Creating From the Heart Blog Candy...

You could win this...

Melissa has a wonderful giveaway over at her blog Creating from the Heart.  Head on over...check out her gorgeous projects and get yourself in the running for her amazing end of year giveaways.

Christmas Delicious-ness, an Artful Delight Giveaway and List of Fours...

I hope that all of you had a blessed Christmas.  We thoroughly enjoyed our time with my parents, my brother-in-law and our close family friends.  It was a whirlwind of a weekend but it was so wonderful!  I'm looking forward to playing with all the new scrappy goodness that my husband and oldest son got me for Christmas...here's a little sampling of all the yumminess. 

I know lots of the papers are older lines but I have been admiring them for SO long and just haven't had the budget to add them to my collection.  So seriously, who wouldn't be inspired to craft with all those goodies?  The kids are still home from school this week so I don't know how much I'll get to right away because I really want to spend more time playing with them now that the mad holiday rushing around is over but next week when they are back in school - look out because the paper will be flying around here.

Leeanne over at Artful Delight is giving away one of these

Pretty cool right?  The giveaway ends January 6th so hurry over and check it out.  She's got lots of great kits in her store!  She also tagged me for the List of Fours so here it goes:

1. Four shows that you watch?
Extreme Makeover Home Edition
Grey's Anatomy
Detroit 1-8-7
Human Target

2. Four things you are passionate about?
God
My family (they truly are amazing and such a blessing)
Paper crafting
The outdoors

3. Four words/phrases you say a lot?
Seriously
Praise God
Stop fighting with your brother
Pick that up
4. Four things you have learned in the past?
Communication is key to a relationship (Leeanne had this one too but it's a truth that can change any relationship.)
God will ALWAYS be there for me and I can trust in Him.
You are only as happy as you allow yourself to be.
You have to make time for yourself...no matter how busy your life is.

5. Four places you would like to go?
Kauai (I could go there over and over again)
Italy
France
Spain

6. Four things you did yesterday?
Drove my parents to the airport (boo hoo)
Worked at church
Laundry
Watched Minute to Win It with the kids and hubby

7. Four things you are looking forward to?
Working on some crafty projects with my new supplies
A big snowfall (hopefully later this week)
Springtime (I'm a huge fan of flowering bulbs)
A date night with my husband

8. Four things you love about winter?
Sledding with the kids
A warm, cozy fireplace
Pajama days with the kids when it's too cold to go outside
A fresh blanket of snow covering the ground

Tag four people to play along:
Lisa:  Where Chaos Meets Creativity
Liz: The Scrappiest
Mary Pat: Siehled With a Kiss
S: Snaps and Snippets

Merry Christmas Eve and beyond...

So my kiddos woke up at 6am today (ughhh)...is this a precursor to what is to come tomorrow morning????  I sure hope not because we will all be SO tired!  I have been so busy this week trying to finish up all the last minute baking, the cookie plate making and the wrapping of presents.  It's done and I'm ready but I'm worn out.  Why is it that no matter how much pre-planning and preparation I do it always seems to come down to the last minute?  I've really got to get better at this because I'd rather be spending the time doing fun Christmas-y stuff with my kids during this week rather than hustling and bustling about. 

My parents are here too which is wonderful - I love that they make spending the holidays with my brothers and our families such a priority every year.  It's a huge blessings to us and to our kids.  Today we'll attend Christmas Eve services which are always amazing and make me cry - I get so emotional thinking about the true meaning of this whole celebration.  Tonight our close friends and their kids will join us for our traditional Christmas Eve tamale dinner, the kids will all get to open one gift, we'll tuck them into bed and collapse into our own bed and hope for a nice, long sleep before the festivities of celebrating Christ's birth get underway.

Before I go, I'd like to wish each and every one of you a blessed Christmas.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16 (NIV)

And here's a little peak at ALL those cookies!

 Wrapped up and ready to be delivered by my little elves...

 Up close...

December Challenge at Artful Delight

I finally got around to working on the sketch for Artful Delights December challenge...better late than never!  Here's the sketch...

