Cards and Photos

Hello again, friends! Grammy went to bed and I'm not tired, so I have a few more minutes than I thought I did to update, so here's some photos!!

This is a photo of the invitations that I made and sent to our families for Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone was sooo excited to get a hand made card! I made 8 of them in total, but this is just two of them. I used a leaf die-cut and embossing folder in my Cuttlebug, inked them up, cut out a tag from Plantin Schoolbook (I think), stamped the sentiment on them, inked the edges of the tags and the card, and then tied them on with ribbon and pop-dotted everything!

This is a card that I made for no real reason other than I wanted to. LOL! Actually, I was playing with flocking on this one. I used it on Santa's hat to make if fluffy-like! It was my first time trying to use it and I like it, but I think I need different adhesive for it, so if anyone has any suggestions of good adhesive to use with flocking, I'd appreciate a comment!!!

I made this one to try the flocking again and to play with glitter and embossing powder as well! I flocked Rudolph's antlers, glittered his nose, and embossed the stamp "Oh Deer!" I love this card!!

This card was originally made for my entry for InkingItUpCrazy's call for her Winter Design Team. This is my all-time favorite card that I have made and that I am the most proud of!! The gingerbread man is from Winter Frolic. I embossed the bottom piece of paper before adhering, used buttons for embellishments, and Stickle'd him up really well! :-) Isn't he CUTE!?!?

Finally, here is a photo of some of our Thanksgiving dinner guests. :-) Obviously, I'm not in the photo, dear hubby is in front of me, so he wasn't in the photo either, and 2 of our guests hadn't arrived yet, but this is the crowd! It was certainly a day that I will not forget!!!

I suppose it's time to get off of here, but thanks for stopping by!

Thanksgiving Mini-Recap

I'm back!

Kind of.

First, let me wish everyone a Happy beginning to the Holiday season!! My holiday season started out with a bang! My first holiday dinner hosting went VERY well! We ended up with 17 guests at our house for dinner on Thursday! Nothing but rave reviews and compliments (though I'm sure family would NEVER say a negative thing to my face... we'll see what's said behind my back! LOL!). It was so nice to have my family and my husband's family all together for the first time since our wedding in 2008! Besides dinner, we have had 6 house guests staying with us since the week before last, plus hubby and I and his daughter, so my life has been quite different than my typical alone time! It was wonderful though! Went to Disney, the zoo, many great restaurants, to see the new Harry Potter movie, the beach, some craft shows... so much to do when family is around! I have so much to scrapbook now!!!

My sister, BIL, and niece left to return to PA on Saturday. My mother and her husband left today to continue their vacation/late honeymoon to TN (Dollywood and Gatlinburg). My great-grandmother, who is 92 (will be 93 at the end of December) was supposed to go back to PA with my sister on Saturday, but she decided that she wasn't ready to go home yet, so she's staying..... until DECEMBER 17th! LOL! My uncle is coming to Florida for work for a few months and is going to be taking her home with him when he flies home for Christmas. It should be interesting though because she has never flown! So I get to hang out with one of my favorite family members for the next three weeks. I think I'm going to take the time that I have with her here and work on some family genealogy and history and get some of her stories on video! She has soooo many and what better time to get them than now! Perhaps I'll have to introduce her to the Cricut while she's here too! She is staying in my "craft room"/guest room, so I know she's been looking through my scrapbooks and card projects because she keeps commenting on how talented she thinks I am. :-) That's why I love her so much!

I digress!

Hopefully, sometime in the next week I will get some projects done and posted. I also need to post the giveaway for hitting 50 before Thanksgiving! I want to do a video of all of our Thanksgiving Day & Black Friday sales, and of course, the photos from my holiday!! :-) Stay tuned! And I hope everyone is doing well!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone has a wonderful day of happiness, laughter, and giving thanks for all that is good in our lives!!

No crafting for me. :-(

Tomorrow morning, my sister, brother-in-law, and 2 year old niece will be arriving! They left PA this afternoon and are driving all through the night and we expect that they'll arrive here in northeastern Florida sometime tomorrow morning, so I have spent the past few days CLEANING CLEANING CLEANING and organizing, so I've had no time for the fun stuff!!!

