Christmas gift tags

It's official - my Christmas shopping is DONE! Now I just have to wrap everything and then I can get back to crafting (and I still have a lot of that I want to finish before Christmas). Tonight, I was exhausted after two full days of shopping, first with my sis-in-law and then today with my mom, sister, aunt and cousin. But tonight I wanted to work on my gift tags so tomorrow could a wrap-o-rama kind of day. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. Something different for sure. I thought about some kind of cat snowman, but then I saw the gold flourish wrapping paper that I had picked up for only $0.99 a roll at Jo-Ann's (love that sale) and knew it had to be some type of a gold flourish to coordinate but I wanted a little more color. I pulled out this gold shimmery paper left over from making my Christmas cards this year and red shimmery paper left over from some other projects (I think maybe some wedding invitations?). I found a flourish with just a hint of holly to coordinate with the paper and voila:
The picture doesn't do justice to this beautiful paper. But I love the clean and simple look of these tags and they were so easy to do. Now to just find a way to attach them to the gifts without becoming too attractive to kitties who are up to no good. I know better than to use ribbons, but I need to attach them somehow...

Must...sleep...now

Well, not really. I'm pretty wired even though I've been awake since Thursday morning except for about an hour last night at 10:30 P.M. Walmart was the WORST! People were rude. They ripped apart displays (I do mean ripped - many of the cardboard displays I saw were demolished). The lines were awful with no rhyme or reason. I thought I might have to call my sis-in-law to tell her she might have to start without me. If it weren't for the kindness of two lovely women who directed me out of the line that was going nowhere anytime soon to a short, fast moving line in electronics, I might still be there. But the rest of the shopping day was wonderful. There was always a good parking spot. All the specific items we were looking for were there. The only thing I really didn't find was a good buy on any Wii games. The selection was limited to non-existent by the time we got to each display. But that didn't stop us. It's amazing the litany of stores we made it to beginning at 3 a.m.: Kohl's, J.C. Penney, Target, Sears, Gamestop, Kmart, Craft Warehouse, Lowe's, Staples, Avenue, Michael's, Borders and Fred Meyer. Then it was a nice breakfast (about 10 a.m.) and off to Jo-Ann's, then back to J.C. Penney, Bath and Body Works, Kohl's (again), and second Jo-Ann's. Then drop off a load and off to Walmart and back home by the 4 p.m. hour. Now I have everything sorted and ready to wrap, my rebates completed and ready to drop in the mail, so I guess I had better start making some name tags. In the meantime, I'm trying to get the furballs in the Christmas spirit, but they seem a little Scrooge-y to me:

Maybe DMM will be more in the mood, but first she has to finish celebrating her Mom's birthday.

Black Friday!

Before dinner, we perused the ads (Mom had help from Smoke):

There was lots of good food and Chewie ate her weight in turkey! After a good turkey dinner, the girls spent most of Thanksgiving shopping. Fred Meyer and Kmart then back home for dessert and round of golf (the card game). The back out for Big Lots and, of course, the evening sale at Michaels! The boys napped while football played in the background. After all her turkey, Chewie opted for a nap with Dad:
So now I'm off for one last bite of turkey and a couple of hours sleep before I have to run out for a midnight sale and then get home to meet my sis-in-law at 2:30 for the real shopping! Happy Thanksgiving and Black Friday everyone!

Thanksgiving fun

The turkey is (already) done (way too early). The banana bread is half-eaten already and Dad isn't even here yet for his share. Matt made a fabulous egg and potato frittata to tide us over until dinner. I got tons of sleep last night to make up for needing to get up to go shopping at 2 a.m. (store opens at 3 a.m.). It's going to be a great day! So happy Thanksgiving to all. In the meantime, I'm going to play with paper and watch the kitties enjoy what little is left of the snow.

