This year has just blown by! It is hard to believe that Thursday will begin a new year.
2009.
This year we will be celebrating quietly at home. Dad is working the next day, so the typical karaoke party is out. Eric is off, and we have decided to spend the evening at home with the girls.
Whatever your plans are, stay safe and have a Happy New Year!
We had a pretty good Christmas this year. We were in charge of the food for Christmas eve, so we decided to host it at our house. Dwayne, Sarah, Monty, Alana and Marin all came over for dinner and to exchange gifts.
After Sarah's family left, the girls got to open their Christmas PJs and Grandpa read them a story (Twas the Night Before Christmas.. of course!) before bed. Amazingly enough they went right to bed.
On Christmas morning we woke up and opened gifts at home before heading over to my parent's house.
Where we opened MORE gifts. We had maybe 3 or 4 gifts to open at each "celebration". Not to much.. more than enough for the kids.
(The kids passed out the presents)
My favorite gift this year was my watch from Eric, but a VERY close second is the stories and pictures from my Grandmother. I asked my grandparents this past summer for some stories about their childhood, my mother's childhood etc. I told them that for Birthdays and Christmas from now on, that is all that I wanted from them. I received 2 stories for my birthday, and another set for Christmas. This time it included pictures of my grandmother as a little girl!
Priceless.
I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas! Now I get to take all of the holiday decor down. I am always sad taking down the decor. The house just looks sad without it...
I worked on a couple more gifts last night.
This set is for my friend April. It is homemade lotion (SCS) and a nugget tin with a gift card holder.
Stamps: Snowfall, Snowfall Additions, Holiday Treats
Paper/Ink/Ribbon: PTI Spring Rain, Vintage Cream
Pearls: Paper Studio, Tin: PTI, Lotion Container: Specialty Bottle
I also made another nugget tin that will be part of my FILs git.
Stamps: PTI Holiday Treats
Paper/Ink/ Ribbon: PTI Ripe Avocado, Vintage Cream, Pure PoppyTin/ Labels: PTI
This past week was a busy one for us! The girls had their Holiday Program on Thursday night. Megan did great! Lauren... not so much. She would not sing, she would not sit still while the other kids were singing, she would not listen to Mommy and Daddy. We ended up leaving after Megan's class got done because Lauren was just being a pill. This made Megan upset because she didn't get to talk to Santa (who showed up as we were leaving).
Friday afternoon we took the girls down to Crowne Center. We saw the Gingerbread village:
and watched the trains
Visited Crayola Christmas
Visited with Santa (BTW.. the BEST Santa and setup I have seen in a while! They even encouraged us to take our own pictures.. though we bought one of theirs as well)
Went to Fritz's for dinner, where the trains deliver your food...
Played by the fountains
And went ice-skating!
There are LOTS more pictures in the December 2008 album!
Here are some pictures of the girls playing Monday night.
They are so sweet! They have been playing together really well lately. I hope that they always stay this close!
I love the holiday season. Our Christmas shopping is just about done (I need to pick up a few gift cards and stocking stuffers, and that is it!) The house is decorated... inside. Maybe next year we will do the outside. The girls have their holiday program Thursday night. The babysitter and hotel is reserved for my company holiday party Sat night. Next week is Eric's birthday, yummy Butterball Soup!
Friday night Dwayne took Alana and Megan to see the Nutcracker. Lauren went to Kindercare's parents night out while Eric and I went out for a grown up dinner. We had a nice night, and picked up Lauren just after 9. She did not want to go to bed until Megan got home (around 10). This is what she looked like at 10.
I know it is hard to tell, but her head is actually OFF of the couch!
She was so tired but wanted to wait for Megan!
Ok, I delivered the teacher gifts to daycare this morning. I decorated clear glass ornaments with shredded paper, glitter, fake snow and rub ons.
The ones with the snow and/or iridescent fill are hard to see, they have light blue/ purple wintry rub-ons on them.
I had a hard time with the packaging. First I made this with the acetate top:
But they were a pain. I went down to the craft room (I was working on these in front of the TV in the evenings since my craft room is not set up yet) to get some patterned paper for the tops when I found the gift packaging set that I bought from Wal-mart last year. It has pillow boxes, takeout boxes and gift bags, with lots of die cuts to decorate. It is all packaged flat. I do not remember who makes them (Since I am posting from work) but I only used 2 last year. They were too small for most of the gifts that I gave! The takeout boxes worked perfectly, and the colors matched the ornaments that I made! It was meant to be.
My next project is decorating the cocoa jars and nugget tin for my FILs gift basket. Nugget tins for co-workers (April, act surprised) and lotion jars need decorated. Oh, and I still have not sent out cards or started wrapping any gifts yet! Plus there is the cookie exchange (just family and a few friends), my Relay for Life meeting tonight, the girl's program Thursday, my company holiday party on Sat, Eric's birthday next Friday... I had better get started!
Ok, I took pictures of the gift tags last night, but they were in crappy light.
Most of the tags have a coordinating "To: From:" circle on the back (like the one top-right). The Spring Rain ones were hard to photograph!