I am so excited to see my family though because 1) I haven't seen them since September when we went "home" for my mom's wedding and 2) we will be celebrating the first Thanksgiving in my house! Nervous about that, but so excited about it! I even made invitations to send to everyone that we are inviting. Hubby and I counted 21 people that will be eating dinner at our house on Thanksgiving (that's if everyone that said yes to the preliminary invite come). EEK! :-p

Regardless..... with 3 house guests coming to stay for the next two weeks, and then another 3 or 4 coming next week to stay for a week... plus the local family coming and going, I fear that I won't have much time to craft. In fact, with my 2 year old niece being SUCH a busybody, we actually packed up most of my craft room (which doubles as a spare room and I think will be where she will stay!) LOL! I have had so many nightmares in the past week about her staying in there and us walking in to find her covered in Stickles, glitter, and Pop-Dots that I had to!!!!!

I will try to pop in and out to post photos of family events and whatnot, but probably no craft updates until after Thanksgiving. :-( Don't hate me!

I will be doing a giveaway the week after Thanksgiving for hitting 50 followers, so make sure to come back and check out my blog for that!!

:-) Happy Crafting, everyone!!!

Weekends and Houseguests

I'm learning that weekends are not my high-point for creative productivity. LOL! Especially the weekends that my stepdaughter is here with us. But I am OKAY with that because I love family time! That's what we've had lots of this weekend, so no scrapping got done after Friday night.

Friday, I made the CUTEST card that I am most proud of, but I used it for my entry for Kassidy's Winter Design Team (over at inkingitupcrazy)! The entry time ends today, so I have been working on some projects until I finally got one that I thought was good enough, so I sent that to her today! I don't want to share it just yet, so look for that in the future!

I have to say though... the next couple of weeks might be kind of quiet from my end. The first part of my family (my sister, brother in law, and 2 year old niece) is coming into town on Wednesday to stay for two weeks! Then next week, my mother and her husband and my 95 year old great-grandmother are coming in right before Thanksgiving! Then my uncle will be joining us right after Thanksgiving. I will have a VERY full house for a few days!!!! I'm hoping to get to sit with my sister and play in my craft room (she only has the Baby Bug and does not have the G or a Cuttlebug), but we'll see how that works out. Plans are already in the works for a visit to Disney, Universal, St. Augustine, and who knows where else! PLUS I will be cooking my first Thanksgiving dinner for (I think) 21 people! EEK! Pray for me (and my guests! LOL!)

I hope to get some things posted, but if not, I'll at least try to stop by and catch up on the blogs that I follow periodically! And I'm still looking for one more follower and then a little first giveaway!!!

Limited Edition Stickles at Michaels

First, I have to say that I don't work for Michaels. LOL! There's just one 2 minutes from my house.

Hubby and I went there today and found limited edition 1 oz size Stickles! $11.99 (minus what I got off with coupons!) for 3 bottles!

Here's how they compare to the "normal" size bottle of Stickles.

Limited = 1 oz. "Normal" = .5 oz.

Recent Projects, Great Find at Michaels, and a Mini Haul from Michaels

Hello, friends! And welcome new followers/friends!!!

I wanted to share some of the projects I have actually managed to start AND finish recently.

There are a bunch of birthdays coming up in my close circle in November, so I made a bunch of Birthday cards to be ready to send out! Here's three of them.

I posted some of these little people while I was working on them, but I actually got them all completed! These are made from clearanced coasters at Michaels (ended up being $.30 for 8 of them( and Paper Dolls made with Paper Doll Dress Up. I am going to give them as take-home gifts for our Thanksgiving dinner guests!

This is a box that I made to keep index cards of planned projects or pages that I want to make. I see so many great ideas in magazines or blogs, so I needed a place to keep track of them. I made it by covering a recipe box (that was $1.00 at Michaels) with paper and ribbon and welded and cut out the word "Projects" with my Gypsy for the front. It's not perfect, but I'm quite proud of how it turned out!!!

This is a card I made for my stepdaughter to celebrate her good report card! She just got her first HIGH SCHOOL report card and she did very well in all (but one) of her classes and managed to bring up the one low grade within a week to an A! I made it using the new Smiley downloaded cart on my Gypsy.

This is a random Christmas card that I made as a trial run to see how it would turn out. The Santa is from Winter Frolic (I think). Don't ask why it's missing two edges. LOL! I said it was a trial, right???

Here is a sort of "get well" card that I made for my brother-in-law's father. He had to have an emergency quadruple bypass the other day and is finally home and recovering. He's a really nice guy and will get a kick out of the sentiment on this card!