Fun with word books

So much of what I've been playing with I can't share either because it's a gift for someone who reads my blog or because it's a project someone else requested I do and I don't have their permission to share it yet. But here's one that I think I'm safe posting. I've been playing with word books like the Marine one I made for a friend. So one of the ones I started with was the book "Asa" using my nephew's name. It's short and easy to work with. So I have the base of the book done, but haven't really played with finishing it. But I have to say that I love, love, love this My Mind's Eye paper from the Twinkle, Twinkle Little Boy pack. I picked it up at Craft Warehouse a few weeks ago with one of their exceedingly rare 40% off coupons. It was also on sale during their open house and I was going to pick up a second pack, but, of course, they were sold out. No surprise since it really is an adorable pack.

So one of these days I'm going to add the pictures and the bling and send it off to my sister-in-law so she can have a handy book of pictures of the cute little guy!

Then and Now

It's already the crazy holiday season here. My craft room looks like a hurricane hit it but I can't share any of my projects until after the holidays. The rest of the house is in pre-holiday cleaning mode in case we end up having to host Thanksgiving after all. So when I put the cat hammock back together after a run through the wash, I gave it quick spritz of catnip hydrosol and the kitties came running. Watching Smoke and Chewie take turns rolling around on the catnip scented hammock reminded me of when they all fit on it. So here is little then flashback (Chewie, Gandalf and Smoke (L-R)) and now when just Chewie or Smoke fits:
My how they've grown.

Birthday blog candy

Hmm, maybe I should be doing this, but while I decide on that, go check out IBeCircled who's giving away birthday blog candy and has some great cards and layouts.

I won an award

I have to thank Yolie for awarding me the "Attitude Award." I'm not sure I really have attitude (although my family would probably disagree). Mostly, I just like sharing what I'm doing so that my friends and family can keep up with us and, hopefully, I can inspire some creativity in others.

But this award comes with instructions:

First, share three things that make you different from everyone else.

Then give the award to five blogs.

Third, display the award in the sidebar.

Lastly, link back to the Digi's with Attitude Challenge.

So for my three things:

1. We have five cats (yes five!): A 17-year-old tuxie who's been with me all her life, two 3 year-old long-haired greys that were from a litter of kittens we fostered, a three-year old Siamese who hates people and is the only one we bought, and a one-year-old tiger stripe that we rescued off the freeway.

2. I'm a paper hoarder. I have enough paper to craft for a decade, maybe two, without buying a single sheet. Okay, now that I think about that, it really doesn't make me much different then most of the other paper crafters I know. So, how about I have tons (and tons) of embellishments, but I never really use them much because I tend toward clean and simple layouts that focus on the pictures and the story.

3. I got married on the ice at a hockey game in between the first and second periods and it wasn't my husband's idea since it was his first game (of course he's hooked now).

So for my five blogs: Hmm this is really hard because I tend to start reading new blogs as a result of following a link from a blog I already read. When I find one I like, I add it to my blogroll and well, there you go. Thus my favorite bloggers tend to already know one another. So I'll have to give some thought to that and update this when I've figured it out.

In the meantime, hop on over to the Digi's With Attitude Challenge and try your hand at the current one (which sounds awfully interesting).

Thank You

I'm too tired tonight to do anything creative. After nearly 12 hours at work with no break, I just don't have even a spark of energy tonight, but I did take the time to change our header to celebrate the wonderful veterans in our life and thank them for their service. There are far more pictures that I could have included (if I had simply known where they were). So that was about the sum total of my creation tonight.

So I'm off to bed to get some sleep before tomorrow's girls day out craft shopping. Yes, the craft stores had better brace themselves! Actually, the truth is I don't really need anything but we have a friend in town and it's always fun to see our stores through and out-of-towner's eyes.

So you all have a great Veteran's Day tomorrow. And if you are a Veteran yourself, thank you!

