The Cross

My husband gave me this cross for Christmas. It's called a clinging cross. I had never seen one until we were out Christmas shopping one night and we spotted one at the Hallmark store. I purchased one as a gift for a friend. The more I looked at it and read about it after we got home, I was really drawn to the idea of having one for myself (which of course I mentioned to my husband). He went back and got one for me and put it in my stocking. So you are thinking it looks a little odd right? All wrinkled and misshapen? Well it is made that way to fit perfectly in your hand with your fingers wrapped around it. It feels so cool when you hold it that way. I have been holding it during my prayers and it just reminds me of Jesus' presence and the price he paid for me on the cross. That comforts me. When I was a child, I would sometimes be scared at night. One particular time period, in the city where we lived, there were some home invasions happening where kids were being pulled out their windows during the night. Good reason to be scared right? Well I used to have this little wheel thing from my Mamaw's church that your could turn to look up verses for different subjects. I would look up verses about fear (such as Isaiah 41:10 So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.) and read those and then fall asleep with my little Bible under my pillow. I never even had a nightmare. Now, since back in my days of dealing with and being treated for depression, I sometimes struggle with fear/anxiety at night. There is a verse that always comforts me (Psalm 4:8 I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety.) and its printed on a picture that hangs on our bedroom wall on my side of the bed. I always look at it and read it and repeat that verse to myself and can then go to sleep unafraid and comforted. Well now I have my little cross too that I can "cling" to while falling asleep and saying my prayers. And again.... so comforting. Not sure why I wanted to share that this evening, but it was on my mind.

We had a good day. I mean it involved a few pieces of Godiva chocolate (brought home from the mall the other day), a carry out dinner from Applebees and finishing and enjoying a good book. What's not good about that? The book I finished was Chasing Fireflies by Charles Martin. It was really good and I enjoyed it as I do all his books. It was probably not my favorite, That would probably be When Crickets Cry, but it was very good. He weaves in such good and important truth and reaches my emotions. It wasn't the first time one of his books had me crying over events in the book. When I enjoy a book, you will often notice things underlined, or notes written or at least corners of pages folded down to mark things that really spoke to me. Plenty of pages were folded as I was reading today. Things such as "Men spend their lives asking Who am I when the real question is Whose am I? I don't think you can answer the first until you've settled the second. First horse, then cart. Identity does not grow out of action until it has taken root in belonging." On a funnier note I liked some advice Unc gave when he said "forgive your enemies.... it messes with their heads." Check out this book. You will enjoy it.

Have you heard about the free layout a day class on BPS? Check it out here. Not sure I can keep up, but it sounds fun and worth a try and might be a great way to start the year.

Speaking of the new year, are you a resolution maker? I've been mulling over some things I might like to put down on paper for the new year. Some personal goals, home goals, scrapping goals. Maybe I'll share a few tomorrow. Still thinking. If you don't have any big plans for New Year's Eve, stop by The Scrapping Spot. We are putting together and little impromptu online crop to ring in the new year. You will need to register for the board, but that is quick and easy and we'd love to have you join us.

Blessings!

Vacation Time

So this sweet little girl is my niece Lindsay. She is 10 years old now. In this photo she was just 2 mos. So hard to believe she has grown up so much. Where does time go? Made this layout with some more of the KI Memories Pop Culture. The swirl to the right of the journaling is some of the Tim Holtz Grungeboard which is also part of the January Scrapping Spot kit. It was my first time to work with it and its so cool! You gotta try it! Also added some AC Thickers for the title (love those!) and some MM, Heidi Swapp and Doodlebug flowers.

I had some time to scrap this layout because I am enjoying some vacation time. So glad to have it too! It was one of those times when you are just really ready for vacation. My husband is off too and since the day after Christmas we have been enjoying sleeping in, relaxing, watching some movies, I've been scrapping and playing on the computer, Darrel has been playing a computer game he got for Christmas, and we also did some shopping and have enjoyed eating out at some favorite restaurants.

One of the first stores we hit shopping yesterday was Archivers. Love Archivers. I got to get a Bind It All Machine with some Christmas money I had! Yay! My friend Lisa got one a few weeks ago, so of course I needed one too right? Can't wait to try it out! I also got a few new journaling pens, some stickles, some HS flowers, some ribbon and rubons that were on clearance, some free MM chipboard flowers and some free cardstock! After Archivers we hit an Eddie Bauer store that was going out of business and Darrel got a great pair of Leather gloves for 30% off. After we walked the rest of the mall those stores were in, we headed for a second nearby Mall. First we ate an early dinner at The Cheesecake Factory! YUM! We had a nice quiet dinner together and some fabulous dessert and then checked out this second mall. I found a great buy on some new PJ's at 60% off! At regular price, they should have all been about $88, but I only paid $38! Love some new PJ's..... my outfit of choice when I am home. We also stopped at Godiva and got some chocolate and the Williams Sonoma where I got this pretty pink spoonula. Did you know there is also such a thing as a pink Kithcen Aid Mixer? Very cool. Here are my PJ's.

While at the mall we had been looking for some new black dress shoes for Darrel. We didn't find any so we decided to hit Shoe Carnival on the way home. Darrel found a great pair of shoes, plus they were having a buy one, get one 1/2 price sale and I got to get these Skechers. My Mom and sister both have some and said they were so comfortable. I had to try them. Besides you can't hardly beat 1/2 price.

To protect my new pretty pink Camera, I wanted to get a camera case right away. Sony had this one so I ordered it last night.

