It is a "True" blog hop with "True Friends"

Welcome, welcome, welcome...Happy New Year!!!

Can you believe that it is 2010 already? WOW!

This month our blog hop features a great journaling/sentiment stamp set called True Friends. If you came here from Deb Young's blog then you are in the right place. This set of 11 is so adorable and fun. It features brackets that are perfect for journaling and some sentiments that are great for cards. This time around I decided this set would be "Perfect" for a card...I used Perfect Day paper, which is just one of my favorites.

True Friends is Available January 1–31, 2009 only


Purchase $25 and it's only $17.21
Purchase $50 and it's only $11.48
Purchase $75 and it's only $5.74
Purchase $100 and it's FREE

Here is the card I came up with. Isn't it so lovely? I have some friends that could really use some cards that scream cheery without saying hi I am a cheery card so hopefully they will find it warm inviting and smile when they receive it knowing that I am thinking of them.

I mounted the floral patterened paper onto Sorbet and  then mounted the Colonial White and the striped paper on top of that. I also punched the striped paper with a Martha Stewart punch and then I wanted something to stand out so I took the little stamp that looks stitching out of the Somethin' special set from the Jingle WOTG. The stamp set is now available in the Spring Idea Book.

I am also really into finishing my cards. I always have been so it is so nice that the rest of the card making world is following suit. Here is what I did, just brought the design into the inside and left plenty of room to write a note. I also did my punching and my faux stitching here.

I hope you have enjoyed this months blog hope now you can continue onto Sheila Bennett's blog and please enjoy your day!

Happy New Year!

Hi everyone I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and that you have a very safe and Happy New Year tonight!

I am following my tradition and staying home with the family. We will make a bunch of snacks and play games. The kids will drink fake wine and we will enjoy watching the ball drop at a few different locals. I am looking forward to the newest game at our house Monoply City. Whoo hoo...I will fill you in on how it goes.

Being the new year and all makes me all reflective of the last year. I have been organizing photo's and thinking of what kind of goals I have for the next year. I cannot understand how those girls can grow so fast so soon!

Now these are not resolutions if these things do not happen it is ok but these are the things I want to work on...

• Better over all health (menu planning)
• Be more active (walk up stairs, play more we fit, go for walks)
• Home improvements (painting walls, maintain yard, create studio)
• Bible study time (carve out time every day to spend with God)
• Blog post (get back to posting regularly which will help me stay creative too)
• Go to the CTMH Conventionv(nuff said)
• Date night (get out once a month with the hub and sometimes with anohter couple)
• Do some regular journaling (I really miss this)
• Keep track of books that I have read (I hate it when I read a book twice. LOL)
• Set aside some business time
• Send more cards - birthdays, thinking of you, have some on hand
• make creative time
• Love, love, love - this year was tuff, especially this past month or two. I lost a friend, a two grandparents and my best friends mom who was like my mom. I want to make sure that those I love KNOW that I love them.

So I guess this is it...do you have any goals or resolutions?

Gearing up for next week. Are you ready?

So I can't beleive that next week is Christmas!!! Wow where did the year go?

I thought I would share a few projects from Christmas Past's ... mmm is that how one would say that? Anyway, my family always goes to my grandma's on Christmas Eve and then Christmas day was spent at home. Once me and my brother grew up and had our own families we swiched it around and started going over to our parents house after my grandma's house. This became ever more increasingly difficult for my brother whom would also go to his in-laws after that. I had the brilliant idea of just changing it from after grandma's to before grandma's. Once my parents split up and got a divorce I took over having Christmas Eve at my house. Here are some photo's of that. I have to say I am so lucky to have my mom and dad play nice and spend the holiday with us together. It makes things much easier! I am a little diapointed that I did not get any photo's of my brother, barely one of my dad and none of my neice and nephew. Oh well at least I got photos I was busy playing hostess with the mostess.

Here is something I love to do with striped paper! Journal on it! I find it a little playful and I just think it is so fun to use the lines and create a little ditty. You should try it.