Here is a photo of my haul from Michaels today. Some great coupons and great sales there this week (if this is stuff that you need!) The thin ribbon is 5 for $1.00. The jingle bells were $5.99 and then 40% off. The Christmas stamps is actually a set of two sheets of stamps for $9.99 and I used a 50% off coupon. The googly eyes weren't on sale, but I needed them. The punch was 40% off! I will be going back on Thursday or Friday because I have a coupon for 20% off the whole order including sale items!! There's some really cute holiday-themed DCWV stacks that I want, but when I can save another $3.00 on them, I can wait 2 more days!!

And while browsing around Michael's, I literally ran into something new and exciting! I struggled to find the Pink ATG when I first wanted one and finally found one (purely luck). Many of my online blogging friends are still struggling to find them, BUT if all Michaels stores are doing this, look no further!

It was an entire end cap of Scotch adhesives and more ATG guns than I have ever seen in one place!!! It was along the wall, not along the main aisle, so check your local stores if you're looking for one!!!

I hope that everyone is doing well! I'm off to work on some more projects and layouts!

Michael's

I'm off to Michaels with some great coupons!!

Halloween Photos

I know I'm a week late with the photos of our Halloween, but I tend to be a few days behind all the time!

Each year, we decorate the whole outside of our house. This year, I decided we needed to dress up to hand out candy! I even downloaded some great Halloween tunes and had them playing through the dining room window for everyone to hear as they came up the street! Unfortunately, we are one of only three or so houses in our development that REALLY go all out for the holiday and decorate and dress up and everything. In fact, we were more dressed up than some of the trick-or-treaters that came to our house! Kinda disappointing!

I was the Wicked Witch... or Elphaba for those who know "Wicked". :-) I was so afraid that green paint wouldn't come off!!! LOL!

And in this story, "Toto" is actually "Princess" and I had her from the beginning! Princess was also a witch for Halloween!

Jon was a creepy pumpkin-headed guy. He even made a little girl cry!

Kelly was Lady Ga Ga, but I don't have any good photos of her costume. :-(

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I've been in a funky mood for the past few days, so very little crafting has been done, but I have some new projects that I finished last week that I will be posting probably tomorrow! For now, I am going to read some more of the blogs and try to find some inspiration and motivation to get back in there! :-)

Oh! And one more thing: I am very close to 50 followers (I know... that's measly compared to SOME bloggers, but for me, that's great!) and Jon said once I get to 50, he will support me doing a little giveaway!! So stay tuned for if/when that happens!

Great Blog Candy at DawnsCrafts

Dawn, over at her beautiful blog Dawn's Craft Place is doing a GREAT giveaway!!! Go check it out and tell her that I sent you!!! (You can click on the photo of her giveaway item to go to her post, as well!)

Lesson From the Craft Room

Don't sneeze while working with embossing powder. Especially powder with glitter in it.

Personal Note and Gypsy Update

What a long day it's been............

To keep the personal part short, but necessary: Today, DH and I went to Georgia to attend funeral services for his great-grandmother. She was 95 years old and surrounded by family to say farewell. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful ceremony. Unfortunately, her passing hit Grandma (DH's father's mom) very hard and she has been in ill- health as it is. She had been hospitalized the day she learned of her mother's passing and was released only to attend services. Needless to say, the emotion and heat of the day caught up to her again at the church and she became unresponsive. 911 was called and she was rushed to the hospital with a diastolic blood pressure around 42. They are keeping her for observation this evening, but they have ruled out any stroke or heart attack, which is good.... now we have to wait to see what else it could be.

I ask that anyone who reads this who prays to keep her in your thoughts. She is being kept at a hospital that is 4 hours away from home, so I'm sure she is scared and she doesn't like to be fussed over.

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On a more crafty note:: I had been reading various things on my phone on the 4 hour ride back this evening and saw some nightmare stories about the G update today! I was so anxious to get home to see if my update would work. I was a bit disheartened to see that Mac users were being put off for the updates a bit longer, but decided that I'd try to use DH's PC to update... and it worked the first try! Less than 30 minutes and I have all 6 of the free carts! I also linked Simply Charmed this weekend, so while I catch up on a gazillion loads of laundry tomorrow, I will be spending some much needed time in my craft room with my G!! What a beautiful love affair G and I have! LOL!

I hope that you are all well and that my fellow G users had pain-free updates as well!!! For now... good night!