And my take on it...

I used primarily the November kit from Artful Delight that I won in one of their other challenges.  I added a couple of brads, the Maya Road envelope, and the brown cardstock.  I still have a ton of product left and I've made so many projects using this kit...their kits are jam packed with scrappy goodness!!!

The Scrappiest and Your Scrapbook Stash

Liz has done it again with another fun sketch over at The Scrappiest.  I love the ribbons running down the middle of the sketch - reminds me a bit of a corset or those cute wedding dresses that were so popular a few years back with all the lacing up the back.  Anyhoo...it inspired me to get crafty again this week (which truly is amazing considering I baked a TON of sugar cookies yesterday).  Here's her sketch...

And here's my take on it...

And nothing like waiting until the last minute but I finally got my design team submittal in to Your Scrapbook Stash...at the last minute.  It's been on my to-do list for a couple of weeks now and I had most of it written up and ready to go.  It was mostly a matter of finding a few minutes to refine it and get it all sent off.  This is a great site and I'd love to work for them...wish me luck!

Wintertime at Sweet Peach Crop Shop

I recently received the Wintertime kit from Echo Park as part of my design team assignment for Crop Chocolate.com and was looking forward to getting a chance to work with it.  I took a break today from all things Christmas and set to work on this month's Sweet Peach Crop Shop sketch created by Liz Chidester.  Here is the sketch she created...

All the snowflakes inspired me to play with the Wintertime collection and the collection worked great with my pictures from last winter of Tyler enjoying his time in the snow.  Here is my take on the sketch...

I can't tell you how wonderful it felt to sit down and create a layout...it's been a while with all the holiday gift projects I've been working on.  That and the shopping, wrapping, writing, baking, decorating....you get the idea.  It's been busy and I've missed my time at my scrapping table dearly.  This was just a temporary break though, I still have hundreds of sugar cookies to bake, frost, and deliver to my wonderful friends and neighbors and my folks are coming into town for Christmas on Monday so at some point I have to get the dust cleared, the bathrooms cleaned (yuck!) and the floors vacuumed all before they arrive.  Wish me luck!

In desperate need...

Of some time to be crafty.  I'm hurrying and scurrying around trying to get through all of my Christmas "to-do's" and in the midst of it all I am seriously feeling the lack of crafting that is occuring (or truly not occuring).  I have got to get the Christmas cards stuffed into their envelopes and popped in the mail, wrap the rest of the gifts (actually purchase one more for my darling hubby), and bake and frost about 1000 sugar cookies.  Then I will have my time to play with paper.  Sorry I have no new projects to share right now but I can share some pictures of the holiday decorations strewn all over my house.  Enjoy and I will be back to pretty paper projects soon.

Scrap the Moments Deadline Extended...

Some Scrap the Moments news. The deadline for the challenge has been extended to December 13th. So you have plenty of time to submit your layout! Come on everyone lets try this one! It will be fun. I am sure you have some ticket stubs, receipts, old match books, or other memorabilia to scrap or get even more creative than that and make something from stuff you have around the house like I did with my paper towel flowers.  On the blog post today you can see some examples of the fabulous kit you could win if you enter! The Retro kit contains some of the Crate Paper from the Restoration line and they are gorgeous.  This is the kit you could win...

And here is a more detailed look at some of the paper from Crate Paper's Restoration line...

It is a really pretty line and you get tons in the kit --So what are you waiting for? Let's get busy and make a layout and email a photo to: scrapthemoments@yahoo.com I would love for one of my followers to win!

A little birdy told me that no one has entered the contest so come on guys don't you want to win FREE stuff!

Can I brag for a minute???

Scrapbooking.com magazine picked up my Yo-Yo Christmas wreath project for their December issue.  You can see the article over at Scrapbooking.com magazine website.  I'm just so excited and wanted to share.  These wreaths have been a huge hit with my friends and family that have seen them...they might just get a little surprise this Christmas. 

Gifts, gifts, and more gifts...

