Well can you guess where we have been today?
Chicago! We took a drive there this afternoon and just drove around the city remembering all the places we used to go and things we used to do there when we were dating. My husband used to attend college there so on weekends when he could not make it home, I would go spend Saturday with him in the City. We used to go to The Art Institute, Sears Tower, Hancock, Water Tower Place, State Steet shopping, The museums, Shedd Aquarium....you name it. Such good memories. Doesn't the city look pretty as the lights were just starting to come on for the evening? The city was packed with people. So different from our small town living. It's interesting just to go and "people watch."














We started the day at church. We got to attend where we used to go before we moved. It was a great service and so wonderful to hear Pastor Eric's preaching again. There are so many memories in this room too. This is where I came to church for Vacation Bible School when I was 7 years old. This is where I first asked Jesus into my heart. It was right there at that altar you can see at the front left. This is where I met my husband. This is where I first learned I could sing. It is a very special place to us and I am so glad it is still there and blooming and that we can go there and visit and remember. Sounds like a scrapbook LO in the making don't you think?














Thought I'd share a few more of the goodies I got at Archiver's the other night. So fun to have Christmas money to shop with! I was thrilled to find the BG Blush, Dasher, and the Daisy D Modern Romance collections. Aren't they pretty? Tuesday I get to go pick out my first products to work with for my first new Design Team assignment. I am all excited about that.

Hope you have a wonderful New Years! My husband and I are kind of boring I guess. No big New Years plans. He is watching a movie and I'm on the Internet. Later he will probably be on the Internet and I'll be scrapping. As long as we are happy that way right?

I pray you and your family will be very blessed in 2007! May you know God and His Son Jesus more each and every day.

Found this little tiny AMM tote today at Archivers. How stinkin' cute is that? I would rather have the pink brown like my regular size tote, but they only had black. At least it was pink! I had never seen these before. Have you?

We had a great after Christmas shopping day. Found some new Jammies 1/2 price. Got a new pair of Crocs. Hit the clearance sale at Bath & Body. All my favorite things. We had a great lunch at a make your own stir fry place called Stir Crazy. Have you been to one of these? You seriously need to try it. Soooo good!

Hope you have a fabulous New Year's weekend! We still have a few days off from work. Hoping to relax and enjoy. Hope you can too!

Blessings!

So here is the promised picture of stocking stuff! Do yu see all the pink? Is my husband on the ball or what? He got my favorite shower gel from Bath and Body, there was scrapbook stuff (notice the distress ink), snowman stuff (another collection I seem to have started), Soft cozy socks, and all kinds of pink stuff! It makes me smile just to look at the picture!

We checked out some old hang outs today. I was bummed to find out the place that I used to work at is all closed up with a for sale sign out front. I worked there for 12 years and the ladies in that company were very good friends to me. Our boss, Becky treated us like family. If you had asked me 6 years ago if I thought things would be different now I would have said absolutely no way. It is just so odd that now, in the last 5 years the company sold, a lot of us were laid off, and my boss and friend Becky died from cancer. It just doesn't even seem real sometimes. It's like that was in another lifetime or something. I have kind of lost touch with a lot of friends from that time. I hope those ladies know how much they still mean to me and how often I think of them.

Tomorrow we have some shopping planned while we still have some time off from work. Hope we can find some good Christmas sales and some yummy places to eat!

Blessings!

Just bought this at Hobby Lobby today with a Christmas gift card! Fun! I was so excited to find it there.

I am sitting here in a Panera Bread, with my Laptop, a mug of Hot Choclate and a Chocolate Chip Cookie (ok, there was a chocolate chip cookie....). Could it get any better? Well, OK, it could, my husband could be here with me. He is at his sister's, where I will be shortly. I just took some time this afternoon to hit some scrap stores and spend a little Christmas Cash. I also found a Fannie May candy sale, 1/2 price for Mint Meltaways and Pixies. Yum. I haven't had them in the longest time.

Did you have a good Christmas? We had a nice time with family. Good food, good weather, wonderful Christmas Eve church service. It's been a blessed week. My husband is the best. He had like 2/3 of the stuff in my Christmas stocking in pink! Pink tweezers, pink emery boards 2 bottles of OPI pink nail polish, pink M&M's, pink tic tacs, a snowman with a pink hat.... I am sure there was more I am forgetting. It was the coolest and made me smile. Isn't he the best? I have a picture of it, maybe I'll get is posted tomorrow. He also gave me a beautiful pink sapphire necklace. He is The BEST!

