I’m so excited. We are heading up this very moment to the resorts. There’s a bright blue ski and newly fallen snow. A perfect day ahead.

I even found my camera. Expect some awesome photos of me and Jer tearing it up on the slopes.

So Christmas 2009…

My camera has grown legs and walked off somewhere so I don’t have any pictures of our Christmas celebrations. So sad. Please use you imagination with me if, for some reason, you are interested in how my Christmas went.

The celebrations start at my maternal grandparents house. On Christmas Eve we get together for a comfortable, cozy night. We have been having soup dinner on Christmas Eve at their house since I can remember and even before that.

{Insert cute picture of old fashioned soup bowl steaming with chicken noodle soup or creamy clam chowder}

After we eat, we always have a little Christmas program where the kids act out the Christmas story. Emma was Mary this year. She brought a little chuckle to the program when she gave birth to the baby doll.  Isaac was supposed to be Joesph but was too busy rolling around on the floor and my 3 little cousins were angles with their lines memorized and everything.

Leah didn’t want to be left out of the program so she decided that attacking the baby doll Jesus would be perfect for her. The doll was lying in the middle of the floor in a small wooden manger with gold and silver tinsel and wouldn’t that be fun to stick in your mouth. So off she crawled and my littlest cousin, age 4, would not put up with such an attack on baby Jesus and was brought to tears by it. Her idea was that the angels should do a little dance around baby Jesus for the final number.

{Insert picture of 3 dancing angels plus Emma as Mary. I’m in the background holding a struggling Leah.}

Back home after the kiddos were all snugly tucked into bed and we were setting up Christmas, Santa’s glass of milk was dropped on the tile and it shattered all over the floor. We rushed to help clean up the mess and were so nervous that some curious little body would be awaken and see us in a great big mess plus Christmas half set up.

{Insert picture of Jer and I scurrying around glass shards in a great big panic.}

Luckily there was no pitter pattering of little feet.

On Christmas morning Emma awoke bright and early but we had to shake a very sleep Isaac awake. We left Leah sleeping. Opening presents went off with out a hitch and everyone seemed genuinely pleased with their loot.

{Here would be a traditional looking picture of Emma and Isaac holding up their favorite toy with wrapping paper strewn all about.}

Our Christmas day was full of running to and fro from party to party. I felt like a crazy chicken with no head and Jer couldn’t wait until he could stay home and play with Isaac’s transformers. I made 2 jello salads and homemade rolls to take. Both of which need a bit more practice to perfect. Jello is obviously an easy thing to do but I always forget about it setting up in the fridge before I can get the fruit in it at the right time.

{Insert picture of Jello salad with fruit floating on top.}

Overall it was a pleasant Christmas. This next week remains to be a bit busy with family in town. Hopefully I can find some time to work on my 2010 calendar. We are looking forward to hitting the slopes a bit and also have a hopp’n New Years party at my house. Yipee.

{Hopefully I will find my camera soon so I can stop it with these silly imaginary photos. :-}

I’ve been trying to sit down for days to get a post out to you all to wish a Merry Christmas.

So this is it.

Merry Christmas!

Ha.

Hello everyone. I have finally gotten around to working on my calendar templates for 2010. Instead of starting from scratch and spending way too much time on these, I just fixed up last years calendar. The dates have been updated and I perfected a few things about the design and updated the colors so they look all new and shiny.

If you have procrastinated, like me, and need a new calendar for next year… download here.

My templates are 8x10s so they are easy to print anywhere.

When I get mine printed, I cut them in half and paste them on a 8.5×11 card stock that has been cut in half also. The photos fit perfectly that way with a nice little border so I don’t have to trim the card stock at all. Less work the better, right.

The pages go together kind of like a book. The title page ends up being the cover or front and back of the “book.” I then get it wire bound and a hole punched so that it will flip and hang nicely on a nail.

If you don’t want to be bothered with cutting and pasting then you should try Scrapping Simply. Chari is wonderful and she is offering free Wiro binding on calendars. Just number your pages and tell her to add the binding in the special instructions when you are checking out. I love her prices and her photo quality is beautiful too.

Here’s some pics of last years calendar just so you can get an idea how I put it together.

Another helpful hint is that the numbers and calendar grids are black. When you are designing your layout don’t forget that you can paint those things to match your calendar. It really helps to pull the design together. It’s also fun to add elements to the bottom part of the calendar too.

I’m pretty excited to start working on my own. I absolutely LOVED the way last years calendar turned out.

Time to get to work, Ladies.

Wow, thanks everyone for voting and putting up with my silliness. I was actually a bit surprised by the results. As of right now, #1 and #3 are exactly tied. I had no idea that #1 would be a favorite. I personally had been leaning towards #6. I guess it’s a good lesson to just stick to my original plan and not over think everything.