So like I said we have been going over to my grandma's forever on Christmas Eve and when my other grandmother was alive we would go to her house in the afternoon and then to my other grandma's in the evening. I always loved Christmas just because I got to see so many of my cousin's, aunt's and uncle's all in one day! Not to mention all the treats and the presents. Yee haw....it was fun being a kid way back in the day!

Now we just go to the one grandma's and I hardly ever see my other cousins anymore. We used to try and get together but then we all got our own families and time just gets away...I was hoping to have them over this year since we bought the house but maybe I will try and have them over in the spring for a barbe-que instead.

I know some of you have seen this photo before and now you will get to see the rest of the page!  I am not sure why I don't have tons of photo's for this Christmas like I did every other year but I just had a few that turned out so I will share them here.

I also like this fun playful journaling. as well as all the white on this page. I don't use white very much and I found it worked well here.

Something to make the grandma's explode with emotion!

So I mentioned that I made some explosion boxes for the grandma's for Christmas and I have finally gotten some photo's of the process and the project to share with all of you! My first real tutorial if you will:

Cut down a peice of 12 x 12 cardstock to a 11 1/4" square then score every 3 3/4" in every direction then cut out all four corners so you are left with a cross shape.

View of peice all scored

view of cross shape

Repeat steps with these sizes

Second box: Cut 12 x 12" sheet into a 9 3/4" square, score every 3 1/4" in every direction, cut corners

Third box - Cut an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet into a 8 1/2" square, score every 2 3/4" in every direction, cut corners

Here is what your box should look like

and the lid cut an 8 1/2 x 11" sheet into a 5 7/8" square, score at 1" on all four sides, make a cut as shown above, fold at score lines and glue lid together.

Now the fun part...decorating!

So I took a sketch from the wishes book and just rotated it each time so that each side looked different but had the same feel.

 Here I did the same thing and added little flowers in the corners. This is again from the wishes book.

And the last box so I added a little flower to the middle with a pop dot. This pattern is again from Wishes.

 Here is all of them nested togetherLooking into the boxA fun way to look at it.Now I did attach the parts of each box with pop dots but you could also let each box just sit in there.

Here it is with the lid. I kept it simple

All closed up

I even signed the bottom!!! My grandma would be proud of me for signing it. I am forever sending her cards with no siggy on the back.

I hope you enjoyed the box.

Pretty in Pink

Here is a page for my daughters book. She went to prom and looked like a princess. Her dress was so super cute and she went and had her hair done un an updo. I think she must have had the time of her life.

I used the flowers from CTMH and had this other really cool ribbon that had leaves all over it so I trimmed the leaves and made stems. I might add some buttons to the middle of the flowers but I have not made up my mind yet.

I have the double page with the rest of the pictures. I will share those later. I usually do a single page for school books and double pages for mine.

Tis the season to organize and catch up!

So as I have mentinoed in the past I scrapbook chronologically for the most part. By the time December rolls around I usually start thinking man a new year is almost here and I am still behind. Haha...I am ok with being behind as I like to enjoy my scrapbooking so if some pages take longer than others it is ok.

With that said I have been on a roll!! I have been so creative since I moved into this house. I think it is because my scrapbook area is finally right in the heart of the home. It is smack dab in the family room so I can sit and make cards or scrapbook while I interact with my girls. This makes me very happy.

Now I don't want to share everything I have been working on as I want to have something for a rainy day to share with al of you but here are a few projects.

Here I used the Game On paper packet and created a quick page for soccer season.

Another view for you

and another. Here you can see the SU punch that looks like notebook paper. I have been using this a lot more in my cards and pages. It just adds a nice little something.

Here are some basketball pages with some older papers that I have just had so I don't know where they are from but I was happy to find something cute that matched out school colors.

 and the close up of the button detail

Well I hope you all have a great day today! I will be back to show you the rest of the pages later.

I must say the best part about doing these older photo's is looking back at how cute and little the girls were. Now they still cute but so old. Time it just goes by so fast...I better go take some more photo's!

