2008's Top 10

Man is it tough to choose my favorites from this year. I scrapped 80 something pages this year, that's not including mini albums and other projects, so it's hard to narrow it down to 10 favorites. There are a lot more that I love and had so much fun going back through my albums today deciding on my favorites from 2008. Here they are, in no particular order.

I love this one because of the colors and the message and the fact that I used a ton of my stash.


I love this page because it's fun and a little funky. Plus it features my favorite girls, who I miss everyday!


This one was a lift and I adore how it turned out. Plus, it's one of my favorite pictures and past times, freshly painted red toes in the sand. Just makes me happy looking at it!


I'm a sucker for a nice grid layout and love my square punch. I love the simplicity of this page and it was the perfect way to use some not so perfect London photos.


Another page with a message...I'm good at that...I just like looking at this one and it serves as a good reminder for how I wish to live. Plus, I just adore that studio calico bird!


Another simple page that I simply love. I'm all about using up my paper scraps and have become increasingly interested in stitching on my pages. Don't be surprised if you see variations of this page in the future.


This is one of my happy pages. I just love the fun Sassafras papers and the colors. Not to mention, the memory attached to this day...


I think this page may have been the beginnings of my current felt and embroidery floss obsession. Another use my scraps and stash page, which I'm finding out are some of my favorite pages.


Collage Press and map paper, need I say more?


This may be my all time favorite from this year. Except for buttons and stitching, it has everything I love about a good scrapbook page...good photo, meaningful journaling, cluster of embellishments, label stickers and trims.


I may be back with favorites from my mini albums and other projects as well. Here's to many more fabulous pages in 2009!

December Daily

Finally finished up the December daily project and got it all photographed to share. Enjoy!

Christmas has come and gone...

Here's my Christmas recap in photos. Well, actually it's just Christmas eve in photos. There were tons of lovely photos taken at Christmas dinner at my aunt and uncle's house, but sadly, none were taken by me. I forgot my camera and unfortunately did not capture the craziness that is a Moroney family Christmas. I did not capture the delicious food, Pat and Beth's beautiful new house, the impressive dessert collection, the boy cousin hangout, the girl cousins all in red and green...sadly, I have no photos, just memories of a lovely Christmas night.

I did however, remember to bring my camera to afternoon tea on Christmas Eve. I was in fact accused of being the paparazzi....Christmas Eve is my grandma's birthday, so we decided to celebrate with afternoon tea at the Phoenician. It was wonderful and quite the experience.





This is a real gingerbread house, complete with stained glass candy windows. It was amazing. The rumor is that the kitchen starts working on this masterpiece long before Christmas. Quite impressive.


A few hours after tea, I headed to my parents house for Christmas Eve dinner. Poor Shawn had a horrible migraine and did not join us for dinner. He missed quite the silly night at the Smith household...Christmas crackers, complete with horns for making music, and a little wine made for an entertaining evening.







These are the serious Christmas crown photos. I have several silly photos that I may threaten to post later. All in all it was a very nice Christmas, full of family and memories. Just as Christmas should be.

Good Day

Yesterday was a good day.
This ballet.
This restaurant.
This drink.
New PJ's
and this movie:

Making A List

So I've been busy trying to check things off of my to do list.
Since Sunday I have

baked pumpkin bread
decorated the tree and put away holiday boxes
wrapped some gifts
boxed and mailed all but one out of state gift
wrote and mailed half of my Christmas cards
wrote and addressed other half of cards (to mail tomorrow)
finished some DT obligations
did all the laundry
baked dark chocolate macadamia nut cookies
made chili and cornbread for Shawn and made yet another pot of "whatever's on hand" veggie soup for me
made mulled apple cider
worked on more holiday crafts
bought gifts
comforted my husband
had a yummy breakfast with Stephanie

This is all in addition to my usual activities, like you know, working.....There are still things I need to get done:

mail last gift
mail rest of the cards
send flowers
finish shopping for Shawn
one more stocking item for Dad
buy ornament for ornament exchange
make gift tags
wrap rest of the gifts
find clothes to wear to the Nutcracker on Sunday and to my grandma's birthday tea on Christmas Eve
bake more
figure out condensed work schedule for the next two weeks
figure out what I'm bringing to Christmas at my aunt and uncles house
groceries for said Christmas dish
DECEMBER DAILY....poor neglected thing...

I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting...it is almost 11:30 after all and I should totally be asleep, well if it weren't for this list...