Got my first Design Team assignment for the team I am joining starting in the New Year. I am SO EXCITED to get to do this. One of my best friends is also on the team so it will be so cool to get to do this together. She recommended me for the team so I owe her big time. Our first assignment is to use the My Mind's Eye Magnolia collection. There are like 15 different designs in that line so it was hard to choose. Can't wait to get to work on this next week.

Hope you are having a great week. Blessings!

Cool! Look what I got tonight! I own a Pink Razr phone. I have wanted one since they first came out. We had to wait though for our 2 year contract to be up before we could upgrade/renew. It paid to wait though because in that time the price went down. Gotta love that! Now the fun though of loading all my phonebook contacts into the new phone. I am still so stinking excited to have a pink phone! I seriously have some kind of "pink" sickness I think.

I was just saying to my husband where did this thing for pink come from? I seems to have developed over the past year. I was remembering that last year at this time we had vacation and did some shopping trips to hit the after Christmas sales. I bought a pair of pink house slippers. I remember when I bought those I debated at the store should I get the pink which were a little bigger, or the red which were a little smaller, but my favorite color at the time. Well I ended up with the pink. I also bought a comfy pink night shirt and some soft fuzzy pink socks. Those things have been some of my favorites every since I got them. So is that where my love of pink began? Or, was it such a great vacation and time away with my husband that those memories are tied to it? I know, why am I over analyzing it? Just got to thinking about it is all. These days my eye is just drawn to anything pink and I swear, it just makes me smile. Did I mention the cute little pink stapler I found while Christmas shopping? It will fit just perfect in my pink and brown scrapbook tool tote.... I bought it and handed it to my husband and told him he could put it in my stocking. He just smiled and shook his head.

Well I got all my work done today! Yay!! I seriously had a few moments when I didn't know if I was going to make it. So glad to be done and am looking forward to some time off now.

We did a little shopping in town tonight. We went to get a case for the notebook computer. It was kind of fun because everything was open later being just a few days before Christmas. I got this book . I spotted it in a Chrsitian Woman's magazine earlier this week. It's a Christian fiction book, it involves scrapbooking, what could be not to love?

Hope you are ready for Christmas. Remember even if all the "stuff" isn't done, it doesn't matter. It isn't about that. It's about God giving us all the greatest gift ever... His Son. That's all that really matters.

Blessings & Merry Christmas.

Look at what my husband has peeking out of the
top of my Christmas stocking? Is that not the cutest snowman? Or snowwoman? She has a pink hat! Love that. Maybe it's a very secure snowman who isn't afraid to wear pink! ºÜº

So how is your week before Christmas going? Mine is OK. I am a bit stressed....a bit hectic...a bit tired... but OK. Felt like blogging just to have some fun for a few minutes. I think this will just be a collection of random thoughts so hopefully it will make some sense, or at least be entertaining in its confusion. Maybe I am more stressed than I thought and I am in fact losing it?
Anyways - on to Random thoughts. I still need to even begin to think of what I want to do for some vacation time next week! Ok, I confess I do have a small list started. Yes I have a list for everything and take great joy in crossing things off my list. I've even been known to write something on my list that wasn't there (but I thought it was) just so I could cross it off. I know, it's a sickness. This is my new pink train case bag from QVC. It makes me smile! It's pink and it keeps things organized! Both a huge plus for me. My Pastor has referred to me before as "scarily organized." I'll take that as a compliment.














This is a picture I took of 2 antique ornaments hanging on our tree. They make me smile because they were my Grandmother's. I love that they were hers, I love that they are antique, I love that they are now ours, and I of course love the pink teardrop.

This is our new snowglobe to add to our collection this year! Isn't it cute? It's the Grinch and Cindy Lou Whoo. We found it at Hallmark and had to bring it home with us. When you have many snowglobes it is fun to find something different and fun. Even though we are grown ups (honest, we are) we love to watch the Grinch and Charlie Brown Christmas and stuff like that. Last year's snowglobe addition was Charlie Brown Christmas.