When you register your camera purchase with them, they give you 15% off on accessories, and right now they are running free shipping thru Dec. 31st so it was a pretty good deal for a matching leather case. Plus, it's pink!

Speaking of good shopping deals, a friend pointed out that VeraBradley.com is running a 25% off special on the retiring fabrics and styles. They are also running free shipping on I think a $25 purchase plus a free gift! So far I have resisted but the petal pink cell case and/or laptop case are tempting me.

Did you notice I changed my Blog Banner a bit? What do we think? It thought it needed to be jazzed up a bit. I mean I have to decorate just about everything right? You might also notice the blinkie for a 2008 Scripture Challenge. A lady from Willow Traders is running this. Starting Jan 7th, we will receive a scripture a week from her, and then will be completing small layouts to go on the 7 Gypsies trading card holder. I used to really enjoy the Scripture Challenges I participated in on 2Peas so I am really looking forward to this. If you click on the blinkie, it will take you to the blog where challenge info. is in case you are interested in signing up too! So a few more days of vacation and I intend to do some more scrapping, finish my book (Chasing Fireflies), hopefully read another book, and we might go see a movie or two. We are thinking of I Am Legend or the new National Treausre one. We will see what we feel like doing.

Hope you are having a great week and that you have a Happy New Year! Blessings!!

Merry Christmas!

So how was your Christmas? We had a great one. For Christmas Eve we had some family time at Mom & Dad's. We got together early in the day and made homemade pizza for dinner. After that we opened gifts. When we were done there, Darrel and I headed home and had our gift time together. We started with a prayer together and then opened our stockings. Darrel had tons of pink stuff in my stocking. There were pink brads, ribbon, nail polish, emery board, socks, and candles. There was also a little snowman, a cool cross, and some candy. My favorite gift from him was a pink Sony Cybershot camera. LOVE it. It's so cute! It's PINK and it will fit in my purse so I can have a camera with me all the time. I love that too!! He also got me a beautiful willow tree figurine, and some sizzix stuff, a book, a Vera Bradley wallet and a candle from Bath and body. All the stuff above was from Darrel.

These are goodies from my Mom and family. I was surprised to get a cool digital photo frame. Look at the cool pink stuff my sister picked out for me. Would you believe my wish list actually had an item that said "pink stuff" ?? Of course you would if you know me. ha. ha. ha. Also got a gift card to Bath & Body. Love that store. Recieved some great gifts from friends too including this cool vintage chenille pin cushion that is pink and yellow and a really cute set of snowman salt and pepper shakers. The church people were so kind and generous to me too. It blessed me and touches my heart. Thank you so much everyone for thinking of me and for being so kind. Love you!

My Mom's dog had puppies over the weekend so we also got to enjoy these little cuties for the holiday! Aren't they sweet?

The Mom dogs name is Maggie and she had 5 puppies. The kids were already naming them, but of course I can't remember them right now. There are 3 girls and 2 boys. I do remember that my little nephew Ethan said the black and white one should be named "Spoty"... not Spot, Spoty. How cute is that?

Finished this layout on Sunday but hadn't had time to post it. Had some more fun with the KI Memories Pop Culture from my Scrapping Spot kit. Still loving these pictures from my Dad's birthday when we set the cake on fire! Ha. Ha. Ha.

So tomorrow we need to regroup from the holidays and plan what we want to do with our few days of vacation time. Hope to get in some shopping and some good restaurants and some rest. I am so tired! Been fighting off a cold/flu and can't seem to shake it. Been taking antibiotics for a few days now and they seem to be helping.

Hope the rest of your week is fabulous and that you are looking forward to a wonderful New Year! Blessings!

More Pop Culture

Finally had some time to finish a new KI Pop Culture layout. Loving these photos of my niece and nephew Lauryn and Cole. This was the first chance I've had to work with the new Lace Cardstocks. Aren't they cool? Very fun! Most of the supplies used here are in the January large kit from The Scrapping Spot. I hear they are going fast so check it out quick to be sure to get yours!

This past week has been pretty busy. As I've mentioned we have some vacation time off between Christmas and New Years. This makes work before vacation very busy in trying to get work done ahead for the time you will be gone. It all got done though! Yay! I am really looking forward to some time off now. Hope to do some sleeping, some scrapping, some shopping and some reading and nothing much more strenuous than that! Ha. Ha. Ha.

We had our children's Christmas programs at church this morning. It was wonderful. The kids did awesome! The little preschool age group was so cute. I don't think I stopped grinning the whole time they were up there. The older group did a play which was also awesome. During the sermon time Pastor Mark used a clip from the movie The Nativity Story. I had not seen that movie before and I thought the clip was awesome. Now I really want to see it! Need to run out and rent it or something. The clip he used was the Wise Men coming to see Jesus. It was so cool seeing the story happen right in front of you. Wow.

Yesterday we did a little more Christmas baking. We made pretzel turtles. YUM. I had never had those before this year. After our big Christmas Cantata, someone had made them for the reception. They were so yummy, on the ride home I was trying to figure out how they were made. Have you had these things? Turns out all you need is a mini pretzel, a rolo candy and a pecan half. You place your pretzels on a parchment covered baking sheet, then an unwrapped rolo and put that in about a 300 deg. oven for like 3 minutes. When it comes out, you press a pecan half in each one. Thats it. They just have to cool so the chocolate can set up again. They are so easy to make and so much easier and quicker then dipping the pretzel rods in carmel and chocolate. After we made those, Darrel also made a batch of peanutbutter temptations. The ones with the peanutbutter cups in the middle. Those are so yummy too.

Was hoping to do a little baking and some more scrapping today. I've been fighting off some cold or flu bug all week and was not doing well after church so I've been napping. Feeling better now so maybe I can still fit those things in. I would at least like to make a batch of toffee. That sounds soooo good.

Tomorrow we head to my Mom's for Christmas Eve. We have a tradition of making homemade pizzas together and having that for dinner. Then we will do gifts. I'd love to make it to church at 10PM, but not sure we will make it back in time. We head to Mom's on Christmas day too for dinner and some more family time.

So what are your plans for the Holiday? I hope you have a very Merry Christmas!! I am going to close with this excerpt from Luke which is one part of the Christmas story I can pretty much recite from learning it for a Christmas program as a child.

The Shepherds and the Angels

8And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ[a] the Lord. 12This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."
13Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 14"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."
15When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about."
16So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

More Christmas Projects

Finished up a few more Christmas projects today. Still enjoying and using the BG Figgy Pudding paper. I liked my fall blocks project so much, I decided to do a set for Christmas too. Since I didn't want to spell out Christmas.... I went with Joy. Figured I could manage 3 blocks! Ha. The BG paper is so pretty I didn't do a whole lot of extra embellishing but did add a few things. I wanted a more vintgey look for this set. Here is another view.














I also put together a few cards to be used as gift card holders. Remember my secret love of cool packaging? Well for some reason I like and have been hanging onto the Starbucks cup sleeves. Julie, another DT member for The Scrapping Spot came up with this idea/use for them as gift card holders. Since I had planned to give a few Starbucks cards for gifts this year, I just had to try making these. Came out cute don't you think? I also got a chance to try my new Bazzill stitch templates. I used those for the stitches along the edges. It made it so quick and easy and gives you a cool design! Not to mention a use for the 500 yards of DMC floss I have from my cross stitching days.















I also used another piece of the Cosmo Cricket chipboard that I had and turned it into another ornament. My friend Lisa reminded me about some rusty stars and bells I had so I used those to dangle from the ornament. Lisa gave me the rusty stars and stuff when we were first getting to know each other. Can you believe that has been like 3 years ago?! I can't believe that much time has gone by.

Lots of big plans for this week leading up to Christmas. Going to head to bed to try to start off rested and full of energy.... we'll see how that goes. Have a great week!

KI Pop Culture

Guess what was on my back porch yesterday? My January DT kit for The Scrapping Spot. This month I get to work with the new KI Memories Pop Culture line! What a cool kit! Love, love the colors, not to mention the cool frosted paper and lace cardstock! Also included this month was this mini chipboard clipboard from pinecone press. I decided to use it to display photos on and have it set on a mini easel. Didn't it turn out cute? Not to mention the cute girls in the photo, my nieces Lauryn and Lindsay.

Darrel got in the mood to wrap some gifts today. He is so amazing. He doesn't mind wrapping and is very good at it so he usually does the majority of our Christmas gifts other than his own. Rather than buying to/from tags, we decided to cut some with the sizzix. I still had last year's Christmas cards so we used those to cut the tags from. It's fun to find a design you like from the front of the card and get it placed in the right spot on the tag die. Darrel is really good at it. Is there anything he can't do? I had to take a photo of my husband using my pink sizzix big kick. Isn't he cute?

Here are some of the results:

I got the idea to see how it would look to emboss a couple with this cuttlebug snowflake embossing folder that my friend gave me. First we embossed then ran that thru again with the tag die. Look how cute they came out.

So are you ready for Christmas? I am trying not to panic. Ha. We have our shopping done. Decorating is done. I haven't baked a thing yet and would still like to. That pretty much leaves this week. The work week is going to be way busy because I have some vacation time between Christmas and New Year so I need to get as much as I can done for that week as well. At home there will be the baking, wrapping Darrel's gifts, making some cards I need for a gift, getting the rest of my DT work done, start laundry and packing for vacation, regular housework and stuff, thurs. night there is a cookie exchange at church that I need to bake something for, there is supposed to be a choir rehearsal on Wednesday, I still have some Christmas crafts I wanted to finish before Christmas actually gets here....... think that is enough for one week? I know everyone is busy this time of year so I am sure not alone right?

We are watching Love's Unfolding Dream on Hallmark. Just watched Love's Unending Legacy before that. These are based on the Janette Oke Love Come's Softly series of books. LOVE those. They are among my favs. so I really enjoy the movies. I highly recommend both books and the movies.

Darrel has locked himself in our room and is wrapping my Christmas gifts. Can I just tell you how great my husband is? I love him so much and he is so good to me. He took a vacation day yesterday to go shop for me all on his own. He takes a day to do this every year. He always picks out the perfect things for me and he does so well in knowing the things I like and enjoy. Last year he filled my whole Christmas stocking with pink stuff because pink makes me smile. Since we were engaged (which was 22 years ago yesterday) he has had a tradition of always getting some cute little bear, santa, or last year a snowman with a pink hat on to stick out of the top of my stocking. Some of my best tweezers, nail files, etc. have been things that he found for me and put in my stocking. He even takes time and writes special notes on the tags of my gifts and they will all have extra pretty ribbons and bows that he ties and curls just so. He is completely amazing and I am very blessed.

We got some snow and ice today. Supposed to get some more snow tonight. It looked so pretty out earlier and it was a great day to stay inside and be cozy. Makes it feel like the holidays. I hope you are having a fabulous month and week and Christmas! Merry Christmas to you and your family.

Blessings.