Hope your to do's are getting done!

Fun with felt

I've been playing with felt and embroidery floss a lot lately. I'm loving all the fun things I can make with felt. I've been making ornaments and embellishments and coming up with all kinds of felty ideas. In fact, playing with felt is challenge number 3 in Scrapgal's 12 Days of Christmas Contest. You should go check it out and play along. Here are some ornaments I've made:



I started making stars, not sure what I was going to do with them and later decided they'd make a cute garland. I'm still working on this one and think I will be adding stars for awhile, but it's turning out super cute and matches my tree skirt and my new felt star tree topper quite nicely.


I'm trying to decided if I want to add embellishments like the word embroidering or buttons to all the stars or just a few of them...I'm thinking a few of them, but who knows what I'll decide...


I've also been making a lot of flower embellishments out of paper and felt. Here are some of the felt ones I've been creating:




Don't be surprised if you see felt popping up on my scrappy pages, as I think I am officially addicted!

Dancing Elves

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Tuesday 10

1. Needing to get my Christmas cards out and mailed. I had grand plans to make them all this year, but I only got a few mailed. The rest of them will be boxed cards. Sorry folks! Here's a couple I made:



2. Spent all night last night playing with felt, embroidery floss and buttons. Fun stuff! I'll share later.

3. Here's my December Daily, unfilled. I used a lot of the Teresa Collins Christmas stuff and my Bind It All. Still working on the filling it part. Something else I'm behind in...







4. My Book Tree made the Catwalk at SIS today!

5. Getting my Christmas tree, finally!

6. Hoping to check a few more things off my holiday to do list today.

7. Still knitting feverishly, but I've got 4 projects done and one close to finished.

8. Things are disappearing in our house...seriously, this weekend I discovered we are missing 3 knives, one of them a good knife and my December Domino magazine has vanished...I may have accidently recycled this one, but the knives?

9. Had pumpkin pancakes for breakfast this morning! Yum! Sadly, this was the last of the big batch I premade this weekend.

10. Getting ready for the 12 Days of Christmas Contest at Scrapgal.

Time keeps getting the best of me

I've been busy decorating and working on some holiday crafts, but have not gotten so much done. Still waiting for my Christmas tree. Shawn had to work yesterday and wasn't able to go with me to get a tree and today my car is at the shop. Yeah, $800 worth of car repairs right before Christmas...fun, right? Oh well, what can you do? I need that car for work and for Christmas tree retrieval! Hopefully we will get the tree this evening after picking up my car. I'm going to need something to cheer me up after I hand over my credit card to the auto repair man.

I'm hoping to post holiday decor pictures soon and some December Daily pages. Still trying to catch up....This weekend I had grand plans for knocking things off my list, like December daily catch up, decorating, cards and gifts. I have clearly not gotten as much done as I would have like. Hoping this afternoon proves more productive.

Here are a couple pages I made using the December Scrap for a Cure kit. This is a great kit, jammed packed full of holiday and winter themed goodies. Such fun papers and embellies. I'm hoping to find time to make more with this kit later this week.




I also never shared this little page I made using the Studio Calico Looking Glass kit a few weeks ago while scrapping at Ally's . It's one of my recent favorites.


I'm off to cross more things off my list....gift making, card writing and my poor neglected December Daily are calling my name. Happy Monday!

Wish List

I thought I'd take some time to document my holiday wish list. I always love a good list, especially a list with links to fun things. Here are a few things I'm wishing for this year.

I'd like a few accessories for my Slice:
The noteworthy cartrdige
Basic Shapes 2
Vinyl Sticker Papers
Brocade Acetate Papers
Jewelry from Lisa Leonard
Ali's Book
This lens
Gift cards to Pottery Barn, Anthropologie, or Studio Calico.
This necklace
Art from here, here or here
A new pair of my favorite PJ's
Kitchen items:
glass food storage containers to replace my plastic, like these, these or these
new spatulas
potato masher
juicer

Holiday Fun

I'm counting down the hours till I'm done with work this afternoon. This weekend (well my weekend Sat night-Monday) is all about holiday fun! After work today, I'm headed home to make some cookies, scrap and hang out at the Scrapgal holiday crop. The crop last night was pretty fun. Lots of ideas and inspiration for holiday decor and gifts. I posted a tutorial for this cute little coffee sleeve mini.



There will be lots more going on tonight too. I'll be posting the tutorial for the book tree and hosting a fun little game where you can win a Scrapgal gift certificate. Check out the crop forum for all the action.

