I just love all the festive holiday wear this time of year. I couldn't resist this adorable Santa dress for Ashlyn. She literally wore it for two years straight. In the heat of the summer, she would pull it out and put it on! I finally convinced her this year that it was a little too small but fortunately, I had found an identical one in a bigger size for this year! HO! HO! HO!

Greta

all supplies from Dec Scarlet Lime kit

 

I'm tickled pink that my layout which features a picture of me with my daughter Nicole landed on the cover of the January Issue. This is very special because it is one of the very few nice pictures I have of myself with my daughter.

Anyway, I just wanted to share the other layout I submitted for the call. The one which was not chosen obviously. :) I love this picture of her. Here it is...

 

Iris

Having a background in graphic design, you'd think I'd be an all digital scrapper. I think all those years of sitting in front of the computer burned me out and the dimensional quality of traditional scrapbooking is such a nice change. I still have a digital side to me though, I like to incorporate some digi elements every now and then on my layouts ... a title that is created in Photoshop and printed onto transparency or some handdrawn art that I've scanned and printed out to include on my layouts. But, I have yet to do an all digital layout. So, I did an all digi Christmas card! I love they way it turned out and it still has the dimensional look that I love so much about paper crafting.

Merry Christmas to all of you!

Amy




Paper, cardboard, raffia, tags and ghost letters: scrapartist.com

So, there's something y'all might not know about me...

I am a multi-tasker. I literally cannot do one thing at a time. Ever.

While sometimes this is a good quality, allowing me to get lots of stuff done on busy days; at other times, it is rather annoying to me and to others around me (hi husband o'mine! ;) LOL)

One thing that has been bugging me lately is that I can't just watch tv. I always need to do something *while* I sit on the couch. Usually, I choose randomly surfing the internet, but that gets old after a while & seems to annoy the hubbie more than anything. So I decided I wanted to try a little...

Hand-sewing.

Shocking, I know. ;) I've never thought of myself as someone who would do this. Just seems so maternal & adult somehow...something my grandma does that is just beyond my womanly capabilities. Much like her cooking...I can try, but its never as good as hers, kwim? Not to mention the whole "sitting still" factor, which many would tell you is NOT my strong suit. ;)

I'm not quite sure if what I did qualifies as embroidery or just stitching or what, but I love it! :) I decided last night was my "jump into something new with both feet" night, even though I didn't have a pattern or a clue what I was doing. Before this, I've only hand-stitched a simplistic border onto a layout! Not that this is fancy...FAR from it...but it was fun and I think its pretty cute! (I might be biased though! LOL)

What do y'all think? And can anybody point me & everyone else in the direction of other hand-stitching (embroidery?) sites/blogs/etsy shops that are "can't miss"?

...Staci :)

Well... at least one of them! 

Every year we count down to Christmas with books.  The kids unwrap one book a day every night in December up to Christmas Eve.  We started doing this about 5 years ago.  I had seen the idea in a magazine and desperately wanted to try it, so I went out to the used book store and bought enough books to fill every night (when added to some Christmas books we had already aquired).  Now we have more than enough books so we can rotate different books in each year instead of having the exact same 24.  I'm always on the lookout for new books during the after Christmas sales. 

The kids LOVE it.  We didn't do it last year since we moved over Christmas.  But the kids started asking about a month ago if we could for sure do it again this year.  We started last night with the same book we always start with... a simple big board book of the navity story with puzzle piece people.  I keep thinking that the kids are too old for it, but they know it is always the first book and look forward to seeing it again.  From there we alternate nights.... Clara started out and she picks from the books wrapped in red and Alex is the odd nights, picking a book wrapped in blue.  We had to resort to this plan after they year that Alex was not at all pleased to unwrap Barbie in the Nutcracker as his pick.  He'll gladly listen to it if Clara picks it... but it is not acceptable as one of his picks... LOL!  Then on Christmas Eve they unwrap 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.  It is so much fun to take time out of each evening to sit and read together by the tree.  Who knows how much longer they'll enjoy this tradition... I hope we still have at least a couple more years left. 

Have a great week!!!

Tracie

It is really exciting to have purchased our first home. We took possession of the keys a little under a week ago and are now in the throws of trying to move our stuff into the new place. A terrible time of year to be trying to do this sort of thing, I know, but we didn't really have a choice...

Anyway, when it comes to my scrapbooking gear, I have no idea how to get it into the new place in an orderly fashion. How do you get it from looking like this - (my exact current mess)

into something that looks like this -

This amazing space belongs to Robyn Werlichs (MM) and I don't know if any of you have seen it before, but I am in LURVE!!

Funnily enough we have a wall almost this exact same colour in the new place - but I think setting up a scraproom in the guest bathroom might be a bit odd!!

Anyway..alll advice welcome..

Amelia