Thank you for your service.
The tag says:
Thank you for the sacrifices you and your families are making.
Our Vietnam Veterans have taught us that no matter what our positions
may be on policy, as Americans and patriots, we must support all of our soldiers with our thoughts and our prayers. ~~ Zack Wamp
Today is also the 8th anniversary of my dad's death. He was a vet having served during WWII, stationed in France. Miss you dad!
Happy Valentines day to all my family, friends, and blog followers. Hope you have a lovely love filled day.
This journal page was inspired by Lisa Kaus work. I love her stuff. It was made with book pages and my own pink painted paper. The heart is scrapbook paper from a Christmas paper pack but you can’t tell it’s for Christmas.
Click here to visit Lisa’s blog.
I did create a couple of Valentine cards to give to my loved ones but I can’t show as they haven’t yet received them.
I designed and made a quick Christmas ornament with my Cricut and my Make the cut software. But I have exported the file into an SVG so that it is usable with other die-cutting programs. It’s very simple and quick to make:
You can download the file from here: FrameOrnament.svg but do it this way: Right click the link and choose “Save link as….”
This is how it looks:
The cute family is my girl, her husband and of course, the always cute Little G. Can you tell I adore them?
Merry Chrismas all.
We spent the weekend getting the house ready to set up the Christmas tree. That meant moving furniture around so I could finally have my tree in the living room window. I’ve never owned a house with a large window facing the street. Well OK, I still don’t. But the house I live in has one. So I’m a happy [Christmas] camper.
I decided not to get a real tree this year. My guy hates to clean up after them and so I decided to be nice to him this year and get an artificial tree. And he decided not to complain about putting up the outdoor Christmas lights. Yay we both win. LOL!! Ok confession time, we did it for Little G. It’s G’s first Christmas and although he won’t remember it, we will and so will My Girl [G’s momma].
In other news, I've been really enjoying the Tim Holtz 12 Tags of Christmas. However, I could never afford to create all the beautiful tags he's designed without my Cricut cutter and Make The Cut software [aka MTC]. Tim uses so many different die cuts and each set is about $20 each. So I've been using MTC to make my own versions of his designs. If you haven't heard of the 12 Tags of Christmas, here is link to the blog where the tutorials are located. Beware, tag making is addicting and the tutorials are quite long and informative.
http://timholtz.typepad.com/my_weblog/
This is what I’ve done so far:
I’ve showed you mine, now you show me yours. :)
What we feared last year came true. My Guy was laid off from work just before we were going to leave for Christmas vacation. As a friend said ‘How heartless are people who can lay off workers just before Christmas and then go home to their family and enjoy their holiday?’ I could never understand that either.
Luckily, we had already paid for the airline tickets and all of the Christmas presents we wanted to buy for the family we were going to visit. My Guy and I decided before we left that we were going to forget what happened and enjoy ourselves as we’d planned. So off we went and we had a wonderful time.
However, since coming home, it’s been a little tougher to get back to living with some energy. I’ve been uninspired and a little depressed. However, as I say in my journal page, I don’t want to live like that any more. I need to stay hopeful and positive for the both of us.
So the word of this year is Optimism.
I joined an ATC swap at ATCsforAll.com and the theme was Christmas trees. Here is what I made for the swap. I hope they like them because I had fun with them.
Have you swapped any ATCs recently? I hate that I don’t create and swap them more often. They are so fun.
Do you see this beautiful girl? This is my daughter Alma, “my girl”, my baby.
Every year I make the gift tags for our Christmas gift exchange. It’s something I love to do because it makes gift giving extra special. Here are the ones I made this week:
And a couple of close ups:
I use shipping tags in large and small sizes. The backgrounds are colored with stamps pads. Images come from a variety of sources such as catalogs. I use scrapbook paper to add interest. Also used are white pens for snow and silver and gold pens for outlining the images or the card itself. The snowflakes came in a roll of ribbon from Target that I cut the snowflakes from. They look very 3-d.
I created the base of our family Christmas card as well. But I will embellish each one individually in order to personalize them and make each one unique. More on that next week.
Some of my favorite gifts have been the small ones that I would have never thought I’d receive. For example, I hadn’t spoken to My Girl about my favorite cookies in ages but she read my blog about Biscochito cookies just before Christmas. When we went to Albuquerque for Christmas my dear Girl made a batch of them for me on Christmas morning. It was even more special because I’m the only on in the family that likes them because the cookies have anise in them. That precious girl got up extra early on Christmas morning to make them and they were heavenly.