I plan on spending Sunday and Monday decorating the house and having more holiday fun. We'll go get the tree on Sunday and I want to spend the day decorating and baking and maybe more crafting. I haven't had a chance to pull out all my Christmas stuff yet and am dying to get it out and make the house feel Christmasy.

Monday morning I have to take my car in for an oil change and new brakes (great timing, right?) I'm hoping to spend the rest of Monday taking care of some Christmas to do's and enjoying my decorated house.

What's on your weekend agenda?

Slow down

I really need December to slow down. How is it already the 4th? Time is going way to fast this month and my to do list seems to be constantly growing. I thought I had a good handle on gifties this year, but I seem to be falling behind. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. I think this week just got a little crazy, plus an icky stomach and lack of sleep doesn't really help. I'm looking forward to this weekend....holiday crop at scrapgal, scrapping Saturday night, getting the Christmas tree and decorating the house Sunday....I think I'll feel better once some of my to do's are accomplished and the house is all pretty and Christmasy.

This conversation I had with one of my kiddos today, makes me smile:

M-What's your husband's name again?
Me-Shawn
M-So you have a husband but no children?
(I'm talking to a 7 year old, mind you)
Me-Yes. Someday I will have children. Maybe next year...
M-I think maybe tomorrow.
Me-That might be hard to do. How many children should I have?
M-4
Me-4! I don't know about that. Should I have boys or girls?
M-Both. 2 boys and 2 girls.
Me-Ok, what should their names be?
M-Well, the first one should be M (his name) and the second one will be Erin, and than one named Shawn, and the last one should be named (big silly smile) Piano.
Me-Piano? That's kind of a silly name, don't you think?
M-Yeah. I want one to have a silly name.

Hey Good Lookin, whatcha got cookin?

Yesterday I did my grocery shopping for the week and restocked our sad empty fridge. I gave my mom a lot of my produce when we left for Chicago so it wouldn't spoil. I don't think I've ever seen my produce drawer empty before. Anyway, in my effort to stock up and plan the weekly meals, I decided to plan lots of good meals for this week. With the holiday madness starting soon, I know that there will be several take-out nights or nights where we eat really simply. So I decided this week was a good week to cook well and try a new recipe or two. Here's the meal plan for the week:

last night: Meatloaf for Shawn, butternut squash soup for me, baked potatoes
tonight: Steak for Shawn, mushroom risotto and french bread (a new recipe from Jamie Oliver, it was delicious!)
Tuesday: Butternut Squash and walnut pasta, salad
Wednesday: Lemon Chickpea Stir-Fry (a new recipe emailed to me by Tim)
Thursday: Shawn's dinner night (I work late)
Friday: meat for Shawn, fish for me, veggies

What are you cooking this week? Tried any new recipes lately?

Today, after dropping off my billing for work and having lunch with Kellie at The Herb Box, I headed to Restoration Hardware (with a coupon) for stocking stuffers. They have some pretty fun little toys and gadgets that are perfect for adding to adult stockings. I also took advantage of Cyber Monday with a couple online purchases. Cross a few more things off my ever growing December to do list.

I posted a tutorial for this little project on Scrapgal today. Head to the Galblog for instructions on how to make them.




Happy December!

Home Again, Home Again

I'm back from a lovely trip to Chicago for Thanksgiving. Shawn and I spent five days at his mom's house and enjoyed our time with his family. It was a pretty low key trip and I got lots of much needed rest and relaxation. We spent a lot of time hanging out. I watched several movies, knitted 2 and a half Christmas gifts, read a few magazines and spent most of our trip indoors. It was cold for us AZ kids, but really wasn't too bad and the sun was out almost the whole time.

Thanksgiving was nice and mellow. We had a wonderful dinner and I indulged a little too much! Here are some Thanksgiving photos. Ellen in her new cute apron:


Uncle Bruce carving the turkey in his lovely floral apron...he borrowed Ellen's other apron, but I think flowers suit him!


Shawn's Grandma finishing up her famous green jello mold:


The beautiful Thanksgiving table:


On Friday, Ellen took me into the city to be a tourist and to see the Christmas decorations. We didn't really do any shopping, just lots of walking and looking. It was fun to be a tourist and take pictures like this one:


Here's the Chicago Bean in Millineneum Park. I love the reflection of the city.


Some city shots:

Ice skating in the park...how fun would that be?



The Christmas tree in Daley Plaza: