i will miss this...

This is our Christmas Tree on Christmas Eve...right after Santa arrived, filled the stockings and left presents under the tree for the kids. Isn't it beautiful? I love this image. I remember as a kid sneaking out of bed several times on Christmas Eve all night long to look at the beautiful lights on the tree in our unlit living room and all those unopened PRESENTS. It doesn't last long...just that one night. All the presents were opened as of 10:00am the next morning. I will miss this sight!



Hope you are enjoying the Holidays!

holiday centerpiece idea!

...okay don't get too excited. This is a gag gift. My husband and I went to a Christmas party where there was a white elephant exchange, and a friend of mine thought it would be funny (it was funny!) to wrap up her husbands stinky old running shoes as a gift. Complete with an air freshener. My son loves the air-freshener, it's a baseball and he has it proudly displayed in his room. The shoes we felt needed to return to it's original owner. So I dressed them up Holiday style and turned them into a centerpiece! We left them on their front porch last night. Ha ha ha. Yes I think I'm pretty funny.











Doesn't that penguin look so happy popping out of that shoe? This will be a family heirloom for years to come, I'm sure. :)

Merry Christmas!

three more days

Well it's been a busy but fun December. And now there are only three more days until Christmas! I've been meaning to post a few picts...

First my Christmas tree. I love the Christmas Tree...it's my favorite part of Christmas. Here's mine. This room is the room that I redecorated a few months ago...I couldn't wait to put the tree up!





We collect Christmas ornaments from our vacations. Here's my latest edition...chosen at an *awesome* Christmas store in Folsom, California (right outside Sacramento where we went for Thanksgiving.) This was seriously the biggest Christmas store I had ever seen. I cannot even imagine how many ornaments they had in that place. They had an ENTIRE CUPCAKE TREE! I was in heaven! This was my favorite cupcake ornament...





Now for the papercrafting part of this blog post....a quick Snowman tag. These are bottles of Shower Gel from Bath and Body Works that I had bought for my friends...we were meeting for a Christmas lunch and I needed a quick wrap job. This took 5 minutes to do...I just stamped the snowman in red ink on white cardstock, punched it out, framed it with a larger scallop edge punch, put some ribbon through it and tied it on. And then ran out the door because I was late. Gotta love that!





Last but not least, a friend of mine took our family photo this year and this is what went inside my Christmas Cards...





This photo was taken at the base of Snoqualmie Falls where I live. This next photo of my kids I really love...I'll be getting a large version of this one for my wall...




I did something else this Christmas that I have not done for a LONG time...I played my violin in church and at a Christmas concert. I have played the violin since I was five and music was a big part of my life growing up. As I got older, I became more interested in art than music and that became my focus, so my music took a back-seat. (Though many artists are musicians and vise-versa. They go hand-in-hand.) Just recently I'm discovering how much I miss having music in my life and I'm starting to play again...and really enjoying it! My goal this upcoming year is to push myself to practice and get back up to speed. Eventually I'd like my daughter to start taking violin lessons so I guess that means I need to be an example!


We are looking forward to Christmas this year...both my kids are "believers" and very excited for Santa to come. My husband and I are feeling very grateful for our family...we love those two little people.


I'm looking forward to relaxing for a few days and I might even do a little papercrafting...I got sucked in by all the awesome Holiday papers and embellishments at my local scrapbooking store this morning so I have lots of new stuff to play with. I might get those Christmas photos scrapbooked before next Christmas! I also heard that Santa may be bringing me a new sewing machine to play with....hmmmmm.... ;)


Merry Christmas to all of you!

mix blog hop!

Today we are doing a Monthly Mix Club blog hop! This is my Mix card. It may be the Holidays, but I've still got birthday presents to give. I wanted a little coffee gift-card to go with a Starbucks gift and I thought the coffee cup from the December Mix stamp set would be perfect for that...the quote around the coffee mug says "A cup of coffee shared with a friend is happiness tasted and time well spent." Perfect for a little friend gift card!





Make sure to go and see all the stampers participating in today's Mix blog hop...they are all listed on the Lizzie Anne Blog. And make sure to leave a comment there because we're going to give away our new December Singles of the Month to one lucky stamper!

i love this kid

I'm not a morning person. My son Ethan knows this because he's always up before I am, trying to drag me out of bed to feed him breakfast. Having him in school now so early (he started first grade this year) has been rough on me.

This morning, he came into my bedroom to "get me up" ...gave me a hug, and said, "Mom, bigger boys get themselves breakfast and ready for school, don't they?"

I said, "I think so, but it's okay. I like to get up for you because you're my baby boy and I love you."

Well, he still beat me downstairs by about 10 minutes, and I found him in the kitchen making himself and his little sister waffles in the toaster for breakfast. He had the milk out and he was also making his own peanutbutter-and-honey sandwich for lunch. I guess today he decided to be a big boy and do it all himself!

So sweet. I love my boy. He's always been a sweetheart.

Now if I could only get him to look at the camera when I take his picture. :)

Here are some more family photos I've taken recently...remember I said I've been playing with my camera settings? I think these turned out really nice!

quick gift

I was at the grocery store the other day and saw they had Ghiradelli Peppermint Bark candy bars on sale, so I bought up a bunch of them (almost all!) I find having a stash of really good candy bars is a great last-minute gift idea...just stamp a quick band to go around the middle, tie on some ribbon, make a matching gift card and you're ready to go! And sure enough, I was visiting a church friend today and needed a holiday gift...so I went for my Christmas candy bar stash. Here's what I came up with...





Since the candy is called "bark" I thought it would be cool to make it natural-feeling. I stamped the pinecone from Heaven and Nature all over some recycled white paper and tied some twine around the middle. I think it looks nice! I love that pinecone. I made wrapping paper with it too.



The Nativity stamp is a new Single of the Month we just released...I had a lot of fun drawing that little sheep. Now I confess, I borrowed this card idea from Joslyn's blog entry today. I needed a simple QUICK gift card, and this only took me 10 minutes to do! That's what our Design Team is there for...inspiration. I get ideas from our Design Team girls all the time. So borrow away!

The only problem with this gift idea is I tend to buy chocolate bars that I wish I had for myself. They are over in the pantry right now just waiting for me to take a little bite. Maybe Santa will bring me one (I've been leaving a lot of hints for Santa on my blog lately so I hope he's listening! ;)