Notice the details on this months blog hop...

if you found your way here by Sylvia's blog then you are on the right track. If you just stopped by don't worry you can just jump right in. Once you are done looking at my projects you can move on to Deb's blog.

This months stamp set is perfect for all those little extra's that you might want to add to a scrapbook page, a card, or anything else you can imagine! This set has 41 perfect little parts for you to mix and match and use to your hearts content.

I have three projects for you today but I thought I would start you out today with a fun little card called an easle card. I did one a while back for fall but now that we ar moving closer to Christmas I thought I would share what every Christmas season needs...

Snow! I know I am crazy but I love snow as it is so pretty and it sparkles like diamonds. I used some of my favorites on thTis card: Jingle Level 2 paper pack, Flurry Elements, Notice the Details, Little bitty brads, Pearl Paint, Prisma Glitter.

Here is another view of the card when it is open. As well as a close up of all the words inside the card.

Since I made you suffer through the cold cold snow I will move you into the summer time where you can watch a little softball. My daughter has played for years and years but for three of those years she actually played club ball, which is travel softball. This basically means that we eat, drink, and sleep softball. It is round the clock and we are always on the go.  She loved it, I loved it, she doesnt' do it anymore and it makes me a little sad even though I enjoy the lighter schedule. For this page I actually made a whole calender page out of the little weekly calender. I just cut them and lined them up super cute.

 and the other page

The last thing that I have for you is a gift idea. These are journal jars and I did one for my daughter a few years ago and she loved it! She still has it as a matter of fact.

Well I hope you have enjoyed your time at my playhouse. I hope you enjoy the rest of your hopping. Now hop on over to Deb's blog.

Lets talk about snow...

Men! Haha...You thought I wanted to talk about snow for a whole post huh...where you worried? Some people really hate snow and some love it. I would be the latter and here is why, if I have to be cold I want something pretty to look at. I know simple reason. It is also so pretty to look at for the first month or so...come the end of January and I am over snow.

Anyway I made up some snowman soup a.k.a. hot chocolate, that I saw last year over at Nicole Heady's blog last year as I thought they would make fun little gifts for teachers, co-workers, secret sisters, ect..

They came together so fast! I used Aspen Level 2 papers and Snow Flurries.  I found the tins at Papertrey Ink I also got the cute little topper and poem from her blog, she again has the cutest ideas over there. This whole project came together so super fast...well I also had some help from my good friend Patti.

I think most everything is better with a little bling so I added a litttle bit of shinny gooness to the lid. I also think these would look adorable with some prisma glitter or stickles along the sides.

I want to hear from you

You know how there are one billion fabulous blogs out there? Everyone loves comments but sometimes you find that you just don't have a moment to show a little love. Well now you can tell me what you think with my new reaction buttons! How cool ar those??? Click at your leasure.

I hope you all had a wonderful day today!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Traditions:

One of the cool things about being an adult is making your own traditions. I have found that some of my traditions came straight from my parents and others I have made with my family. The holidays make me get all sappy and sentamental each and every time. One tradition that we have is to put up the tree on Black Friday. I have done the shopping thing but I actually would rather stay home put up the tree and have some hot tea and put on some Christmas tunes. This year I think we will light the fire too. It is so fun going through the ornaments with the girls and giggling about the ones they have made over the years. Some are pretty beaten up but most of them are still just as nice as they were the day they came home with them so proud of what they accomplished.

As the years have went by the ornaments have become fewer as the participation in tree decorating has also went from two down to one. Savannah still loves to decorate the tree and I am so glad. It actually makes me sad that Danielle no longer wants to help but the sandness is not as bad as the attidute that I am met with if I force the issue. Pick your battles right?

This page came together so fast. I discovered a while back that the titles of the pages are labled on the back of the level one kits. What I normally do is to turn to that layout in the book that it is in, in this case Reflections, and I look at what else has been done in that chapter in regards to photo and papers.

Here is another view I just love the play on patterns here.

As well as a close up of the date. I just cut a Z to make a 7 and used a letter O for the zero

Note to self: take some photo's of the ornaments this year.