Enjoy the little things

In these crazy times, we all need to step back and enjoy the little things in our life.

I have tried to write this post several times but my heart is aching and that makes it hard to share with you all.

I made this sign as my Christmas 2019 annual wood project. At that time the sentiment was speaking to me. I am in the process of slowing down, retiring from my job and recharging my batteries- enjoying my home and my family. Looking forward to crafting and working on my wish list of projects. 

Today this means so much more... My oldest brother died unexpectedly last week.  I am sad, teary eyed and heart broken. 

He was always there for me. If I needed help, he was there. He and his wife  helped me take care of our Mother when she was in hospice. We were a team and could depend on each other. 

I feel a bit ungrounded. 

I will be ok. We will all be ok through these crazy times. 

I have had numerous crafty friends send me Sympathy cards. They mean so much to me. Thank YOU!

It's just a reminder of why we crafters do what we do...our creations touch hearts! Mail a homemade card today, brighten someone's day. 



Love your family- let them know you love them and

Enjoy the little things...♥ Sue

Christmas Love 2019

Merry Christmas to all my Crafty Friends!

I just want to take a few minutes to share a little Christmas love I have received in the mail this week! I love my crafty friends and family...it is such a joy to be remembered is such a special way.!

My sweet little crafty niece Melissa Mason is a woodworking guru and I am always in awe of her crafty skills. Soon we will get together and craft up something fun.   She sent this surprise mail this week.  They are wooden tags about 8 inches tall or so. The  cut outs she cut with her scroll saw.  That girl really is a whiz!!!

Thank you Missy! I love you!

Isn't this just the sweetest little image?  I received this card from Leslie Miller-my Oregon cyber stamping friend! You can visit her blog Running With Scissors. She is so talented!

   I have joined a FLIKR Christmas card exchange for several years now.  This beauty came from Mateja Pintar.  Such pretty winter details! Thanks Mateja!

This pretty embossed card came from my HM Design Team friend Bunny! I loved the embossing!  You can visit her blog Bunny's Cards.  

Thanks for popping in for a little holiday love!

♥ Sue

Ahhhh...the Christmas rush is on!

What have I been up to???  Boy I have been running around like crazy trying to get things done!

Lukey is my crafty "Project" boy.  He is very methodical and will stick with a project until the end! Cole not so much....

Lukey made these little dipping pretzel snowmen. One for each of his family! 

 I slipped in a LeeAnn Rimes Christmas Concert...beautiful!

 My wood crafting friend Jill and I (with the help of my Dad) made these wreaths for our annual wood project. They turned out so cool!  We made 36 of these!!!

Jill and I have also been baking our annual Christmas cookie stash...we made more than twice this many plates up today and they are ready to give away!!!  Every year we think we won't have enough cookies and in the end we have so many more than we thought!!!

We also made up some fun Santa Sacks for our grandsons.  My first time using Heat transfer vinyl.  Made a few mistakes along the way-- but in the end I figured it out!!  These were pre printed sacks and we just added the names.

I had planned to help my grandsons make this project(as seen on Pinterest), but in the end, the cookies got the best of me and Auntie Abby helped Lukey make these for his Grandpas and Daddy.  The original plan was to paint on the brown with acrylic paint, but I thought better of it with a 5 year old.  We just decided to use brown cardstock instead. 

I love 5 year old handwriting! I made 60 of these lightbulb name tags for my parents to use for their gifts with some left over for me too!

Well, that is where my craftiness has  been channeled over the last month! I have a few more projects to show you but no pictures of them yet! Coming soon!


 Thanks for popping in-I am off to bed!!!

♥ Sue

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to you all! 

Here are a couple pics of versions of our barnwood Christmas Tree projects that My Dad, my friend Jill and I made this year...we sure had fun making them!!! They are meant to stand outside in the weather-sort of the shabby chic look !  We used old wood my Dad had around his property, so they were all a little different!

Christmas breakfast with Grandma Jo taters!

Greenies for Billie and Porter!

Christmas Cookies

It is not the gifts that make the holidays, it is the people you spend it with!

♥ Sue

Merry Christmas to You all-annual woodcraft project.

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas! 

I hope you enjoyed the holidays and family-I know I did.

