A few of my favorite posts

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas.  This is why I have not been around.  My kids and I were all in a Christmas play at our church.  I played the mother to 7 kids!  With decorating the church and my own house and play and choir rehearsals( I sang the lead in the play as well) we haven't been home much.  Needless to say, my poor craft dungeon has been neglected.  It's been too cold to be out there anyway.  For those of you who are new around here, my scrap space is located in my garage where it can be very cold and sometimes dark.Since I have not been able to make anything new I decided that it might be fun to post a few of my favorite things that I have done since I started blogging.  It hasn't been quite a year yet, but there have been alot of exciting things happen around here.

Working for Provocraft was a dream job.  I was so excited to be a demonstrator and I wish the job could have lasted forever.  It was nice to acually be paid.  I love being a stay at home mom but it sure was nice to earn my own money too.  Mostly though this was just a super fun job and I never wanted it to end.
Sugar Sweet Paper Treats was my very first design team.  This post was the first project that I did for them as well as my first ever tutorial.  OK well I haven't done another one since, but at least now I know that I can.
Caps for Sale was the name of the layout that I did when Creative Inspirations wanted to feature me on their blog.  Now how cool is that?!!
Scrap Camp is always my favorite time of year.  Lucky for me it actually comes twice a year, once in the spring and again in the fall.
Euphoria is the feeling that lived in our house for at least a month after our favorite baseball team won the World Series for the first time in 56 years!

I am so glad that I started blogging and so glad for all of you.  Have a very happy New Year and I will see you next year with more fun projects, a new design team and whatever else I feel like sharing.

Christmas gifts for teachers and classmates

 It is the last day of school before Christmas break.  We have been so busy around here with rehearsals for our churches Christmas play. that I was working down to the wire on teacher's gifts for my children to give out today.  A few days ago we made homemade hand scrub.  I have seen this on various blogs lately but can't remember the exact locations.  Google it and you will find tons of recipes and you are sure to have most, if not all, the ingredients already in your kitchen.  We made a strawberry version and a coffee version.  I decided to make them matching in the pink and brown(just opposite
of each other) to make it easy and so the colors would work after the holidays are over.  I reused some Starbucks bottles to put the scrub in, and attached a tiny spatula that I had from my days as a spa product consultant.  I used the Stampin' Up Scallop Trim punch as the border for my band.  Then I cut another strip of cardstock and stamped it with some Close to my Heart stamps and Stampin' Up ink. The tag was cut with Just Because cards and my Gypsy to size it to fit.  I used Microsoft Word also.  The ribbon is from American Crafts and my Stampin' Up cardstock and ink are Chocolate Chip and Pretty in Pink.  I forgot to take a picture of the top, but I did circle shaped word art, then punched it with a circle punch, inked the edges, then backed it with a scalloped circle that was the same size as the lid and was cut from my Nestabilities.  Perfect to hide the logo. 

For the kids' classmates we made these.  Again, not sure where I got the idfea, but from somewhere on the web.  2 candy canes glued together, decorated with Rudolf from Doodlecharms(I hid the details on the Gypsy and added the google eyes and nose) and the Gingerbread man from Just Because Cards.  The stocking is also from Doodlecharms.  My son thought the candy cane idea was too childish for his 3rd grade buddies and came up with the Stocking idea on his own.  We cut two of them and they are glued together just on the edges so we could stick the lollipop in there.

Feeling Sentimental

Remember last week I showed you this card I made with some new sentiments from Joni over at Inktegrity?  Well I said that the images would be available in the store the next day.  Sorry, but I lied.  Not intentionally though, because Joni has decided to give them to you as her Christmas gift to all our friends and followers.  So head on over to the Inktegrity blog and snag your Christmas gift and if you use them for any last minute holiday items, please shoot Joni an email so she can showcase some of your work.

 Here is another card I made with one of the sentiments.

