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!