Now that the holiday is wound up-I can show yous my annual Christmas wood project. Of course, after a busy season preparing for a wedding, I had to pick out something easy to complete. My crafting buddy Jill and I saw this on the Lowe's website and decided we could CASE this easily.

You could use a clip board, but we are always trying to keep our costs down, plus we love taking a saw to wood for our annual craftiness. We used 1/8 MDF board that we bought at Home Depot for something like $4 or  $5. It came in a 2x4 piece of wood. We cut our boards to a 9x12 size -you can get 10 boards by cutting this size. FYI-(clipboards are 9x13).  We drilled 2 holes at the top so we could feed the 1/4 or 3/8 inch ribbon through.

We painted one side with chalkboard paint, added some faux stitching with a Krylon red paint pen (chisel end) and a fun holly berry/ leaf svg from Creations from AR. I also used some of the glitter dots I made that I showed you in a previous post HERE.  We used buttons on some of them as well, just for a different look. 

For a finishing touch, we tied the chalk on with some sisal string. We left the boards blank so people could write their own Holiday message before hanging it up. . We always wrap up our projects in clear cellophane and tie it up with some pretty wire edged ribbon. This year we set a plate of cookies on top of the wrapped board and added the ribbon. A combo deal LOL!

Again-Merry Christmas to you all!

Little Penguins!!! Jill and I made about 125 of these little guys! Cute huh? We were short on time this year and had to pick a quick project! These are little ornaments to hang on your tree.

Jill and I combined our baked goodies and make up goodie plates for friends and family today! That's not even all the plates...

Sweet Busybody Cole was here to visit Gwamma and help her finish up all her crafts and baking! Gwamma had to give him a present early to play with..a Sit and Spin...I think he made  himself dizzy LOL!

I hope to get a few minutes tomorrow to take pictures of the project that I didn't complete all the way, but since it was for my girls, I know they will understand and give Mom more time to finish after the holidays. These projects always take more time than a person thinks!

See you tomorrow!

Christmas Project 2008-Woodworking and Papercrafting!

Stampin Up! papers.

I think some of this is Stampin Up! paper too.

Our version of the Anna Wight snowflake! I found an old tin full of wonderful buttons and we had fun matching them to each stocking! We bought the big snowflakes(Bazzil?), painted them and glittered too. Used the Martha fern punch and a Sizzix snowflake embosslet. Added an old button and Viola!

Some more Debby Mumm papers?

Debby Mumm papers?

Mainly Basic Grey paper maybe?

Jill and I made these wonderful stockings based on Anna Wights stocking here. Her stocking was quite a bit "fancier" than ours...but we make quite a few of them for family and friends and time becomes a big factor. We had such a grand time making these, although they have now become a New Years stocking as we are in the midst of a severe snow storm and the stockings got stranded...as well as many of the yummy cookies that were made. At least I know I will not go hungry. Jill and I decided this is our favorite project we have made...! Thanks so much Anna!

These stockings were a good excuse to use all my DP I have been hoarding. I closed my eyes, my heart was pounding and handed my DP holder over to Jill to start gluing away! How liberating...LOL! I still have lots of pieces, but I loved looking at all the stockings and trying to decide which one to keep for myself! They were all different too...not one that looks like the other. Jill was in charge of gluing and using that nifty little Fiskars finger cutting knife to cut around the wood once the glue dried some. What a nifty little tool!

I was the chief wood cutter and sander...ouch that is hard on the hands. I used my new scroll saw that my Mom and Dad got me for my birthday! We actually set it up in the front living room (not a cold shop this year) and sawed away. Dad had to help me learn to change blades...Jill and I sort of destructed the machine when trying to change the first blade, so Dad had to help put it all back together...a real learning experience!

We wrapped these in cellophane, put a big bow on them and will deliver some as Christmas presents or some as Happy New Years stockings...!

Projects of Christmas past! Woodcrafting

I love these little reindeer! The heads are made out of the little spoons that come with orange sherbert cups...remember those? The fence is made out of tongue depressors. I think you can see that each little reindeer is named (those are my kids!)...lots of little pieces on this...they took longer than I thought they would, but were fun to make with Jill West...I think...Jill and I have crafted almost every holiday in the last 10-15 years, but sometimes a new crafter steps in once in a while to join in the reindeer fun. I hope I keep the names straight!


