It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

As promised, here are some pictures of my Christmas decorations. Unfortunately, they are not the greatest pictures. We've had grey sky's for several days here, so I haven't had great lighting for taking these pictures. I have two of these quirky little snowmen. The other one did not photograph well, I'll have to try again when the lighting is better. She has a red coat, white collar and green hat. They sit on either side of our television in the living room.


Since I don't have a mantle, I've hung the stockings on the bookcases that sit on either side of the television console. The green stocking photographed much better. Just like the snowman, these two are on the side closest to the window.


Not a great photo, but you get the idea.


Here's my table full of little Christmas trees. I added the button tree and the feather tree this year. I think I need one more...5 would be better!


Here's the whole table as it appeared this weekend. Notice the remote control helicopter....belongs to Shawn of course. I told him the helicopter did not fit with the Christmas display and he gave me some long winded story about how Santa needs to modernize and give up the reindeer in exchange for a helicopter.....can you feel my pain? I have since replaced the helicopter with a vase full of glass ornaments.


Here's my altered star card holder hung up on the inside of our front door. Sorry for the glare...there was no way to avoid flash photography on this one as our entry was pretty dark. I don't have any cards in it yet. I've only received two cards so far, both from friends in scrapbook land and they are both sitting with my address book and boxes of cards I need to send out soon....


I'm hoping to get the tree decorated soon and than I can post pictures of that. I also need to work on some decorations in our bedroom. We'll see what gets accomplished this week!

Christmas goodies

Finally getting around to posting my card for 52 Card Scrap Up. The prompt from Andrea was "favorite holiday decoration." I had a hard time deciding on this one, so I just went with trees in general. I love Christmas trees of all kinds and have a growing collection of little trees that I put up each year. Am hoping to add a tree to our bedroom this year, still haven't decided what I want though. Here's the front of my card:


Here's the back of the card:


I also managed to get moving on my Christmas journal. I wanted to do this last year, but never got around to it. I've been stockpiling supplies for a few weeks, but hadn't started working on it until this weekend. I think it was the fabulous December kit from Studio Calico that got me inspired to work on it. I started it last night and finished all the pre-made pages for the whole month. Today I worked on filling in the first week of December and got it done up until today. I plan on adding pictures, but haven't printed any off yet. I can easily slip those in later. I used some of the SC kit and a lot of things from my stash to create this book. Can't wait to keep working on it as the month progresses. Here's the front cover:


Page one is just some quick journaling as to why I wanted to create this little mini.


I had to start the month off with some Starbucks ephemera....plus I enjoyed a nice gingerbread latte on my way home from work on December 1st!


Day 2 is a clear page, so you can see day 3 peeking through too.


Christmas music, of course...


I tend to be doing basic pages on the front side of each day and than adding my journaling to the backside of that day.


Day five is a cute little tag I found in my stash.


I love the layered effect of using a mixture of tags, sheer pages, clear pages, patterned paper, envelopes, etc. I love how you can see all the layers together on some of these pages.


Day seven holds some receipts from my Christmas shopping adventures on Friday.


Of course I had to add the cute little SC tag to commemorate the day this lovely kit arrived and got me going on this project.


Love the AC velvet letters!


Day 9, today, we got our Christmas tree. It's not yet fully decorated, but when it is I plan on adding some pictures of the tree and my favorite ornaments.


Hope you enjoyed a nice weekend of Christmas magic and not too much holiday stress. I wish I had another full day of not working so I could get some more creations made. Stay tuned for photos of my Christmas tree....off to decorate!

Thursday Thankfuls

So I intended to blog lots of fun photos of Christmas stuff and other going ons today, but I am just plain old tired and will have to get to it later. Look for a big huge post sometime tomorrow evening or Saturday afternoon. In the mean time I leave you with a quick list of things I am thankful for today:

1. The big news of being published in CK's April 2008 Reader Gallery!!
2. Sitting side by side with Shawn while we both surf the internet...loving this "new" laptop!
3. haircut and color coming up tomorrow morning
4. finding my watch, which disappeared during work yesterday, at the bottom of my instrument bag
5. sending packages off today through the automated machine at the post office with no wait time!

52 Card Scrap Up & More

This is the first week I have not posted my card for 52 Card Scrap Up on Friday. It's just been one of those weeks. I'm not getting everything done that I want to get done....and you know what, it's okay. This holiday season, my goal is to be less stressed. I'm trying to finish up my shopping this week. I want to wrap presents, mail packages and get decorations up early this year so that I can really just enjoy the season. I know it's ambitious, but it's the plan. Here's to a happy December and a stress less holiday season!