Inspired by Sketchy Thursday

I was really tired tonight after a second very long day at work this week. In fact, I didn't even think I would spend much time in my craft room tonight. But then I saw the 11.4 sketch on Sketchy Thursdays and realized it was the perfect inspiration to use a drawing I've been saving. You see, this spring we cleaned out an old storage unit that my in-laws had. You know the kind; it holds of little bit of everybody's stuff. Well in that process, she unearthed this clear plastic frame with a drawing of her that had been done at the state fair in 1956! It was is in near perfect condition. It was just begging to be put on a page. So off into my pile it went and tonight it finally found a home thanks to the inspirational sketch.
Well that's all. I'm tired and the furballs are demanding to be fed so I had better go before blood is shed.

Pamela's World of Scrap Sketch 227

I loved this layout design when I saw it and I've been meaning to do a page about our home. Now that I think about it, lately it seems like I'm finally doing a lot of pages that I've been meaning to do for a long time. I guess it's just all that great inspiration I've found on various blogs lately. Well this one is from sketch 227 on Pamela's World of Scrap. I decided to use hidden journaling, mostly because I had a lot to say and didn't want to clutter up the design with so many thoughts. Now that I think back though, I wish I would have done the journaling as the background paper. I think it might have been interesting looking. Anyhow, here's what I settled on:

Oh, and Chewie and Tigger have abandoned the craft room in favor of Daddy's chair. Smoke and Cha-Ching have claimed the living room and Zoey, of course, is happily sleeping on the bed upstairs. So I had absolutely no creative help here tonight. Maybe that's why I still feel like this page is missing something. But I'm tired now so that's all for tonight.

Sketchy Thursdays - December Guest Design Team Challenge

Oh my gosh. When I saw this sketch this morning I immediately knew what I was going to do. My family is just filled with happy couples, whether they've been married 6 years like Matt and I or 55 years like my aunt and uncle. I've always wanted to do a page to memorialize that and when I saw that page I knew it was the perfect one. I just wish the picture was better because you can't see the glitter in the brown paper or all the glittery stickles touches I used.
Okay, that's it for the day. Matt made popcorn and the smell is calling my name.

I'm SEW excited!

I have to say a huge "Thank you" to Custom Crops for their free Cricut Expression cover sewing pattern and videos. I'm not a seamstress by any stretch of the imagination. I even have a hard time sewing a straight line, but their pattern and video made it "sew" easy to make my own custom cover for my Expression. You can find the video and pattern here. I also need to say "Thank You" to Yolie over at Just Yolie. She posted pictures of the one she made with the links to Custom Crops and it inspired me. So yesterday I picked up some fabric and made this one this morning.

Oh, and I must be sure to give credit to my helper, Chewie. I'm sure I never would have been able to finish it without her holding down the fabric for me. Or, was she simply snoopervising?

Inspired by Sketch Inspiration #148

Update - It did need something - blue stickles on the blue flowers. Now it looks about right. Unfortunately it just doesn't photograph well. Also, I updated the blog design. It was long overdue.

I'm pretty happy with this layout based upon this week's sketch at Sketch Inspiration and I love that I got to use hidden journaling so I can display this at work without everyone coming and reading about my love of my scraproom and the kitties who help me out there. :) They really don't need to know these things.

Inspired by Crafts by Rowena

In the last few weeks, I've found several wonderful websites with ideas for cards and scrapbooking layouts. It's so inspiring. So tonight I was surfing for an idea for a new page when I stumbled upon a website called "Crafts by Rowena." The sketch reminded me of a couple of pictures I had taken the last time we went camping. In a very funny turn of events, an RV that looks similar to ours was parked in the next campsite over and, in the pouring rain, we pulled into the wrong campsite after a quick trip to town for some groceries. It was so funny at the time that I just had to go take pictures of the RVs the next day to remember the look-a-like.

Sketchy Thursdays

So when I looked at this week's sketch on Sketchy Thursdays, I immediately knew what I would be doing with it, but didn't have any pictures. Well, I didn't let that stop me and just told the story I've been thinking about for a while. They say that telling the story is the real point of scrapbooking, well then this one gets to the point.