Tanner

On The Scrapping Spot message board we've been having a little game of tag. Once you sign up for the game, you are on a list. Then as each person has their turn they pick a layout from someone on the list to "scraplift" or in other words make a layout inspired by/based on that person's layout. So this is the layout I did when I was tagged. My layout was inspired by Tara's layout. I used the Sassafrass Lass Indian summer papers from our November kit. Aren't they pretty? The journaling on this layout comes straight from my Blog this past February when I took the photo. Love the picture and it always makes me smile so I've been wanting to scrap it for awhile.

This morning we headed to an annual craft show. Darrel went with me this time. It was his first year. I've been a few other years with my friend Julia. I found this cute snowman sign and this heart ornament. Totally love the buttons. What is the deal with me and buttons? This totally caught my eye. While I was paying for these two things, my husband was outside where we had parked working with a friend to pull our car out of the mud/ditch.... Yes, that is right, my car has been in the ditch twice in one week! Can you believe it? As our friend Josh said, "not a good week for the Cavalier." Ha. Ha. This craft show is at a local elementary school and parking is a huge pain. Darrel had parked along the road out in front of the school and he said as soon as he got parked, the front tire sunk in. He couldn't get it out and so we called a few friends that we thought might be able to pull us out. Pastor Mark to the rescue with his Jeep and a chain. yay! It came out with little trouble and Thank you Lord for that! We did not want or need a tow truck bill this month. We also bought this handpainted switch plate for our bedroom. LOVE it and wishing I'd bought another for another switch I had forgotten about!

Still having virus troubles with out laptop and about to have to resort to paying to have it fixed. Ugh. Darrel has researched and tried several things and yet the virus remains. What a pain. However, so thankful that it has not been a system damaging virus, just an annoying one that keeps pulling up web pages that we didn't pull up. It also continues to try and load a trojan virus. Hoping we will get it resolved soon.

Finished all the family Christmas shopping last night! It went really well and we found what we wanted pretty quickly and easily. I just need to shop for Darrel (which I am doing Thurs.) so should be able to wrap things up easily.

I am reminded again this evening of how very much we are blessed. I know of 2 or 3 families who are having some major financial or other troubles during this Christmas season and it humbles me and reminds me I have nothing to stress, complain or grumble about compared to what others are dealing with. We are certainly not millionaires, but God has provided so much for us and He always does and I just want to praise Him and thank Him for his provision and protection. It also reminds me to keep focused that Christmas is about my Savior's birth and not how many presents I can buy. I pray you and your family have a very blessed and peaceful Christmas!

Snowmen!

So did you know I collect snowmen? The snowman paper in the BG Figgy Pudding kit was too cute to pass up doing a layout about them! I had some fun with this one and combined the BG Christmas papers from Fruitcake and Dasher along with the Figgy Pudding. Isn't it cool how they coordinate? Had fun painting my chipboard snowflake too. It was from the Cosmo Cricket Ornaments. It was just the plain chipboard color so I painted it light blue. Then I put brown crackle paint on that. Well then it was too brown and I didn't like it. So I sanded off some of the brown and ran my light blue paint dauber back over it to kind of like dry brush it. Then I was happier with it and was getting the look I was going for. Once the paint dried I added some Ranger glossy accents and then stickles. The jewels were in my Scrapping Spot kit and are Daisy D. The little snowman charm....that is from my stash and I've had it for what like 6 years.... See I always use it up eventually. Really liking the blue/green color combo here. You know what though? I thought that was all the BG Christmas paper I had and now I am realizing I forgot about Blitzen! Bet that is in my cabinet too.

I didn't feel too bad today from getting knocked around when I went in the ditch yesterday. A few people have asked me if I reported it. I didn't because it happened so quick and the other person kept going and I really couldn't tell the police much at all about the other vehicle. I didn't get a license because I only saw the front and in our state you don't have to have a front plate. I did have some blurry vision at one point today and a headache but I am thinking that was my typical eye struggles since it went away and I've not had any problems since. Thank you everyone for your concern.

So what is on your Wish List? I would like a PINK camera, digi of course, (and I used to think I'd never give in to the whole digi thing...) that would fit in my purse. So many times I am out doing stuff and see something I'd like to get a picture of and I don't have a camera. I am thinking Sony or Nikon or Canon. We have a sony and are happy with it and I am thinking if we stick with the same brand it might share batteries and memory cards.. maybe? Here is the sony. I've seen it on sale for $179. Not too bad for a good camera. For scrap stuff I have a wishlist over at scrapbook.com and wrote out some other ideas for my Mom and Darrel. Wondering about the Bind It All. It's a cool idea and I think it would be fun to make and bind your own mini books. Just wonder if I'd use it enough. I'd also like a new pair of slippers. These are sooooo me. They are PINK and they have sparkles! Love that. I am out of my favorite perfume, Passion, so that is definitely on my list. I've bought it here before and that is a good deal for the big bottle. If Pink is my "signature color" (as Shelby would say in Steel Magnolias) then Passion is my signature scent. I put down a few DVD's too like Lost Season 3 and Some of the Little House Series or Mad About You. The TV DVD's are fun to pop in while scrapping.

Well now I need to go see if I have that BG Blitzen and then need to head to bed. We have been struggling with our laptop for a few days now fighting an annoying trojan virus thing. GRRR. Looks like we need to get on the phone with Dell tomorrow. Have a great Wednesday.