Seems all I am working on these days is Christmas gifts...'tis the season right?  If I were more organized I'd work on these things throughout the year but well, I'm not!  I decided to make a couple of sets of cards for some very well-deserving teachers that are doing an amazing job with my younger boys.  Shhhh...don't tell.  I had this gorgeous kit that I won from the Artful Delight blogs October sketch challenge.  Leeanne over there sent me their November kit filled with these beautiful papers, flowers and other delicious embellies.  She still has a few left over at their site.  Just look under the past kits.  I made two sets of 8 cards and still have TONS of product left to make numerous layouts or lots more cards.

So without further ado, here are the cards...I sure hope they like them.

There's also a giveaway over at the Artful Delight blog so you just might want to get yourself over there and check it out!

Sketch #152 at Sketch Inspiration

I hope you all had a wonderful, restful Thanksgiving filled with family & friends.  We were blessed to spend our day with some very good friends and their parents.  It was relaxed and delicious...not to mention the kids all played really well together and there was no fighting.  Now that is something to be thankful for!

I've been super busy crafting Christmas gifts and haven't taken much time to scrap for me so yesterday I decided to play with the sketch for the week from over at Sketch Inspiration.  I'm not real big on Halloween but I've had these papers that I picked up in the dollar bin at Target probably 2 years ago laying around and I finally decided to use them up. 

Here's the sketch...

And here's my take on it...

This sketch was a really quick and easy one for me to use and I have a feeling I'll go back to it again in the future.  Thanks Sketch Inspiration for inspiring a little "me time" into my busy pre-Christmas preparations.

A Christmas Mini

I've had lots of projects going at once - most of which are gifts so I can't share them here...you never know who might be lurking - wouldn't want to spoil the gift opening on Christmas day.  This project I can share because it's for my family and it's already out on the coffee table...the first of many Christmas decorations to make their way into my home.



Sorry for the not-so-great pictures.  Our weather can't decide if it wants to snow or sun today so my lighting was hit or miss.  This photo I spread the pages out around the binder ring so you could see a little more of the embellies. 

And here are a couple of the individual pages.  I used a real hodge podge of supplies...stuff from multiple manufacturers but that's the great thing about the holiday lines - they all have a very similar color scheme so you can work a lot of them together on the same project. 

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving.  I know I have so much to be thankful for.  Take a moment to remember all of the good in your life and give thanks!

Scrap the Moments Challenge is Like New

The Scrap the Moments challenge this week is to scrap with something from around your house...a tag, a receipt, a ticket stub...you get the picture. I had lots of cool clothing tags from some of my teenagers' jeans that I thought I'd use but that didn't seem "interesting" enough to me. For a little while I was stumped and then it dawned on me that I could use paper towels. Yes, you read that right...paper towels. I don't remember where I recently saw this technique but I loved the way it looked and thought it was such a clever use of materials. I hurried to my kitchen and tore off a sheet and headed back to my craft room. Here are the results and my layout for the challenge.

Start with shite paper towels and tear them into strips.

Using Smooch Spritz in Spun Sugar and Gingersnap I misted the paper towel strip heavily on both sides then set them out to dry a bit.  You can't let them dry completely as they need to be a bit damp and pliable when you twist them into flowers.

To make the flowers I rolled each strip the long way on the paper towel then I simply twisted and rolled until the flower shape was how I wanted it.  I set them aside to dry a bit more then used my hot glue gun to smear glue all over the back of the flower to help it maintain its shape.

And here they are on my layout.  All the elements on my layout, with the exception of the Thickers, the "ring" border strip and the paper towel flowers all came from the November Artful Delight kit that I won back in October.  Enjoy and make sure to head on over to Scrap the Moments and enter this weeks challenge.  Catch the Moments is sponsoring and they have a fabulous prize package lined up for the winner.

 

Scrap the Moments Challenge

The first challenge to be tackled by the new design team is up over at Scrap the Moments blog.  I for one can't wait to get started on it.  Head on over and check it out.  Entries are due by December 6th.  We can't to see what you come up with...

Exciting news...

