Christmas Photos as Promised...

This is how Santa left my living room late Christmas Eve... notice the vacuum in the right hand corner? That Santa, he's a tidy guy and likes to clean up after the reindeer. That, or, after the commotion with the firetrucks it plumb slipped my mind... Anywho, here's the tree and presents in all their glory:

And me, trying to be a sport about being awake at 4:30AM to unwrap gifts... No, people, it's not pretty, but I was only slightly lucid at this hour...

Jim, on the other hand, had woken up at 3:30AM and was beggin to wake up the kids for a full hour before I finally caved:

Think Santa managed to stuff enough crap into Allie's stocking this year?

And this is what made it all worth it:

I apologize that my daughter is sans pants. She woke up, went potty, put on a fresh pull up and bolted out of the bathroom to tear open presents... too cute!

It's been a little while...

Sorry for the delay in posting, but between wrapping, making, sending, etc... there hasn't been a whole lot of down time or me time.

We finally got the kids to bed on Christmas Eve, only to have them jolted from their sleep, while I was, of course, frantically wrapping in the living room, by the sound of Santa on the firetruck at 9:45pm!?!?! That's right, quarter to ten on Christmas Eve with all the bells and whistles. I nearly jumped out of my skin thinking Christmas would be ruined for all... But Jim, being the saint that he is, jumped up quicker and stood by while they watched out of their bedroom window and quietly tucked them back in. Whew! THat was a close one!

Christmas morning was a mess of paper and toys and rushing to get showers, etc., in ortder to hurry off to Grey-ma and A-Pop's house, where we would open more presents and spend the day.

The day after Christmas was spent shopping for deals and for little Allie's birthday... My littlest munchkin is due to turn 3 on January 4th... *tear* She is so big... We got her a virtual army of Littlest Pet Shop toys, they are her favorite. SHe is nothing short of obsessed...

Yesterday, Jim spent his Christmas money and bought ROCK BAND... We have yet to see anything but that on the good old tube...

OH wait... I must have forgotten to mention the lovely gift from my parents... Are you ready? Are you sure?

I got a Cricut!!!!! I was flabbergasted! I am still working out the kinks and getting the hang of it...

I'll post some new pics new!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!

It's Another Triple Play!

First Let's start off with the sketch from Amy at Prairie Paper and Ink:

And this is what I did with it:

Check out the glittery bling:

Next up is Laura's sketch #15 from 2 Sketches 4 You:

And I did this (using an outline from a few weeks ago by Hanneke):

Oh What Fun!

More Bling:

And finally from Poetic Artistry, a little Mojo Moday action:

Warm Winter Wishes:

Happy Little Trees:

I did the writing myself! Yay!

Well, that's all for now, my momma is coming over to help finish up the christmasy fun and send everything out! TTFN!


Oh my goodness! I have never had so many comments on a post! Thank you all soooooo much!

Sweet Blog Candy

Definitely trot on over to Emma's blog and feast your eyes on the yummy candy she has available. Her post will stay up until January 15th, so go check it out! What are you waiting for??? Why still reading?

A bit sketchy today...

I love Clare's blog, it was one of the first I started following when I got into blogging, so this is her sketch this week:

And because I am still about 11 cards behind, I opted, you guessed it, to bring a little joy to the picture. Ta Da!

I randomly found these cool square metallic alphas in my embellie bin:

I used lots of bling, from glitter, to silver thread, to tiny rhinestones:

This next sketch comes from i heart 2 stamp:

My first Noel card of the season:

I wish this pic had come out better, but eh, oh well, these are cute teeny little translucent mitten buttons with the teeny tinist little buttons on top:

And of course the noel:

And last though certainly not least from Taylor's blog:

A cute little gingerbrad boy:

I finally decorated my stupid tree!

So... my tree has been up for roughly two weeks now, with nothing to adorn its branches with the exception of the pretty multi colored lights it was pre lit with... Like this:

I just hadn't found the motivation to actually decoratye te silly thing. This past Saturday we went to the Christmas party thrown in neighborhood where I grew up and I suppose all of the ensuing merriment took hold and SundayI caved and threw it together with the kids... Here is a pic of the kids with Santa (notcie that no one is crying, in fact they are all smiling and it just turned out fantastic! Yay!):

And here is what we managed to do to the tree:

We dont usually do garland, we do tinsel, but I had bought this a the end of last year to decorate my desk at work... but since I quit working back in July, and this a faux tree, and picking tinsel off the tree seemed nightmarish at best, we used all three strands on the tree... The lids thought it looked awesome, and since they did most of the work, I left it as is. Afterall I'll have plenty of time to decorate a designer tree once the munchkins are grown...

Anywho, each year we make our own ornaments for the tree. This was the project last year, grown from pipe cleaners, boiling water, borax, and tons of patience:

And this year's simpler, less time consuming, but still too cute design:

Happy Holidays everyone... I'm off to finish up my cards and such... they need to go in the mail by Wednesday!

Snowman Kisses

Check out this little army of snowmen:

These little paper boxes are stuffed with a packet of hot chocolate and little Ziploc of marshmellows... I made them for Zachary to give to his teachers as Christmas presents.

I made a tag for each that says "Snowman Kisses"... I wanted to do snowman poop, but you never know who might be offended, so I thought kisses would be too cute. I wanted to make them for Zach to hand out in class but apparently the school has a rule that does not allow children to distribute xmas gifts, go figure...

This guy is my favoite:

Aren't they just adorable... Well, I had better go, I've got a few more to crank out for friends and family... TTFN!

Christmas Kick...

Ok, so I have been on a roll today, and of course, still on the Christmas kick... I mean do you have any idea how much family I have, not to mention friends??? So I figure doing the challenges is a fun way to come up with new card ideas and also flare up some inspiration. The first comes from Kristina Werner's unbelieveably awesome blog. I can not tell you how addicted I am. She has an amzing talent and everything she does looks perfect! Here's this week's color inspiration:

And here is what I did with it:

See the fun brads at the top and the faux stitching:

A close up of the merry sentiment. All I did here was take the sticker slap it on some cardstock, (which is more teal than sage shadow, but it just worked here), drew some polka dot edging with a gel pen and wrote in the rest of "merry":

And the coordinating brads at the bottom:

My second source of inspiration comes in the form of a sketch, complimenti I {heart} 2 stamp. This is a blog I recently started stalking, and I really like the projects they create here. Anywho, the sketch:

And what I did:

These brads are the major colors used in the card:

I just had to add some bling:

And here we are again coloring those stamps:

Adios Amigos!

A cute little Rudolph and Kitties in love...

Here are a couple more challenges I have been working on. The first is from Amy over at Prairie Paper and Ink you can see her sketch here:

And here is my cute little Rudolph card:

Like I mentioned in my last post, I am finally getting into rubber stamping and coloring. I borrowed some colored pencils from the kids stash to finish the Rudolph, and I had a lot of fun with shading and blending. I alwasy did love coloring in school!

I also really like the way green, brown, and blue work with each other in this card. What a fun color combo!

And then the second challenge I decided to conquer was from Caardvarks and te only stipulation was to use NO patterned paper. I had this idea for a card some time ago, but I thought this was the best time to use it, my two little kitties in love:

Again, I am off... This post is lovely, happy, and short, and I have cards to make before I sleep...