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!