!  I will be back soonest with more to share!  

Ugly sweater card!

Hi there!  Have you ever been to an ugly sweater party?!  It is just a regular ole' party, but everyone is supposed to wear an ugly sweater!  Sounds like fun to me!!  Anyhow, today when I made my card and sat back to look at it all I could think of was that for some strange reason it reminded me of an ugly sweater party! LOL  The color combo was bad and the layout looked funny and I had added too much of some things and still it was missing something!!  I stuck it out though and decided I would try to photograph it and see if it looked better....guess what?!  Before I could even take it's picture the wind blew it on the ground and my daughter's chickens stepped on it!!!!  I ran down the stairs and shoo-ed away the feathery little ladies and the silver dazzling diamonds that wasn't quite dry had smeared all over the card!!  Saaaaaay whaaaaat?!  The chickens had silver sparkle all over them because in my haste to shoo and retrieve that silly card there was some flapping and flying and sticking of my card to a before mentioned chicken!!!  I had to chase the chicken to get my card and never did get to take it's picture!  Ahem....needless to say I went back inside trashed my ugly sweater card and started over!  Here is a more reasonable card for today's post (completely free of silver and chicken feathers I might add!):

A simple card with just a few details!  :)

Much better than the first attempt!  I added some faux stitching and stamped some pretty little snowflakes.  The silver is the Bracket Label punch cut in half.  Everything is adhered flat!  No pop dots today!  After the first card debacle I really wanted to play it safe! LOL

Ok then!  My daughter made brownies and they just came out of the oven!  I can hear them calling to me now!  I hope that you have a wonderful day!  I will be back soonest with more to share!

Tags and remembering our pup!

Hi there!  I spent a little bit of time today playing around in my stamp space and made a few Christmas tags!  These little guys are just so much fun and they are the perfect little piece of artwork to dress up up present!  I grabbed a couple of Christmas stamp sets and some Whisper White card stock and got to stamping!  Take a look:

I stamped that handsome reindeer stamp three times and then stamped some faint falling snow in the background on this one.

I added a red polka-dot to make a Rudolph and stamped the To/From in matching Chocolate Chip.  I added a tag string up top from jute twine.  

This little tree is adorable!!  I used markers to get a brown stem and green leaves and then added the same stamp I used earlier as snow to make ornaments on the tree!  The stamp set is called Warmed and Wonder and is a hostess set from the Holiday mini catalog.  

I stamped the snowflake (also from the same set...it is pretty versatile!) in Smoky Slate and then the sentiment in Real Red.

Third one I made also uses a stamp from the same set!  I colored it in with markers and added a fun falling snowflake border to the edge all willy nilly!

It is a great set and I really enjoyed playing with it today!

Here are all three of my tags together!  I had such fun making them!  Cannot wait to dress up some presents with them!

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On another sad little note.  I just wanted to take a minute to remember our very special puppy Zoe.  It was one year ago today that we lost our sweet girl.  She had a heart condition and after gracing our family for 8 years we had to say our goodbyes to her.  There has been a dog sized hole in my heart since that day. Hubby and I talk about her all the time and reminisce over just how dear she was to us and how much we miss her (which happens to be lots and lots!!).   She was such a part of the family and I know that I will always miss her big.  Sniffles.

With much love, always.

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Have a good night!  I will be back soonest with more craft-y goodness to share with you.

  

Envelope punch board poinsettia!

Hello!  Is it gross out where you are?! It is so nasty here!  Cold and icy and sleeting and dark and dreary and just plain yuck-o!  Hubby and I have been hanging sheet rock all day long (perfect weather for that!), but I wanted to pop in for a few minutes and share a fun card with you!  My very clever sis-in-law shared a very cool trick with us the other night at our Christmas class.  She discovered that when you use the envelope punch board and punch a folded piece of card stock or paper that you wind up with a fun ornament shaped leftover piece of scrap (see below!).  So we all started playing around with the shape and we came up with a flower and then I thought it would make a pretty poinsettia!  What do you think?!

Cute, huh?  I just layered them in a circle and then did a second layer of them and topped it with a yellow center!

Here is one of the shapes by itself.  To get it just fold your piece of paper in half and use the punch part of your envelope punch board! Easy peasy and oh so cute!

Ok, well I am literally covered in dry wall dust so I am off to hop in the shower!  Have a nice day and I hope that you are able to avoid the yucky weather! 

Santa treat box!

Happy Saturday to you! Hope your weekend is off to a good start!  We have a pretty full schedule, so I thought I better stop in early today!  Last night at my Christmas class I made and gave each of the girls a little Santa treat box.  Thought I would share them with you too!

They are triangle shaped boxes that hold candy!  Cute and yummy!

Side view!  Isn't he just so cute?!

He is made from a 4" x 11' piece of card stock scored at 5.5" on the long side and folded into this triangle shape.  They are decorated on the front to look like that jolly ole' fellow St. Nick and are just the right size for some chocolate love!  They are held together with ribbon!  Easy, peasy and so much fun!  

Ok, I hate to post and run, but we have three functions today and I haven't evened showered yet!  Yikes!!  Have a great day!  I will be back soonest with more to share!