Mitten Ornament

So there were some Cosmo Cricket Buck Naked Chipboard shapes in The Scrapping Spot Figgy Pudding kit. They were called ornaments so I did something really original (ha.ha.ha.) and made what else? An ornament! I think it came out kind of cute. Love all the cool, cool things you can do with chipboard. How cute is this BG snowman paper? Love, love, love it and already have a snowman layout planned for tomorrow night with another piece of the chipboard. So, consider that your tease to tune in tomorrow. (smile)

Here is another view with the ornament on our tree.

In other interesting news from today, I almost had car accident and got ran off the road! Scared me to death. God was watching over me and neither me nor our car was hurt. I was driving back from town on a work errand and suddenly I had this big black pick-up coming straight for me. I tried to blow my horn but then remembered it is broken. He was right on me and I had no where to go so I swerved and ended up in the ditch. I hit my head but was mostly just shook up. The person who did that did not bother to stop. Another nice man behind me did stop though and asked if I was OK and offered to pull me out of the ditch. Fortunately I was able to drive out and the car was OK. I am a tiny bit sore this evening and have a small bump on my head where I wacked it on the seat belt thing next to the door. Thank you Lord for taking care of me.

I hope you are having a great week. Tune in tomorrow for more goodies.

Blessings.

Christmas LO #3

Here is my 3rd LO using the BG Figgy Pudding. This is my nephew Ethan about 4 years ago. Wow. Where does the time go? Isn't he cute?! Love these papers... I know I already said that several times right? Can't help it! They are great! LOVE Basic Grey. I think there still may be 1 or 2 kits available. Run don't walk over to The Scrapping Spot and grab yourself one. Merry Christmas to you!

I have to make this a quick post. Darrel is on his way back with Chinese for dinner. YUM. Hope you have a great week.

The Black Hole

Ok, I have a question. What is wrong with this picture? (besides the old ugly paneling and the house that is perpetually under construction of course)..... Do you see the Christmas Tree black hole? Isn't it lovely? Last year we bought our first artificial tree ever. The first 20 years of our marriage we always went the day after Thanksgiving and cut down or purchased a live tree. Last year we decided to go the artificial route. We got a really nice pre-lit tree at Lowe's. It looks very life like and we were very happy with it. So of course this year when we put it up we are faced with this. Darrel is very good at finding light problems and getting them to work. Even he couldn't get it to work. So now what? You can't take the lights off because that spot is like 1/2 of 2 different strings. The other 1/2 of each is working. We decided to buy a string of white lights and just intertwine them in the hole without taking the non working ones off. It worked pretty well and you really can't tell. I will post a picture of the completed tree after we finish decorating. Hoping to do that today. The clutter of boxes of Christmas decorations and then fall decorations that need to be put away is getting to me.

Thought I'd share a few Thanksgiving photos. I snapped this one of my pies the night before Thanksgiving. I like to do things from scratch so this was the result of a couple hours work after making and rolling out pie crust, etc. I also made homemade rolls and snapped a picture as they came out of the oven.

Here we all are getting ready to sit down for dinner. We had a nice time and good food. I made a 23 lb turkey in the oven and Darrel cooked another 15 lb turkey on the grill. It was yummy! We also had sweet potatoes (which I messed up twice! GRRR! Hate it when that happens.) Mashed potatoes, broccoli, broccoli salad, pistachio jello salad, and corn. I was exhausted by the end of the day but my family was a huge help. Especially my husband! He is so great. Love you honey. Thank you for picthing in and working so hard.

After dinner we made the famous Oreo Turkeys. Even my little brother made one. Which is cuter? Him or the turkey? Ha. ha. ha. ha. Kidding.















Ethan made a turkey and then made this..... We aren't sure what it was. We thought maybe a mutant turkey which then turned into a whole "teenage mutant ninja turkeys" thing.... Ha. Ha. Ha. ha. Too Funny.

It was a good day and we are so blessed to be able to share a day like this with family.

Guess what?! I had 2 layouts accepted into the Basic Grey Gallery yesterday! My first time in their gallery. yay me! They are posted here and here. There are both my recent DT layouts for The Scrapping Spot. So cool to be in their gallery. I love how they list your name under "designers" in the main gallery page. How fun is that? I hadn't mentioned it here before but I am also a finalist/second round interview person for the Daisy D's design team search! SOOOO excited about that. LOVE Daisy D's and would LOVE to be on the team.

I am off to decorate. Hope you are having a fabulous week!

More Figgy Pudding

Just a quick post to share a second BG Figgy Pudding layout from my Scrapping Spot Kit. LOVE these papers. May have gotten a bit carried away with the bling and glitter here you think? Ha. Ha. Ha.

I am off to decorate a tree! Hope your week has started off well.

Blessings!

Figgy Pudding

Here is my first layout using the Basic Grey Figgy Pudding Line. LOVE these papers. They are from the December kit at The Scrapping Spot. They also have a fabulous line from a new company called Tada. Be sure to check it out. I had such fun doing a Christmas layout. I haven't done one in ages and now I have several planned! Wait till you see the one I am currently working on. Got a little carried away with the glitter and bling! I also am hoping to do a Christmas journal like last year, some ornaments, maybe another set of blocks that say "joy" and some cards. Oh! And I also want to alter/cover my Starbucks Advent tree. Now all I need is time to do all that! Ha. ha.

So last week was amazingly busy and at times stressful. I think the activity was non stop from Monday thru Thursday at about 11 PM. Friday and Saturday were wonderful and relaxing though so that was a cool ending to the week. We had a great Thanksgiving with family. My Mom, Dad, brother and his family and sister and her family all came to our house. We had 2 turkeys. One in the oven like normal and one on the grill. They were so yummy. My pies and rolls didn't come out half bad either. I did however goof up the sweet potatoes twice! What is up with that? It annoys me soooo much to mess up things I know how to do! Hate that. It all worked out though and I did manage to have some to serve.