This week's prompt, given by Jessie, was "your favorite autumn beverage." I'm a big fan of fun drinks, especially those that arrive during the holiday season and I've listed a few on the back of the card. I've been using up scraps on all of my cards so far and am having fun digging through my stash for things I've seemingly forgotten about or bits of papers and lonely little embellishment leftovers....hence the old KI Memories tag. Here's the front of the card:

Here's the back:

So far this weekend has consisted of lots of cleaning and laundry, billing and other work related paperwork, credit card and bank account monitoring (this will continue for sometime I think, as I do not believe the credit card representatives and their promises anymore), time with Shawn formating his old laptop into my "new" laptop, unpacking of Christmas goodies and attempts at craftiness. It rained all day Friday and most of Saturday, so I wanted to root myself in the house and enjoy some lounging around with crafts and movies and hot chocolate. Too bad I had to leave on both days to drive around town and go see my kiddos for work! I did manage to unpack some of my Christmas goodies. I love rediscovering the decorations and things that I have carefully packed away in boxes most of the year. Since we will get a live Christmas tree, I will probably wait another week before I get to pull out the rest of the decorations and ornaments. I'm thinking of buying a smaller artificial tree to put up in our bedroom this year. That way I can enjoy Christmas in my house even more! Next week's 52 Card prompt from Andrea is "Your favorite Christmas decoration" so I will spend the week deciding what I enjoy most...my table full of little trees and my funky little snowmen are tops of the list right now.

I also have ambitions for all this crafting and am wanting to use up some of my kit stash before the new year. Too bad my scrappy mojo doesn't seem to be on the same page. I keep looking at stuff in my stash and moving things around, but not much creating has taken place. I did however work on this little mini for Ms. Andrea who won it on my blog months ago when I did the "Pay It Forward" challenge. I'm still planning something fun for Jill, my other winner and hope to mail hers out by the end of the year. Andrea, yours should be on it's merry little way to you by the end of the week. Here's a little sneaky for you.

Be Very Careful!

Word to the wise, check, recheck and triple check any online banking or bill paying transactions you might make. This weekend I was making some online bill payments and made what I thought was a $400 credit card payment....turns out I was careless with the 0's and made a $40,000 payment instead! The horrible thing is that for whatever reason both my bank and my credit card company allowed this payment to go through....despite the fact that my checking account has no where near $40,000 in it and I don't even come close to owing that amount on that credit card. I about had a hard attack when my checking account balance was roughly -$36,000! After two days, dozens of phone calls, about 10 customer services idiots, I mean representatives, and tons of stress later the situation is resolved....well, I'm crossing my fingers that it is anyway. My bank account is back to normal....still monitoring the credit card for fees, charges and damage caused by idiot employees. Seriously, this is stress one does not need during the holiday season!

Christmas Crafties

I figured it would be fun to play Christmas Craft time while Jessie was visiting for Thanksgiving. I bought two cones, two bags of buttons and a big variety box of pins to make button trees. We ended up needing to make a trip to Michael's for 3 more little boxes of pins, a trip to Scrapbooks Etc. for two more bags of buttons (well, that and Jessie NEEDED to go there and experience), and yet one more trip back to Michaels for two more boxes of pins. In the end, they turned out quite adorable I must say. Can you guess who's tree is who's?

During our trip to Michaels and Scrapbooks Etc. we also purchased supplies to make some ornaments. We bought one box of red balls and one box of clear balls and rub ons. We also raided my Christmas craft supply box for ribbons, more rub ons and beads to fill up a few of the clear balls. One box traveled home with Jessie on the plane today...here's hoping they arrived safely! I will post another picture of these lovelies on my tree, once the tree is up and decorated.

Stay tuned for a recap of the holiday weekend and our escapades full of pictures and stories....just waiting for someone to send me her pictures on hello....hint hint hint......until then, here's a lovely picture from Thanksgiving taken by my cousin Molly.

52 Card Scrap Up #6

This week's prompt was issued by me. I decided to be a bit predictable and went with the theme "Thanksgiving." Here's my take on this theme. A little card about things I'm thankful for this holiday. I was able to use a few fall themed items from my stash as well! This week, I also had the pleasure of making cards side by side with Jessie...a new twist on our online challenge group!


I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and were able to spend to day relaxing or playing or shopping, as we did. Stay tuned for some crafty posts...Jessie and I have been busy...and updates on our adventures.