This is the pile of work sitting next to me. I am trying to ignore it.....It's not working. I still have several things to accomplish before the end of the day Friday so that I can enjoy both Christmas, and some vacation time afterwards. I am not yet ready to panic. I made some decent progress today and with some quiet work time tomorrow I think I will make my deadlines OK. I did have to forfeit some Holiday baking this week, but that was OK. I decided it was better to make some choices about what did and did not have to be done rather than make myself nuts trying to do everything. Might still get some time to do a little baking on Saturday.















This is our new ceiling fan....Yes, it was not too many posts back that I showed you a picture of another new ceiling fan. Well it has already died. We went to turn it on the other night and the fan wouldn't work. Bummer. So, my poor patient husband had to take it all down, package it back up and haul it back to the store. Of course when he got to the store he finds out they have clearanced out that fan and no longer have it in stock. Fun. So now he and I get to try to pick out a replacement fan together over the cell phone. Thank goodness for the Internet. I managed to look up online what he was looking at in the store and we seemed to make a decent choice. Of course this one then turns out to be way more complicated to install including requiring him to go into the attic to add some support boards for it and then it also had lots of little parts to put together. This one is a little nicer and has a remote though! No more getting all comfy in bed to discover the fan wasn't turned on. The 1st fan was Hampton Bay...the Home depot guys told us "Oh, we've been having some trouble with those." Umm no kidding... So, he recommended and we picked out a Hunter brand. Let's hope it lasts more than 3 weeks.

I think there is some kind of consipracy this week, the Tivo was goofed up and not working right, the vapor light on the garage went out, the ceiling fan died, a light bulb in my dining room light went out rather violently and popped the top off the bulb so hard it hit the ceiling..... Enough already.

Well, I am going to tackle a bit of that work pile. Hope you have a Merry Christmas!

Blessings!

New bedroom stuff! ºÜº Was out Christmas shopping with my Mom and sisters the other day so while at Target, I took the opportunity to check out the throw rugs, bedding etc. because I am still needing those things for our newly remodeled bedroom. Well I fell in LOVE with the Simpy Shabby Chic collection at target. Have you seen it? It is exactly what I envisioned for our room. I love the aged, vintage kind of look and this stuff is perfect. This throw pillow I found exactly matches a quilt I bought over 5 years ago in Eureka Springs Arkansas while we were there on vacation. I love the rug because it reminds me of something I would have found in my grandmother's house. When I was checking out the window treatments I came across these Shabby Chic long, pink, shabby, velvet drapes. I almost bought them. I decided I'd check with my sweet husband first since I don't want to run him out of the room with the pink! Ha. He says they are fine with him if I want to get them. When I told him I had sage and cream in mind for the room, with maybe some pink accents if he was OK with that, he was all for it and even found the paint colors including some pink paint. Smart guy isn't he? He knows pink makes me happy and it makes me feel so special and important that it matters to him. And yes, I know, I have serious problems because a color can actually make me happy. Ha. So anyway, back to the drapes. We are going to get them and the matching drapery hardware that has a crackled pink glass ball on the ends of the rods and tie backs. I cannot wait to see them installed!

So I am done Christmas shopping. Thanks to my husband, everything is wrapped. He does most of the wrapping every year. I try to make up for it by doing my part in baking him lots of yummy stuff to eat! Ha. So, I have all my gifts for him, with the exception of one I am waiting for that is being shipped. I just need to get his stuff wrapped this week and I think we are in pretty good shape. I haven' t done any baking. However, I often leave that till just before Christmas and then maybe bake/make one thing each evening that week before. That ends up giving me a good variety and I don't have to kill myself trying to make tons of things at once.

I just finsished writing an Advent reading for church. This was a challenge. I work at our church, and this year for the readings that are done for the lighting of the advent candle each week, our Pastor asked each of us on staff to write one of them. Well that scared me to death! At the same time I was intrigued because I do like to write and I was feeling like the topic assigned to me was something God intended for me to do. So my word was "Love." I've known about this for several weeks, but have been putting it off because I had no idea where to start. I have been giving it a lot of thought, and praying and asking God what he wanted me to write. Well, now we are down to the wire and I needed to get this done today so the readers for next week have some time to go over it. I had some quiet and calm for a few mintues this afternoon here at home so I just kind of dove in and it really seemed to flow. I always recognize that as a God thing. Usually when I have to struggle it is because I am trying to do it myself. So, I think it came out OK. So for today I will leave you with my thoughts on God's Love.