Saturday it started to snow. Just flurries and nothing sticking to the ground. When we woke up on Sunday the ground was covered in white and it was still snowing! The girls were so excited to get in their snowsuits and go outside to play. They played out back for a good 30 minutes before deciding that they needed hot cocoa to warm up.
I decided NOT to go shopping on Black Friday (Sorry Mom and Amanda!) instead stayed home and put up the tree. I fought with our "pre-lit" tree for hours before going to the store to buy some strings of lights. Unless you are really close to the tree you can not even tell that it is half pre-lit and half traditional lights!
The girls had a good time putting up the ornaments, now if only they would leave them alone! They have already had 2 time-outs from playing with the ornaments, and the tree has only been up for 3 days!
I love sitting in my chair at night looking at the tree all lit up. I have a few other Christmas vignettes that I put up this weekend as well. Most of the items were from Judy (either given to me as gifts or acquired after she passed) so they are special to us.
Our Nativity was a Birthday gift from Judy a few years ago:
And my snowmen (on the bakers rack in the dining room) were all from Judy as well:
I have a few other Christmas vignettes around the house as well, I just have not taken pictures of them yet! I put the snow-globes and musical figurines in the girl's room, and the bells (most of which were from my Grandmother) are in my bedroom.
I just love decorating for the Holidays!
Check out this cool site for some awesome giveaways!
http://thesecretisinthesauce.blogspot.com/
Merry SITSmas!
I actually got to play last night, but have not taken a picture yet (It was late by the time I finished). I made gift tags! I used the PTI 2008 Holiday Tags Collection:
I stamped the images all on Vintage Cream in Pure Poppy, Ripe Avocado, Ocean Tides, Spring Rain and Kraft and matted them on scalloped circles of the same color. I used the gold and silver ribbons from PTI as hang tags. I will try and get a picture tonight. They turned out great!
I have joined a Blogger group (#5) on SplitCoastStampers! Check out the Blog Hopping list to the right and help me support my group!
I hope that everyone had a good Thanksgiving! We had a decent week and have a lot to be thankful for.
Last Sunday was Judy's "Angel Birthday". It was a tough day and Megan still seems to be missing her "Grandma that is in heaven" a lot. She talks about her almost every day, and asks to go see "Grandma's stone" frequently.
On Monday my Great-Grandma Bice passed away. She was 99 years old. She was my Dad's favorite person and I know that she will be missed. I wish that I had known her. I did see her a few times in my life, the last time being in 2004 when I was pregnant with Megan. I remember it being a very nice visit and my Dad was so happy to see her.
We had a nice day on Thanksgiving. We had dinner at Dwayne's house. Carla, Sarah, Monty, Alana and Marin were there as well. I brought the camera but did not take any pictures. We had a nice time and everything was delicious! We ate dinner early enough that we had time to play a game (Sequence, girls against guys, Carla and I won 4 times out of 5!) before heading over to Amanda's for dessert. Lots of good food and family. Just what Thanksgiving is all about.
Ok, this is what it looks like right now!
The baseboards should be going in today which means I can start moving stuff back into the room this week! My island and shelves will not be done for a while, but I will atleast be able to work on my folding table until I get them!
I just registered for my last 2 MBA courses! Project Management and my Directed Research Project (Thesis). I will be done with school March 30! April 25th will be the official commencement date! I can not wait until I am done!
We have been busy the last week renovating the basement. We took down the panelling, put up sheetrock, replaced the carpet with laminate wood flooring and painted. I am just waiting on Eric to put up the baseboards (today hopefully) so that I can move everything out of the playroom and into my craft room. We will also be painting the playroom and replacing the carpet, but I am thinking that the playroom may have to wait until after the holidays since we still need to finish the downstairs bathroom (which we gutted at the same time as we gutted the craft room, but have not finished)
I have before and after pictures on my craft blog:
http://kellyspages.typepad.com/papercrafting/
I made a Thank You card for my Dad last night using the new PTI Men of Life and Heartfelt Basics sets.
The base of the boat was stamped onto Ripe Avocado and cut out. The green mat is up on pop-dots as well as the sails. I used Heartfelt Basics for the inside sentiment.
CS: PTI Kraft, Vintage Cream, Ripe Avocado
Stamps: PTI Men of Life, Heartfelt Basics
Ink: PTI Vintage Cream, Ripe Avocado
We are making progress on the craft room.
This is what it looked like before:
After it was gutted
And now with sheetrock and the first coat of spackle
Last week Mom, Amanda, Amanda's friend Jess and I all got together at Mom and Dad's to work on Christmas cards. When I got there I still was not sure what I wanted to do. I knew that I wanted to use a SU stamp set (Snow Swirled) that Amanda had. And I knew that I wanted to use the PTI colors Pure Poppy and Ripe Avocado. But beyond that I had no clue. I played around and ended up with this. I love it!
This is really on white (also PTI) though it looks like a light blue in this picture. I also used the cuttlebug swirled embossing folder, PTI Pure Poppy Saddle stitched ribbon and stickles!