The First Noel

It's time for a new challenge over at Inktegrity.  This week we are to use non-traditional Christmas colors.  Joni made up a bunch of adorable sentiments that will be available in the store tomorrow.  These are so perfect for me because I love decorating my cards with things other than stamps, especially with Cricut cuts, but then I rarely remember to put a sentiment on them.  As soon as I saw this one, I thought of two things.

#1 I knew I wanted to use Baby Jesus from Paper Doll Dress Up for this card

#2 This would be the song that I sang for my solo at our church's trip to go caroling at a local area nursing home.  I just couldn't get the song out of my head.

I used DCWV Metallic stack for the background paper that I embossed with my Cuttlebug and the Divine Swirls folder.  The sentiment was matted with cardstock from American Crafts and inked with Memento Dew Drop Summer Sky, then pop dotted.  The cuts are all from Paper Doll Dress Up and the Cricut and make use of scraps.  The swaddling clothes have Memento Dew Drop London Fog inking as well as some zig pen doodling.  The face was hand drawn and then hay has ink and doodling as well.  The star was cut from (I think?) the Christmas cartridge with a scrap of metallic silver from that same DCWV stack.  I wasn't sure who this card was going to be for, but yesterday a woman from my church came over and gave me a very special Christmas blessing so I will be sending this card her way. 

Nativity Parade

When my son was a baby I was given a beautiful ceramic Nativity set, but I never displayed it for fear that it would get broken.  Now that my kids are a little older, I searched the garage for the set.  It is nowhere to be found.  I must have gotten rid of it on one of my cleaning rampages in the last 8 years.  Char over at Crap I've Made is hosting a Nativity Parade on her blog.  So at least I still get to enjoy some beautiful nativities.  This is the one my hubby bought me last year since I always beg him to put up more Christmas lights and decorations, but he doesn't want to do all the work.  This one you just lay out and plug in.

Come join the parade

Exciting News

I was chosen as a designer for Scrap Tiffany. This is so amazing because the team has members from all over the world!!!  I will be on the card team starting in January so keep on the lookout.  In the meantime head on over and see what the current designers have in store for this month.

Still Thankful

This is what I am thankful for.  I haven't posted any of my Thanksgiving projects yet so I thought I would do that now as well as share why I am thankful for these guys on Thanksgiving and every other day of the year.  My daughter came home from school on the first day back after the break and told me that a little girl in her Kindergarten class had lost her house and all her possessions in a fire over the vacation.  The homework assignment that night was to bring in something for the family be it something new, something used or just a drawing to cheer up the kids.  Well I started crying because I had spent that day felling sorry for myself because my husband is out of work right now and I have no idea if he will be working in time for me to buy presents for my kids this year.  So we found some blankets and a few toys and clothes to donate and both my kids were so excited and happy going through their things to help these people out.  I looked at my kids through my tears and my 8 year old son said to me "Who needs Christmas presents mom?"  And it is the little things like this why I am so thankful for my special blessings. 

 So onto the projects, these placecards were designed on my Gypsy and cut with my Cricut.  I used Blackletter solutions cartridge for the orangle shape, Gypsy Wanderings fopr the word Thanks and Don Juan for Give.  The orange and leaf paper were from my stash and the brown is Stampin Up Chocolate Chip.  I just scored it on the bottom to make a little stand for it.  These placemats were made by the kids.  I used my Nestabilities to cut out the scalloped circle and let the kids cut the feathers out of scraps from my stash.  We added a hand cut beak, some google eyes and my daughter drew on all the legs. 

This is a picture of the decorated table.  I used   paper that my husband uses for masking off the floors to prepare for texturing the walls (he's a drywall contractor) and placed a jar of crayons on the table for the kids to color with.  Turns out the adults had more fun with that as they all played hangman while eating pie.  I wish I had a picture of it after that.  The pumpkin in the center was one my son made last year in school, but is basically just fabric stuffed around and into a roll of toilet paper.