Today is the fourth Sunday of Advent. This last candle on the outer wreath represents Love. It is just a small word, but the power in those few letters is life changing, world changing, and heart changing. How amazing that our completely perfect, completely Holy God loves us so much that He sent His only Son to pay the price for our sins. John 3:16-17 tells us “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.

He loves us so much that He wanted to reconcile us to Himself so that we could have a relationship with Him. How amazing that because of Christ all barriers between us and God are removed and we have the access of a child to their Father to the supreme, awesome, omnipotent God. As we celebrate Christmas Eve and anticipate His arrival, may we be reminded he is our Emmanuel, our “God with Us” and that we can have an intimate relationship with Him not only at Christmas but every day, and every moment.
We will now light the candle of LOVE!
***Light the last outer candle.

Prayer
(read this prayer or feel welcome to pray your own prayer as God would lead you!)

God of love,
Your love for us is amazing. May we be reminded today and every day how far reaching and deep that love is. May we remember the supreme gift of your son Jesus and receive Him into every part of our hearts and lives. We ask you to help us keep our focus on the Christ child as we celebrate His birthday. May we show our love for Him by the way we live our lives, obey Him and share His love with others in everything we do…. In His Name we pray, Amen

So what do you think? All the credit goes to God. I really feel he supplied the words.

Merry Christmas!

Have you heard about this movie? We saw it this evening with a group from church. It was FABULOUS. It was the kind of movie that has an ending like Karate Kid (yes, I know, I'm showing my age now...) where you want to jump up and cheer! I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone. The movie was made by all volunteer actors. They had an unheard of budget of $100K and an E-mail I received today said it has now grossed 9-1/2 million dollars! Amazing. It is doing so well in our little town that the movie has been held over!

I will tell you that there were many parts in this movie that had me struggling with my emotions. There were so many powerful faith lessons that touched me I am not even sure what to share without giving away the whole story. The verse Matt 19:26, With God all things are possible was the main verse/theme of the movie. I think the point in the movie that really grabbed me was when one of the football players does a "death crawl" across the entire length of the field as the coach tries to show him what God can accomplish when we get our eyes off of the obstacles and what we think we can or can't do and work our hardest. He kept telling him not to give up, to try his hardest , to not stop until he had given it all he had. It really made me ask myself do I serve God like that? Or do I give up to easy and only try to do things in my own strength? There was another great scene where a boys father stands up for him when he has to make a really difficult play. It reminded me of a sermon a visitng Pastor preached a few months ago where he talked about how Jesus is waiting for me/us at the finish line, arms open wide, yelling the whole time "come on Deanna you can do it..." Wow. Another cool thing was that he talked about the passage in scripture where Nehemiah is trying to rebuild the wall and he doesn't have enough people, stength, or resources and how he has each person be responsible for the wall in front of their home and with God's power the stone wall is built. Well that was cool because our Pastor preached on that same thing about a year ago and taught us the same thing. I was like hey, Pastor Mark taught us that too!! It was so powerful.

Check out the movie website for more information. I hope it will be at a theatre near you! If not, it will be available on DVD in 2007. Ok, so probably most of that makes no sense to you if you haven't seen the movie. Feel like my thoughts are kind of scattered but I was so impressed with this I just had to share.

How are your Christmas details coming together? I feel like I should be ready to panic but I am not. I've been feeling pretty peaceful and relaxed about it all. Must be a God thing. I still have most of my shopping left to do which also means it will need to be wrapped too. I haven't baked a thing and I have some vacation time coming up which means I'll need to be packing and getting some of my work for the office done in advance. All this needs to be done between this week and next week. I have several other things I'd like to do too, but we will just have to see how it goes. I have only managed to get 1 new page done in my Christmas journal but have been determined to not stress or worry about that. It is supposed to be fun and relaxing and so far I've been able to keep it at that. Another God thing I am sure!

Things are so busy now I am wondering what I am thinking with some things that I am adding to my schedule come January. I have an online college class to learn Quick Books for work, I am taking the Heidi Swapp BPS class starting in January also, I am looking at possibly adding some hours to my work schedule and I have a design team possibility too! I think its all great though and I am pretty excited to get to do all of the things I just mentioned. If God wants all those things for me than I trust He will work out the details.

Got a new package of 7 gypsies stamps today! Maybe I'll get a picture posted tomorrow. Today has been so long/busy that I didn't even get the box opened! Ha.

