December Club Projects

I love the Aspen My Reflections Level 2 paper packet! Since I live where we get plenty of snow, I created one of the Cherish Club layouts using the wintery My Stickease. The second set of layouts I left out the My Stickease so that those who live in warmer climes can use the buttons or their own embellishments and those who live where it's truly winter can use the rest of the My Stickease.





For our Stamp a Stack club, we used the stamp set B1316 Coffee Stain. I had a lot of fun creating these cards.

Did Santa bring all that you wanted?

He sure did here!! I received the LL Bean Barn jacket in red that I wanted. Plus, I received the matching Brighton Enchanted Hearts necklace that goes with the bracelet that my "grandma upline" gave me when I attained the Mediterranean Cruise. I loved the bracelet so I had to get the necklace to match! I also received a digitial photo frame so that I can watch many of our trip pictures all the time. You know how usually we scrap them or put them in photo albums, but they rately get seen again. This way they'll be out so that I can relive my trip every day!

I can't believe how quickly Christmas came and went! Hope you had a fantastic one!

Christmas Eve Day

Can you believe it's here already? Are you ready? I'm almost there. LOL! We're doing the majority of our celebrating this evening so I was up late last night making pies, rolls, etc. There's still a little wrapping to be done :)

It's snowing again right now, so it's definitely a White Christmas! Wonder what Santa's going to bring? I know that I've been a good little girl :)

Hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas!

It's starting to let up!

Finally! Shoveled out the walks and got the worst of it before dark. So, while I had my snow sneakers on, I thought it was a good time to take a nighttime shot of our Christmas lights. I used to decorate the trees on each end of the house, but they've just gotten too large for me. It takes getting in the bucket of the tractor to reach the top, and I DON'T DO THAT!! LOL!!

It just keeps coming!

So, we had about 10 inches of snow on Friday. They said we'd only get a few flurries yesterday....yea...right! They really knew what they were talking about. We got another 3-4 yesterday and braced for the 6-10 we're supposed to get today. The weather forecasters are getting that part right! I didn't want to venture out so I took a few photos from the different doors around the house :)
This one is from the front porch.




This is out the side door. I had to get some of the tree in the photo as it's snowing so hard all the camera could see was white and it wouldn't let me shoot the picture. Normally you can see power poles and a transformer about 1/4 of a mile up the road across the field.


Out the other side door....


It's been a good day to stay in and watch Patriot's football and make Christmas cookies :)

I just realized...

that I hadn't posted a picture of the lovely gifts that I received from my dear friend Helen! When I came home Monday from searching for CC...yes, she's missing again and hasn't been found this time :(.....there was this big box waiting for me on the back steps. What a lovely pick me up it was! I brought it in and opened it immediately :) Inside was this beautiful curio cabinet and another Dreamsicle for the collection that Helen started for me. Thank you, Helen! You are such a special person!

Surprise gift!

Don't you just love this time of year? You never know where your next surprise will come from. I came home yesterday from finishing the last of the Christmas shopping, and there was a package between my doors. Hhhmmm....who could this be from? It was from Tina, my CTMH "grandma" upline! Check out the gorgeous bag she sent me! THANK YOU so much, Tina!

How cool is this?

The sun's shining here and making all of the ice sparkle. Check out these photos! The ice is on each blade of hay in the hayfield.

I spoke too soon! LOL!

No sooner had I finish posting about how lucky we were to have power,and it went out. LOL!! It's back on this am tho. Yea!! There are still about 100,000 or more in the area that do not have power and it's only about 10 degrees. I hope they're able to get the power on to the rest today. It stayed cold here all day yesterday, so it's still looking like a winter wonderland.

I spent the other evening putting up our tree. Normally I'm a bit obsessive about the tree and it takes me two days to do it. We have an artificial due to allergies, so it usually takes me a day to just shape the branches and get it up, then another day to decorate. But, I don't have time this year! So, this is the scaled back version less all the ribbons and fluff...it's going to have to do.

Ice Storm

We woke up this morning to a pretty coating of ice. Thankfully, we've had power all day, but the cable, phone & internet have been out until just recently. We're one of the few lucky ones. There's over 200,000 people in the local area without power and the power company has pulled in crews from as far away as Michigan to get the lines repaired. No school today as there was no power at the school. Here's a few photos after the snow started falling on top of the ice.





My poor lilac tree...

We'll have lots of firewood to cut as many of the trees in the back are down. There's still lots of crackling as more limbs break off. Our neighbor has a huge limb down leaning on his porch and the rest of the tree is leaning towards his house.

Toasted (and roasted) Coconuts!