Saturday Darrel got the tree in the house and set up. It is lit except for one black hole spot we need to figure out. I wanted to go another way this year with the decorations so we didn't do any more till we could stop at Walmart today after church and get some new wired ribbon. We used to always do colored lights and then had gold ribbon and bows on the tree. Last year we got a new articial tree which has white lights. I didn't like the gold as much with the white so this year I wanted red ribbon to add some more color. If you know me, you know I am all about the color! So to Walmart we went after church and lunch. OK, brief walmart rant....Does this only happen to me? You are in an aisle trying to look at something and someone else acts like they are trying to get by. So you move close to the shelf so they can pass. Except of course they don't pass.... they walk as slow as possible and then stop right where you are at to look at stuff and do not just move forward and get. out. of. the. way! GRRRR. Drives me nuts. So after SEVERAL people did as I just descirbed while we were in the Christmas decorations section, we finally found some red ribbon edged with gold. It is not exactly what I had in mind, but I think it will do. Hopefully we will get the decorating done in the next day or two. Then need to decide if I am doing cards this year, plan and finish my shopping and figure out what and when to bake....

OK Christmas is 1 month from today. How did that happen? Last thing I knew it was September and the fall TV season was starting and my husband and I were complaining about how far away it was before the new season of LOST would be starting. Now it's just a month away. It does start in January doesn't it? Hope so!

Hope you have a great week. Blessings.

Turkey Week Begins

So yesterday Lisa and I spent the afternoon together. We had a great Chinese lunch and then hit the scrapbook store to check out their Creative Cafe. While we were doing that my sweet husband went to the grocery store for me and got a few last groceries we needed for Thanksgiving dinner. When I got back home this little snowman was hanging from my vanity mirror. He picked it up at the grocery store for me. Isn't he just the sweetest? Can't wait to get my snowmen out for the winter months! Hope to do that next weekend.

Creative Cafe was awesome!!! We had so much fun. Lisa and I are such close friends and we have such the same tastes in scrap stuff and styles.. Who better to go scrap shopping with right? Ha. ha. We realized we had never done that before! We have no idea how we let that happen. So we poured over the creative cafe line for a good little while. They had such awesome stuff. Here is what I got.

















Here are a couple of closer views so you can see the coolness better! Ha.

Aren't the colors awesome? This was the Lucky line. They had the patterned papers, the felt, felt trims, 12x12 patterned felt, colored chipboard in pieces and in sheets, buttons that you can buy by the button or by the scoop, acrylic shapes, mini albums, cards and envelopes and I am sure there was more I am forgetting. They also had these cool labels and alpha stickers which you can see in the photo. We were hoping they were going to have the creative cafe make and take projects, but those hadn't started yet. They said maybe in a few weeks. Guess we will just have to go back! The store also had the Tim Holtz crackle paint so I got one of those to try. Then they had the bazzill stitch template things. Lisa and I both got 2 of those. We had a fabulous time. Now I just need to find some time to play.....

I think as far as turkey week goes I have hit completely stressed and overwhelmed. I mean my new December DT kit came today and I've been dying to see it and I haven't even had time to open the box! So so much to do this week both at work and at home. Work is that way because it's a 3 day week and its Newsletter week which is an extra big project. Home is that way because I didn't have my cleaning done, and now also have cooking and preparing to do. Tonight went fairly well though. Got about 2/3 of my cleaning done, thanks to the help of my huband. Also got my dough mixed for my rolls. So tomorrow night I can bake them. I use a refrigerator roll recipe where you make your yeast dough and it rises in the fridge over night. Then you let rise and bake the next day. Still also want to make 2 salads ahead, and my pie crust and pies. As you probably guessed everyone is coming to us on Thursday. We will have 13 people. Cool thing about Turkey week though is you work so hard for the 1st few days, then once you hit Thanksgiving dinner, you have a 3 day weekend to rest and relax! Yay!

We have a few unexpected blessings/praises to share from the past few days. I think I mentioned a few days ago that Darrel got a ticket for a headlight being out. We were pretty upset about a $120 ticket for a headlight we didn't even know was out. Didn't seem to be much we could do about it though. In Saturday's mail, we had a letter from the officer. He said after some consideration, he felt he should have issued a warning, not a citation, so he was canceling out the ticket and sent a self addressed and stamped envelope for us to send the ticket back. They said it would be recorded as a warning and would not be reflected on his record and we don't have to pay anything! How big of a wow is that! Thank you Lord! We have no idea why he changed his mind so we definitely feel it was a God thing.

The other blessing was this morning. My husband hit a deer on his way to work. He saw it too late, slammed on the brakes, and the deer hit the front of his truck and spun around and dented in the drivers door and broke the mirror too. Darrel was not hurt. His truck is damaged, but it could have been much worse. He thinks he will be able to make the repairs. The cool thing to me is that last night when I was hugging him saying goodnight, I started praying for him as I often do, but was specifically praying about his safety and asking God to bring him home safe tonight and asking for the blood of Jesus to cover him and protect him... was kind of a big wow today when I realized that and realized he was not hurt and is back home safe. God is so good.

I hope you have an awesome and blessed Thanksgiving week!