I'm thrilled to announce that I have been selected to be a design team member over at Scrap the Moments - a lovely challenge blog created by Devon Hickman.  Here's the official announcement.  I can't wait to get to work on my first design team challenge!  Devon also has a wonderful kit site (Catch the Moments) where you can purchase some fabulous kits.  Check it out here.

For now...I'm busy, busy, busy working on Christmas presents - I swear my craft table looks like Santa threw-up.  What a mess it is!  I'm thinking I'll have to take a break from Christmas papers and embellies and make a project completely un-related just so I don't go nuts from all the red and green.  Until then...happy crafting and be blessed!

A Thankful Giveaway...

Melissa over at Creating from the Heart is giving away an amazing Christmas bundle.  Click on over there...check out the giveaway, get yourself entered for a chance to win that yummy prize, and check out Melissa's wonderful blog.

A Little "Sass" afras...

I've been drawn to the Sassafras collections for a long time for their fun and funky colors and images.  They're a little sassy don't you think?  I added some to my collection through a great buy over at Crop Chocolate then didn't know how to use it since I tend to scrap more "traditional" papers and embellies.  I happened to have these photos of our two youngest on my table when I was organizing my supplies and the Sassafras stuff I purchased caught my eye.  I love how this layout came together almost as much as I love to see my boys chilling out with a couple of books.

I mean really how often are they both sitting still (quietly, nonetheless)??? 

$100 Two Peas Giveaway.

Seriously who would be crazy enough to pass up an opportunity to win $100 at Two Peas - you know you could all easily spend that!  Head on over to Iheartart and check it out.

A Crafty Kind of Week...

So I seriously think I'm working on a record this week for how many times I can post on my blog...not on purpose but because I have lots I want to share with you all.  I completed this layout last night based on this week's sketch over at The Everyday Scrapper. 

It was a fun one for me as I did a lot of stuff that is out of the box for me.  I pulled older papers from my supplies one of which (the background paper) was white with this swirl embossing.  It was kinda plain by itself but smear an ink pad around it a bit and it really made the embossing pop off the page and fit right in with the fun theme of the boys' birthday party.  I also mixed elements from so many different manufacturers some of the stuff was just sitting in my supplies and it had probably been there for at least a year - untouched...well, not anymore.  It all made it's way onto this fun layout documenting a really fun party.  Enjoy!

November Queen Scraps Kit Layout

The gorgeous November Pebbles May Bouquet kit has been released over at Queen Scraps.  This kit has a wonderful selection of double-sided patterned papers, flowers, Thickers (who doesn't love Thickers) and lots of bling  Hurry over and check it out before they are all gone. This kit is so versatile.  I used it to create an Easter related page, a Halloween related page, a fishing page of my son, and this page I'm sharing today of myself.  Here's the kit...

And here's one of the layouts I completed with it...

  The journaling on this one reads "She wasn't where she had been.  She wasn't where she was going...but she was on her way" (Jodi Hill).  I love this quote and truly feel it is where I am right now.  God has big plans for my life, this I know.  He is shaking things up a bit.  Changing them around for the better.  There are growing pains involved but He will be beside me through the entire process and when it's all over, God will still be there. 

"For I know the plans I have for you," says the LORD. "They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11

Be blessed in all you do!

Happy Fall Y'all...

It finally feels like Fall around here...we got our first snow of the year yesterday which is really late in the season for us.  As a matter of fact, my boys had shorts on the day before as we enjoyed temperatures in the high 70's.  I recently made this lovely wreath as a housewarming gift for some friends. 

I'm a bit hooked on these Yo-Yo wreaths and keep thinking of new themes that I can make.  I think I could pretty much have one for every season/holiday of the year.  The manufacturers have so many amazing product lines out there that you really can transform the concept to work for any occasion you can think of.

You could even replace the little embellishments with photos - ooh, how cute would that be.  Black and white mini photos on a super colorful wreath.  I'm feeling another project coming on...

I'll be back a little later to share another of my Queen Scraps projects using the November kit so make sure you check back this afternoon.