Remember the photos I posted earlier of all the firewood I had stacked? Well, the time has come to start burning some. A little background here...we haven't used the wood furnace in about 25 years, and we've installed a new oil furnace in the meantime. Anyway...so, we head to the basement to start a fire. We notice that some wires had been cut so, hubby decides he "thinks" he knows where they need to be connected. I head back up the stairs to shut the breaker down so he doesn't end up on his keester. He gets them hooked up and I turn the breaker back on. Great! They're attached and the fire is burning nicely. While we stand there chatting and trying to decide if they really go there or not...LOL....all of a sudden....whoosh!! Here comes water and steam out the pressure value all over the place. Yikes! What caused that? He hit the value to shut it down and decided maybe something's not hooked up right. You think? LOL!!

He tries connecting the wires to a few more places *grin*. Each time the pressure valve blows and after about 4 hrs of playing with this thing he decides there's something wrong. No kidding! LOL! He decides to let the fire die out and says the pressure value should be fine now. Yea...right! LOL! Every 20 minutes for the next 3 hrs it blows. He finishes barn chores and comes back in. After telling him my escapades of the last 3 hrs he decides he needs to look into it further. Oh...great...it's now about 8pm. :) He proceeds to play with it a little more and says it won't blow anymore. Off to bed we head about 10:45. I no sooner got one eye closed when....WHHOOOSHHHHHHHHHH! Here it goes again. Well, since I tend to move a little faster than he, I grope for some shoes and head to the basement to hit it for, hopefully, one last time. LOL!

So, by now I'm sure you're wondering where "toasted and roasted coconuts" comes into play. I'm getting to that. LOL! We finally figured out that two screws that were supposed to be opened weren't and thus, the hot water was not circulating through the pipes and that's why the pressure value was blowing. Houston...we now have heat going through the pipes and upstairs. YEA!! Well, hold the applause.... We have way too much heat! I'm used to it being 64 in the house and every time I turn around the thermostat has now risen another 2 degrees and I'm peeling off clothes (while he continues to add more wood to the fire). It's about time to break out the bikini....NOT! LOL! As of yesterday when I came back from doing errands, it was 76 in this house. YIKES!! Thus, I told him he was roasting and toasting my coconuts! LOL!

We've now shut the fire down for a day or so until the temperature drops in the house, which it will as the outside temps are in the low 20's. We're down to 70 as of this am. So, probably by tonight or tomorrow am, we'll be able to stoke it up and start again. Evidently when they installed this new furnace, they've changed some wiring around so that the wood stove no longer reads the thermostat that's upstairs. Now, will he decide that we need someone to come in and check it out or won't he? That is the question. My opinion...probably not as he likes it a lot hotter in the house than I do, so I have a feeling I'll be living in shorts and a tank top this winter. LOL!! Beats using heating oil tho!

A Day of Gifts!

Check out this gorgeous ornament that my traveling buddy, Kim, sent me to remember our trip! How cute is this!! Thank you so much, Kim!

And, I've been waiting not so patiently for my gift to arrive from Close To My Heart. As a director each year we receive a gorgeous gift and a handmade card. A fellow director had posted a spoiler but I resisted looking. Then, upon visiting my upline's blog...there it was. UGH! I closed out her blog without really checking it out but I did know we were receiving bracelets. Here's the cute wrapping.



Look what was inside! How pretty!



And...my handmade card!

CTMH Sneak Peek!

The Spring Idea Book has arrived! With all the craziness here I haven't had a chance to wear the ink off the pages yet, but it looks fantastic! What do you think? I'll be putting them in the mail soon.

Lookie, lookie! Here's a sneak peek of the new National Papercrafting Month special! It begins December 16th, and you have the opportunity to get it for FREE!! Be sure to email me to find out how!

Cute Holiday gifts

Check these out! I had so much fun making these and you can also! I'll be giving this My Acrylix Album to my niece for Christmas, as it will be the 1st Christmas for my grand-niece. I think my niece will have fun filling it with Christmas photos of her children, Brooke and Hunter.




















My Sister-in-Law will be getting this cute family recipe album. I'll fill it half full with old family photos and favorite recipes from each member of the family. The other pages I'll leave empty so that Nan can fill it with family favorites from her side of the family.

Both projects are made with all Close To My Heart products. If you'd like to create these cute gifts and see all of the pages, check out my From My Heart Kit.

Craft Fair

Last Saturday I was a vendor at a huge craft fair. It's a local fair that benefits a local children's charity. This was my 5th year as a vendor. With the economy as it is, myself and other vendors did not know what to expect. It turns out that we worried for nothing! Over 2400 people came through the doors to shop! It appears that people in this area have chosen to spend their hard earned money at local shops and through local crafters this year (something that I plan on doing also). It turned out to be a very successful show! Now I need to get busy and paint the special orders that I came home with. It really was a lot of fun as I see many of the same vendors and shoppers from year to year. This year the organizer told me that one woman almost knocked him down after asking where my booth was :) She came flying over and picked out a mailbox and was back out the door in record time. LOL! I also made another lady's day as she'd been looking for a horse mailbox for over a year (evidently she hasn't stopped by Crafter's Gallery *smile*). She kept coming back after placing her order to tell me how excited she was. Sure feels good to make somebody's day!*wink*

Well, I better go get busy...so much to do...so little time!