Many years ago I used to commute to the next town over for work. The commute included a 5 mile trip on a two lane canyon road and many times it was in dark, rainy weather. When I’d get home I’d always complain about the tailgaters. One year on my birthday, my husband gave me the following: a pound of my favorite coffee from the specialty shop, yum, and a license plate holder that said “Back off or I’ll flick a booker on your windshield.” I died laughing and ran right out to put on the car. That plate provided many years of laughs because you could always look in the rear view mirror and catch people either laughing or getting disgusted as they read the plate holder. Yes, we have a perverse sense of humor.
So what little, unexpected gift have you received that you’ll never forget?
This weekend, my guy and I were sitting in the backyard enjoying the afternoon when we heard a thud. We looked around and found a cute baby scrub jay that had fallen out of its nest. The poor thing was scared out of it’s little bird head and he latched on for dear life to the wire shelf he fell on. It took the two of us to pry him loose. My guy took him back to the tree he fell out of but couldn’t put him in the nest. We hoped the mother bird would find it and keep him safe.
The next morning I went out to look for him and the neighborhood cat had gotten to him. Poor baby. Even the cats owner was upset that she hadn’t been able to keep her cat in the house. She has lots of kids and the cat runs out the door the minute one of the kids open it.
I’ve never been a cat person so I don’t see the appeal but I do understand it’s a natural thing for cats to chase and eat birds. But that doesn’t mean I won’t miss that little bird and his squawky song.
Other than that, I had a great 4th of July weekend. How was yours? Didn’t the 3 day weekend just fly by? Our town is the biggest 4th of July lover I have ever seen. Almost every one has a party and they all shoot off fireworks (legal in our county). At least 4 different parties in our neighborhood had roman candles lighting up the sky all though the evening. It was a site to see. Are fireworks legal where you live?
I want to thank my very, very sweet daughter for making some Biscochitos for me for Christmas. She read my Christmas Questions blog post and decided to make them for me Christmas morning. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven, they were sooo good. Thank you my precious girl. (By the way I hope you are feeling better.)
I haven’t posted in a while but not all was lost, art wise, while I was gone from blogland. I managed to get two journal pages done while traveling to New Mexico for Christmas and another was created last week. Those are below.
Today, I finally completed the Texture prompt that Kathryn posted weeks ago at the Soul Journal site. I actually started it a few weeks before Christmas but Christmas projects took precedence and this one was put aside for a while. However, I knew I’d be back to it sooner or later because I liked the idea of it. Instead of adding it to my journal I used a canvas board and created a freeform piece. I really like how it turned out. The size is 5 X 7. I used fabric flowers, foam leaves, lace, buttons, watch parts and beads. All were covered in gesso. The gesso was also used as the adhesive.
The following journal page was created due to the flight we took from home to New Mexico for Christmas. We are very discouraged with the airline industry.
This was a fun page created on Christmas Eve and Christmas day:
This last page was the most recent and based on our New Years Eve activities:
How was your holiday?
Here is a great site for anyone needing almost free Christmas images. (After you post a link back to the site somewhere on the net you can download the images free of charge). These are nice images and you can get new ones everyday for a total of 46 images. Check the site sometime during each day from the 1st through the 25th and you could come away with images to use in your crafts. Last years images were great.
Starts tomorrow: http://countdown.tentwostudios.com/
Yesterday I took my Christmas Journal to be bound at Staples and the girls there did not make me feel good about leaving it in their charge. First she didn't even look at it and was going to bind it across the top breaking into the words. I made her draw a picture of the journal on the envelope and show where the binding was supposed to be. But even with that I wasn't sure it was going to be done right. I walked around the store and as I was leaving it was spread across the binding machine and the girl was off doing something else. I'm sure it's going to be a mess when I pick it up but I will gladly say I was wrong if it's not. Keeping my fingers crossed that I am. Good thing is, if it is a mess, I bought some binding rings while I was there so I won't have to take it back if I have to redo it.
You have to check this out:
http://www.kerismith.com/funstuff/portable_tree.pdf
I love it.
Later here it is made up:
In honor of all Veterans but specifically for my dad who not only served in WWII but passed away on Veteran's Day in 2006, and for my husband who served during Desert Storm.
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