Date Night and a full Sautrday

So I had to put this picture up top because I like it! I took about 20 some and of course that means I ended up with 2 or 3 good ones that I like such as this one. It was getting dark and I was wanting the glow from the fire. Darrel spent some of his afternoon today raking some of our bazillion leaves.... We are never very good at getting that done and in this particular area of the yard, there are so many leaves, the grass dies off every year and then we have to reseed. So this year, we actually got some of them up! yay. He had a HUGE pile here and it only represents maybe 1/10th of the yard. Thank goodness for leaf blowers. That at least makes the job a bit less strenuous.

Earlier in the day Darrel finally had a few minutes to put my new stars up on the garage and house. I love how they look! This is the larger burgandy one on the garage. Below is the smaller green one on the house/back porch.

Last night (friday) was date night. We headed back to town to get my engagement ring back from being repaired. So happy to have it back on my finger and they did a great job. Next we stopped at Bath & Body... (ok I almost typed bath and booty..... ha. ha. ha.... ) and picked up some Christmas shopping things. I spotted these socks and a pair just happened to follow me home.

They are amazing!!!! They are the softest things ever, nice and long and did I mention soft? LOVE them. You need a pair. Trust me! Love, love soft cozy lounge socks! I almost swapped them out for a pink pair we saw near the check out but these were way softer. Ok, and a weird thing about me... well ok, one of the weird things about me... I love cool little details and notice like tags and packaging. LOVE the ribbon and tag on these. I saved it. It may somehow become part of a scrapbook page. It is almost as cool as the socks. (I won't mention that I also have a cool round tag saved from a recent new hair brush, and a cool ribbon that was around a pair of new gold toe socks... OK, stop laughing at me... )

After the mall we hit the Family Christian Stores for an accompaniment track for my husband who is singing a trio at church soon. Then we hit starbucks in search of the elusive advent calendar for this year. We got one! Yay! A friend on The Scrapping Spot mentioned these this week and I really wanted one. I hope to spice it up a bit with some cool BG Christmas paper. This thing is so cute. Plus, while we were there we got to enjoy a yummy hot chocolate. My friend Lisa told me she orders them with double chocolate. Now why didn't I ever think of that? So of course I had to try it. It was yummy!! Oh and the thing I just mentioned about packaging and detail? LOVE the Christmas cups and the cool cup sleeves Starbucks is using right now.

I am off to bed. We have a busy day tomorrow. Church in the AM, then lunch and heading to the LSS with my friend Lisa. We are going to check out the nearest Creative Cafe! Can't wait. Then back home to meet Darrel and head to church for the All Church Thanksgiving Dinner, followed by a choir rehearsal.... Then next week will be crammed full of work, and cooking and cleaning for Thursday! After that though, a 3 day weekend! Yay. Hope to decorate for Christmas and scrap then!

Have a great Sunday. Blessings!

Yes, I Still Play With Blocks....

Finally got my fall blocks finished!! I saw this idea at The Scrapping Spot. The guest designer in October was Lacey and she made a set of these. It was such a cool idea I had to try it. My husband cut the blocks for me out of some wood post scraps he had in the garage. He even sanded them and had them all ready for me to work with. I covered them with Daisy D's Gypsy harvest papers and inked the edges. Then added some embellishments. Very fun. I think I need to do some for every season. I'll have to get right on that in my spare time.... Here are a couple of other views. You can also see more detailed pics. of the other sides in my 2peas gallery here.

I wanted to set these in front of our TV, but needed it scooted back a bit. Darrel scooted it for me and then set the blocks there.... He set them all lined up like they were in front of a firing squad or something... He said I knew you'd have to arrange them anyways. He always sets things all lined up, I have a need to arrange things.

Did everyone but me know that starbucks does a cool little advent calendar tree thing? Someone posted about these on the scrapping spot message board and I had to check them out. They are so cool. I found a couple on 2peas from previous years where people had altered and deocrated them. I would love to get my hands on one. Did you notice though that the web site is already sold out? I hear they are hard to get in the store because they sell quickly. We have about 6 or more Starbucks in a nearby town so we may check around there when we go to town on Friday. I am loving the Starbucks holiday cups too with the red. Then they put the cute little green sleeve on it? Love that. I am a sucker for cool details.

OK today I realized that Thanksgiving is NEXT week. Um I am so not ready. I need to figure out a menu still, plan my cooking and shopping, start cooking and shopping, clean my house.... wow. Better get on it I guess.

Would you believe my husband got a ticket last night?! Why you ask? He was pulling out of our driveway. We live on a highway. He said 2 cars went by and he pulled out. Next thing he knows, one of the cars pulls over and waits for him to pass and then pulls out with the flashing lights on to pull him over. He had a headlight out. He had no idea he had a headlight out. If he did he would have fixed it. Odds are, it didn't go out until he started the truck last night to go to town. So the cop pulls him over and gives him a ticket. No warning. I mean I understand its the law and all, but they could give him a warning at least the first time for something like that. He has a perfect driving record, no tickets ever, and now a ticket for something like this that was kind of beyond his control at the moment. He was so not happy. He asked the cop how much the ticket was for. He said he didn't know and told Darrel he'd have to call the court house today. Today is Veterans Day so no luck with that. Shouldn't the cop like know how much the fines are?

Did you see the new "Creative Cafe" line online or at any of the local scrap stores? A scrapbook store about 1/2 hour away got it! My friend Lisa and I are going to check it out possibly this Sunday! It looks so cool. I can't wait. You are supposed to be able to just by the bits and pieces you want like getting stuff out of a candy jar. Everything I've seen of the line looks pretty awesome. The LSS is also having project times with cafe stuff. We hope to catch one of those on Sunday.