Jill and I made this star up at my Dad's shop in 2001. Of course Dad and sometimes Mom get recruited to act as elves too! The center star is rusted metal.

My Dad, Mom and I made these up at his shop in 2005. The weather was storming and we had the best time. We had over a foot of snow one day when we peeked our head out the shop doors!
I think Jill got snowed out of most of this year!

This was mine and Jill's (and always Dad and Mom) project for 2007. Can you tell they are getting easier and less complicated?

We actually had our local stamp store, The Picture Patch, cut the lettering out of acetate, taped the template on the board and then carefully rolled over the letters...worked pretty slick. My Dad cut the grooves into the boards and then we painted the board black and then red(hmm that is the red on my living room wall!) and then splattered paint on it with a toothbrush. . Jill actually cut the grapevine that is hanging the sign herself! We buy up ribbon and flower pics etc after Christmas and try to incorporate whatever we get into a future projects.


This is a Troutlake Schmid Family project from 1999(yeah I remembered to date it!). They are always more detailed and larger than what I make at home. They even have their own sawmill, so they are ready to go! This is a snowman about 2+ feet tall. Lots of pieces and painting. Lots of fun with family and friends making these...Great memories too!

Close up of the bird house. I think us girls might have put the roof on this wrong (no peak)...or maybe that's how it was suppose to be!

I love this wiggly little snowman. The hat and mittens are cut out of Balsa wood...extremely light, so when you touch them, they just wiggly all over the place (that's what they are suppose to do). Jill and I made these and my daughter Erin hunted down the prototype for us! We are alway shopping craft bazaars etc for something that we can make ourselves! We made this in 2004.

Another Schmid Family project from 2002. Sister Kristie, neice's Kristin and Melissa and myself made these...I know because we wrote on the back! Whew...I love all the dangly lights on this snowman!

Jill West and I made this rustic box in 2006. We gave away these boxes full of Christmas cookies and breads with a candle or special gifty tucked in here and there. This is white washed cedar boards my Dad cut for us. Jill cut the tree branch handles off of her land and we wrapped a long berry pic around it. I now display special Christmas books or magazines in it.



That is it right now for Christmas past(shoot-I just remembered a few more that are around the house...darn it) and now on to Christmas present...I have a few things to finish up tonight and then I will work on that post! We already have plans for Christmas future...and it may be papercrafting!

Hope you have enjoyed this trip down memory lane with me! I am still missing some years in here somewhere, but I did post a few projects from before already! Thanks for stopping by!

Past Christmas projects-Sewing

This was the most time consuming project I ever made...boy was I glad to be done with this!

Back in the days when I still sewed alot, I made 15 of these...I appliqued until the wee hours of the night for weeks, but it is still my very favorite project I have ever made! It is so pretty in real life! The fabrics are beautiful! This is a wall hanging about 18" x 24".

Detail of old St Nick

I actually didn't make this little elf, my friend in Alaska, Linda Branson did. But we made each other one for Christmas as our present to ourselves....so yes, I did make one just like this. He usually doesn't sit in my kitchen, but for lighting purposes he had to pose in here. His place of honor is on an old antique piano stool in my living room!

Here he is holding all the candy canes!

Christmas Woodcrafts-Frosty and Angel

Angel 2003

I made this cute little angel along with my longtime friend and main crafting partner Jill. We started crafting years ago when we had enough energy to stay up until midnight. We always had fun crafting until the wee hours...lots of laughs and talks about life! My Dad has a full wood shop and he stokes up a great big fire in the woodstove and we all usually end up crafting in the middle of the December snowstorms. Ahh...what memories!

After we finished this one-I never wanted to coil another piece of wire! Ouch, that was hard on the hands! (but I must admit, my hair does look like this in the mornings LOL)

Now that I am in the thick of working on my 2008 Christmas woodcraft, I thought I would show you some of my past Christmas projects. Unfortunately, I did not write down when we made this snowman, but I think it was made about 8 years or so ago. I have dear family in Troutlake Washington that helped feed my crafty desires.

Mark and Kristie hosted this craft. They are very crafty and even mill their own wood! A whole group of family and friends got together and crafted this snowman, and we each went home with our very own! He is BIG, at least 3 feet tall and really does have greenery at his feet, it just hasn't been unpacked yet!