With the votes tied, it left me to make the final decision between #1 and #3. And it really came down to color schemes and what colors did I like the best? #1 had the soft blue paper that went along with all the blue in the photo but #3 had such lovely traditional colors and well… I’m a bit traditional. So with a little bit more fussing, I ended up with this…

I used the suggestion to add the tag onto the present and I used my burn tool to add a bit more definition to some of the paper edges. I added stitches to the tree as well as a matching stroke around the star and trunk. I think it makes the tree look a little bit better.

I’m happy with it and I’m happy that this task is done. I can move on with my life, thank goodness.

So if I know you personally, you can expect this lovely card in the mail soon and if I don’t know you… then consider this your Merry Christmas from our little family. XOXO

I have almost completely driven myself batty! I have spent the greater part of my Saturday in front of this blasted machine and I’m just about to give up and hate myself forever…

I am making a Christmas card for our family.

Initially I thought, “Gee, this will be simple. I’ll just use my Christmas Trees card template that I made and that will be that.” But no… it can never be that simple for me. I figit and fuss and nudge my layouts until my back aches, my eyes are stinging and my wrists are twitching.

So… I’m putting my card up for a vote. I know that I’m exposing myself and showing you how sycotic I can be when it comes to my layouts but I also have this strange need for approval. So go ahead and laugh your head off at my ridiculousness.

Pick your favorite, pretty please. All credits go to Dani Mogstad. I used 2 kits of  hers- Holiday Spirit and Sleigh Bells Ring.

#1  My first attempt is pretty true to my template. I think I went a bit overboard with the ribbons on the little tree.

#2 The little tree is all gone. Bye bye little tree. But then I added some strange tag under an ornament to show the date. I couldn’t seem to figure out where that little tag should go.

#3 Then I began to wonder if the color scheme was bothering me so I used a different kit with more traditional colors. Still couldn’t figure out where to put the date.

#4 At this point I was started to get irritated with myself so I thought I’d try someone else’s design. But that didn’t seem quite right either. “Love Gift Peace”  What??

#5  May be I needed to get vertical but then I wasn’t happy with the papers so I changed them out a hundred times and found nothing that I loved. I started screaming and moaning at this point. Ahhhhhh!

#6 At this point Leah woke up and I knew I had completely wasted nap time. We had a little lunch break and then I finished off with this one. Still not sure. Did I go overboard on the stars and sequins?

Okay, that’s it for now. See how silly and obsessed I am.

Cast your vote via a comment and I will now go white wash myself in the snow. Thanks.

Taking a break from blogging is dangerous. It’s always hard for me to get started back up again. Luckily, today I have something fun to share with you.

Yesterday my mom came over and we made these (paper) card together for her card club that she is in. They were, of course, inspired by my wintery pillow.

We were loving the idea to make the pillow design into a card until we had to paste all the itty bitty tree trunks on all 75 of the itty bitty trees. We made 18 cards total and by the end we were cursing the whole idea and started making only 2 tree cards. Woo. If you plan on doing these with paper… I recommend only 2 or 3 trees per card. He He.

While trying to get a decent photo of the cards before my mom whisked them away for her lucky club members, Isaac jumped in my pictures… literally. This kid has been bouncing around my house like crazy. He can’t seem to stay OFF his head. I remember my little brother going through a stage like this so I guess it will end someday. For now, I’m enrolling the little tike into a gymnastics class to see if the bouncing, spinning, flipping and headstands will turn into anything productive.

So I thought I would make all of your lives easier and provide you will a digital version of our Christmas trees card. If you like it click here to download and don’t forget to leave me a comment.

These cards are 5x7s but remember you could transform them to whatever size you may need or drag them onto another canvas.

I, personally, am a fan of the one with a photo.

Happy Christmas card making.

With the bulk of my big scrapbooking project done, I found some time in between making Christmas cards to make my next sewing project. My sis in law really was the reason for me being on the ball because she wanted to make one too. She came over and we went to my favorite quilting store for some funky fat quarters.

I present to you my Wintery Forest Pillow… Ta da…

I have to say it was so much fun to make and even more fun to sit and look at once it was done. I was very tempted to add a star and polk-a-dot ornaments to one of the trees and in fact cut them out and stared at them for half an hour but… I forced myself to restrain. Maybe I need to make a second one that looks more Christmasy. My only beef with my pillow is that I wish I had moved the trees up a bit so the trunks weren’t sitting right on the bottom.

My super-duper-internet-searching-sister found the inspiration on Etsy and of course made one of her own. Go check them out and feel inspired yourself.

I miss you.

I’ve been a wee bit busy. I don’t have any time for you right now. Don’t hate me… I’ll be back. I promise.

I’ll even make some wonderful goodies for you. You can even share them with a whole bunch of strangers. Truly.

The holidays wont last forever. Maybe I’ll even show you pictures of… my snotty nosed kids or my new Christmas pillow. Would you like that? Okay, dear bloggy. Hang in there… I’ll be back.

XOXO