Ok Christmas music. Did you know Josh Groban and Michael Buble' have Christmas CDs? I NEED these. Josh Groban's sounds amazing. wow, wow. You can hear samples on Amazon. I have heard that Josh's song Thankful is pretty awesome.

I am off to get a grocery list made and upload some pics to walgreens for printing. I am way behind there. I hope you have a fabulous week! Blessings.

It's Begining To Look A Lot Like Christmas

You are right, it's not even Thanksgiving yet... but look what we found at the mall tonight. We decided to head to town for date night and hang out at the mall. Since the time change we are now in the Eastern time zone and town is in the Central time zone so its cool because we get an extra hour to shop, eat, etc. before everything starts closing up. So first we hit TGI Friday's. There was no wait whatsoever. Another time advantage. Dinner was good. After that we walked the mall and just went in wherever it looked interesting. First stop was Bath and Body.... one of my favs! They had all the holiday stuff out. We got the two candles on the right and the snowman soap dispenser on the left. Love, love their candles. The scent is so good, they burn well and last long. One is spice and the other is cinnamon. The spice is technically called winter. It's the white one. I happened to have a coupon they had E-mailed me for $10 off of a $30 purchase. Got to use that. Then today they had a special that you got a $10 gift card back with a $30 purchase so they also gave me that. When we got home we noticed our receipt had a phone in survey thing which gave us another $10 off $30. So all that was pretty cool!

Next we headed to the jewelery store because I had been noticing that my engagement ring was catching on things a lot lately. I was worried something was wrong with the prong and did not want to risk losing my stone. He checked it under this microscope thing and found out the prong was worn down (I guess almost 22 years will do that) and the stone was loose!!!! I was like yikes! So happy, SO HAPPY, not to have lost my stone. I would have been soooo upset. So now they have my ring for repair and I have to be without it for a week. My finger feels so bare without it. I never, never go without my wedding rings so this is very weird. We go back next Friday to pick it up.

From there we hit Hallmark and got these two cute ornaments! How cute is the little snowman gingerbread man inside the cookie cutter? Several years back I kind of accidentally started collecting snowmen. I get them out right after Thanksgiving and they stay out till spring. I like that they can be out longer than Christmas since they aren't specifically Christmas themed. We also like to get 1 new ornament each year. Darrel spotted this one with Linus from Charlie Brown Christmas. When you press the button on the ornament, it lights up (like the stage spot light shining on him) and then plays the whole audio from the movie where Linus recites the Christmas Story from Luke in the Bible about Jesus' birth! This is the video clip:



Love, love Charlie Brown Christmas!

After that we browsed at several more places, hit Macy's for some new socks for me and then stopped and enjoyed a Cinnabon together. It was a fabulous date night!

Saw some more sneak peeks today of the December kits for The Scrapping Spot. They are AWESOME. Stay tuned for more info. because you do not want to miss out. I cannot wait to get mine!

Darrel is home for the weekend! Yay. No work this week. Hoping for a peaceful weekend not to mention productive. Hope yours is great as well.

My Button Obsession.

Ok, what is it about these little bags of Foof-a-la buttons that like literally makes me happy? Why can I not resist a single collection. I see a new bag of colors and I cannot help myself. I mean look how cute they are? Look at the beautiful colors! These arrived at my house yesterday. The new Indian Summer and Rhonna Christmas colors. When I was opening the box I told Darrel not to look (kidding of course). He did look and just shakes his head at me and smiles. He says I need a BA meeting.... Buttons Anonymous.

I also got the Christmas pack of the MM Chipboard buttons. Love those too! Can't wait to dig into them. The Scrapping Spot has an awesome kit planned for December and it is already getting me in the mood for some Christmas scrapping.

Speaking of The Scrapping Spot here is a card I made with some scraps from my Dream Street Tea for Two kit. It was based on a sketch designed by the club owner Jill. I am really liking the Queen & Co. felt which you see around the crochet flower. Very cool.

Darrel finally had a normal work day. I/we soooo needed that. We thought we were done after the weekend, but he had another long day yesterday. This getting home at 8-9 PM eating dinner at 9-10 PM is not for us. He worked 15 hours on Saturday and did not get home until 3 AM. Wow. He didn't have to go in Sunday though and I like didn't want to let him out of my sight. I was really missing him. He ended up with 136 hours for the 2 weeks. We both were a little stressed and burnt out on the whole deal by yesterday. So glad that we are beyond it now. His company is very good to him though. I am honestly not complaining about them. This job was kind of just one of those things where everything happened at once. Just a stressful couple of weeks for both of us. I am actually going to scrap a layout about it! Ha. I took some pics when I got home of all the things that weren't done and stressing me out and am going to scrap it! I like the layouts about the everyday and find them even theraputic.

Remember my stars from Covered Bridge? My friend asked me if they were up yet. I'm like um no, that would require my husband being home for more than an hour at a time. Ha. Ha. Ha. They are still sitting in the garage waiting for us. He says he will have time to put them up this week. I am excited to see how they look.

So the family is coming to me for Thanksgiving. I can't believe how close it is. I need to plan my menu and start looking for a turkey! I think I may make my placecards too using an idea I did recently for the club newsletter.

I normally don't watch Oprah, but happened to see the end of the show when I turned on the TV after work today. Did you see this guy off of youtube doing "The Evolution of Dance"?? too funny. In case you missed it, check it out here.

Better head to bed. Hope you are having a blessed week.