Christmas Cards I'm sending this Year

Yes, my Christmas cards are about finished already. No, don't hate me. The majority of the people on my list will get cards I have from workshops and samples I've done all season (now I'm loving those 15 card workshops!). However, when I saw this Becky Higgins card kit, I knew I had to make these for my immediate family. Yes, they are kind of cheater cards--I finished all 20 during Grey's Anatomy last week--but I LOVE the colors and designs. I thought they were a lot of fun. I also loved that they were inexpensive and arrived just a few days after I ordered them. What a relief to be this far ahead before Thanksgiving. Of course, I still need to figure out the picture. I'm hoping we'll get a cute one of all of us at Knott's Berry Farm next week--fingers crossed.

Speaking of Knott's Berry Farm--all four of us are going for just $12.95. Right now they are doing a promotion for Veterans and active Military where each Veteran (Mike) and one guest (me) can get in for FREE and can buy 6 more tickets for just $12.95. Brendan is already free, so we only have to pay for Austin. What an awesome way to honor those who fight (or have fought) for our country. After Thanksgiving, they are offering the same deal to our Police and Firefighters. The kids are so excited. I can't wait to see the boys go on all the Camp Snoopy rides together. I'll be sure to take lots of pictures.

Another stab with this set

Here's another try. I think I'm going to add glitter and go for this card. I do love the embossing, but my embossing leaves a little to be desired and to get 10 perfect ones for the swap, I might have to emboss 20--LOL. Still having trouble with this stamp set, but I love the random stamped paper I made--I almost didn't want to cut it. I think it's the cupid that I don't like because the hearts and the sayings are pretty. I used CTMH's Friendship dangles hanging from the safety pin.

December SOTM Card

I'm working on this for my monthly swap. Need to tweak it a bit more, but it's a start. Not sure I'm in love with the cupid--I may change it to a heart image. ANyway, I used Life Delights papers, In My Heart stamp set, and Colonial White accents. The colors look a little off in the scan, but you get the idea.

Layouts for Friday's Crop

If you are atttending Friday's crop, you will have a choice of this layout in either Everlasting papers or Life Delights papers. I meant to do both papers as Christmas layouts because I think Life Delights is cute with the Snow Friends stamps set for November. However, as I was going through my pictures, none of my Christmas photos looked good color-wise and I knew I wouldn't have time to have them re-printed in black and white. As a result, I went with Easter pictures. For details on my crop, you can visit my CTMH website.

Here are the pictures...

Have to brag a little...

Ok, I always seem to post the terrible things my kiddos do, and I don't want everyone to think they are little monsters--LOL! Those are just the things that make interesting reading. So I thought I'd take a minute to brag a little. Austin just came home with his first report card and I am so proud of how he's doing in school. He got high marks in everything. Friday, we were invited to the awards assembly because he was getting a math achievement award. Yeah Austin! Here's a couple pics from the assembly. I know they're far away--someday I'll be able to get a super-zoom lens for my camera.

Ok, maybe not--blogger doesn't seem to be cooperating on the pics. I'll try again later

My Scrap Space...

Several people have been asking me about my scrap space and I finally have it clean enough to show off :) I have my friend Shawna to thank for this. She gave me the cute little cube you see with all my ink pads in it. It inspired me to re-organize the rest of my room. I had done my paper cabinet about a month ago. This time I did all the rest of the cabinets, cleared off the counters and Mike and I cleaned the rest of the room. It just makes me smile every time I walk in now! Next step is paint. I want something light because there is so little natural light and I think a dark color would make the room too dark. I'm leaning toward Crystal Blue right now. Mike vetoed Sweet Leaf and Breeze. Yes, he gets a say, since it is also the computer room/office.

Here's my paper cabinet.

Oh, you can't see it in the pics (I'll have to take more), but my stamps, ribbon, catalogs, etc are all stored on shelves under the counter.

And here was a before--yikes! Can't believe I'm posting this. It was definitely a "scrap mess" before--LOL! Oh hey, you can see part of my shelves underneath in this picture--yeah!