Blessings!

I wanted to share the Christmas Journal I made. I used a 7 gypsies blank journal with the binder rings and chipboard covers. This was so fun!! Thank you so much to the ladies who post on 2 peas and those taking Shimelle's class for the inspiration. I wasn't able to take the class, but loved the idea for an art journal and to use that at Christmas to stay focused. I decided to use my church devotional for the Advent season and then journal each day about whatever was on my mind from that. I am so pleased with how this is coming out. The papers are the Daisy D's vintage Christmas (love those!) and some Autumn Leaves Christmas papers from a couple years back. Yes, they have been in my stash for that long.... ºÜº

Thanks for looking! Hope you are having a great Christmas season too.

Blessings!

Merry Christmas! So, we are finally done with the decorating. Well, inside anyway. Since we have gotten a later start than normal this year, we aren't sure we are doing any outside lights. Maybe just our back porch. Aren't these the cutest snow people ever? I LOVE these. They were a Christmas gift from my friend Julia last year. I could not wait to get them out again this year. I have really gotten a thing for snowmen these past few years. I think I like them because it's a decoaration I can get out at Christmas, yet leave out all winter long.

This is our snow globe collection. Early in our marriage I happened to buy one small snow globe. We enjoyed it so much we decided it would be a tradition to get a new one for each Christmas. We had almost twice this many (since we are going on our 20th year of marriage! yay!) but like 2 years ago when we got them out of storage, we found about 1/2 of them had broken. They had been stored in our garage attic and we never thought about it being too cold. The water in them froze and then the globes cracked and shattered on several of them. It was really sad to open the box that year and find so many of them destroyed. It turned out that the ones that survived were the more expensive ones we've aquired because they have real glass and not just the thin plastic globe. Most of our favorites survived with the exception of like the first 2 we ever bought. Right now my absolute favorites are the Charlie Brown Christmas one (that was last year's addition) and the large precious moments nativity one in the center. That one has 2 angels that revolve over the nativity scene when you wind it up. So cute!

This is our tree. Like I said earlier, we are going on 20 years of marriage. Well in all that time we have always had a real Christmas tree. Where we used to live, there was a nearby tree farm where we would go cut a tree down the day after Thanksgiving. Since we moved 5 years ago, we have not found a place like that that we like. It has become more of a hassle to find a real tree because we either have to just hit the local grocery stores (and trust me, not much selection there, and the tree my brother bought there last year was full of bugs!) or drive 45 minutes to town to get one and then they cost like $50! So, for the first time for us, we bought an artificial tree this year. I am really happy with this one. It looks very much like a real one, and it was prelit. Now, I don't have a lot of faith in the prelit trees (my Mom had one that only lasted like 1 season before she had light troubles) but just about all the artificials are prelit and this one had a ton of lights on it. I love a bright tree! So, we hope the lights dont give us a problem, but we are happy with it for this year at least. We also got a lovely new tree skirt. The one we were using was like a $5 felt one from Walmart like 15 years ago. It was plain red and I had stencil painted some green bows around the edge. It served its purpose well, but it was time for a new one. This one is a lovely red brocade with cording around the edge.

I am hoping to do a Christmas Art journal this month. I have heard a lot of talk about them on 2 Peas, particularly with a class a lot of the ladies are taking. I decided to do one on my own. I am hoping to use our "Christ's Birthday Observance" devotional from church each day and then from whatever I am feeling impressed on me from that day, to then do my art journal. Well here it is Dec 5th and I haven't started yet. I have 2 new 7 gypsies journals just waiting for me and have had no time. That was the whole reason I wanted to do the journals. To keep focused on Jesus this season. To keep focused on what it is really all about. I refuse to get stressed and hectic and being caught up in the fast pace of the next thing I need to get done. So, I am going to start my journal today and make a point of making time each day to keep Christ in my Christmas. This year I am really feeling like I need to grasp God's love for me in sending His Son. I didn't do anything to deserve it. I could never do enough if I tried. Because of His love, His grace, Jesus came to offer grace, to offer mercy, to reconicle us with God and to save us from our sins, ourselves and our weak attempts to be "a good person." I just really want to get that this year.

Hope you enjoy the new song. I love this version of "O Holy Night" by John Berry. Wow...

Blessings!