Lots of things!

Hi everybody!

I have been a little MIA lately - sorry! With the craziness of Christmas, DT deadlines, a new job, and (sadly) a death in the family, I've been running around like a crazy woman. God help me when there are kids to chase after...

Anyway, I hope everybody had a very Merry Christmas!! Did you get some fun stuff? Did you see some loved peeps? I did! We had a pretty hectic few days, driving all over creation, but we really had a great time seeing everybody and eating. Oh, the eating... I'm still full of ham and potatoes... And the chocolate? I don't even want to think about the amount of chocolate I consumed...

I have a few little bits of news for you for this post-Christmassy post:

#1) The Scrapbook Nook is having its Design Team call! It's going to be very sad to see some people go, but very exciting to see who all the new folks will be! If you think you've got what it takes, well then head on over to the Nook's message board, and check it out!

Here's the January kit - I'm in LOVE!


#2) If you're going to be at CHA this January, give me a jingle! I'll be there Saturday - Wednesday and it would be amazing to meet some of you lovely cyber people in real life!! I can't wait to see what everybody has in store for us this season!

#3) I'm working on putting together some mini-book kits for Scrapper's Depot in Napa! It's a fun one - packed full of fun stuff! If you're gonna be in the area this month, you'll definitely have to check it out! Class dates to follow!

So what's your guilty pleasure?

That's what's on the table for you over at the All About Me Challenge Blog today!

For me, the entire Christmas Season is my guilty pleasure - I'm one of those mushy people who get teary-eyed at the melting snowman commercials. I bake incessantly, and I crave the smell of cinnamon pine cones every time I walk through the door of Jo-Ann's. I love it all!

Here's my layout:




So now check out the rest of the layouts the Design Team made over at the AAM Blog! And let's see what you come up with!!

The drummers they are a-drummin'!

Today is day twelve of Scrapbook News & Review's 12 Days of Christmas Blog Hop!

This season has been full of some great releases, including Cosmo Cricket's Jolly By Golly, Basic Grey's Eskimo Kisses, Collage Press's Joy Ride, October Afternoon's Very Merry, Making Memories' Mistletoe, Bella Blvd.'s December Details, Kaiser Craft's Christmas Spirit and 3 Bugs in a Rug's Let It Snow.

SO MUCH FUN STUFF!!

I've had the chance to play with a few of these lines lately, and here's some of the projects I made:
Christmas Tag: Making Memories Paper, Prima Alpha Stickers.
Directions: Make an accordion circle out of a strip of decorative paper, cut out a round tag to sit on top, and use stickers to say 'You' then tie a knot in some twine and glue it to the back side of the tag. Punch a circle out of another patterned paper for the back of the tag for reinforcement.


My Miracle: Making Memories papers, Prima Alpha stickers adn newsprint flower.

For directions on how to make this layout, visit The Scrapbook Nook's message board!

I hope you all have had lots of fun with Scrapbook News & Review's 12 Days of Christmas Blog Hop! Merry Christmas, everyone!

Have I told you...

That I am a glutton for punishment? Seriously...

So I decided a few months ago that hand sewing a hexagonal king-sized duvet cover was surely the most sane thing on earth I could do with my time. Ugh... I saw it first here and just thought, I can do that! I didn't read what Alicia actually had to say about the project - that she'd start small because it would be crazy to attempt anything bigger than a pillow case or placemat. No no, I didn't go back and read that until later, when my fingers felt like I could just crumple them up and throw them in the trash. WHY GOD?!?!


Anyway, after I decided that hands are just hands and what are they for if not for destroying on a daily basis, I went digging through my stash to add lots more colors and textures to my blossomy pile of pain. I have fabric leftover from the curtains I sewed for mom's studio, and the first pillows I sewed for my dorm room freshman year, the kitchen curtains I bought for Eric and my first house together (he hated them on the rod, so naturally they needed to go into our duvet cover, right?) and a few other nostalgic fabric remnants I've kept over the years. Then I went to **gasp** Jo-Ann's and bought a couple of coordinating solids and a few fat quarters to add to the mix, and then my first-ever Heather Bailey fabric from my little quilt shop in town.


After I finished cutting the stack of 2.5"x2.5" blocks, and regained use in my hands, I printed out my hexagonal papers and cut them out. Alicia gave a link to a great little online shop to buy pre-cut hexagon papers, but I figured, why not just save some money? And quite honestly, I didn't want to wait for them to ship. I'm that impatient. So I hopped onto Photoshop and made my own one-inch hex template - fast and easy. Here it is, if you want it, just remember to print it out as an 8.5x11. You'll need about a million of the little buggers, to do anything of a size that's worth anything...

After I stitched a bunch of the blossoms together I ended up with this sweet little stack of optimism - I'd made it that far, so surely I could just keep on going, right? Well, no, not really, because that sweet little stack needed a cute little dish to sit in, so off shopping I went in search of the perfect little dish. $5 at Ross later, I had it. It's just the right shade of blue. It's exactly the right size. It's perfect, dontcha think?


I'm hoping that this little undertaking will not take me the entire course of my natural life to finish. My goal is to have the top finished by the end of January. If I'm really lucky. Like, as lucky as this woman. Have you seen this?? Crazy!

Anyway, thanks for hanging in there - hopefully I'll have something amazing to show you soon.

Happy Saturday!!

jeezy creezy what on earth is that?

Is it just me or is Christmas getting closer and closer? And all those projects that I need to get done just seem farther and farther (or is it further and further - I never can remember how that works) away from actually being completed. I always delude myself into thinking that hand-made gifts are better than store-bought ones, but really I think this is just some subconscious reasoning to go to Jo-Ann's and buy more than I need to. At least that's how it feels, and really, I think after all is said and done, I've probably spent more on my hand-made gifts than if I just went out and bought them all. Humbug.

Today was a good day, though. I am starting a new job as a rep for Millsrepco - a scrapping/stamping rep firm. I'll be servicing all of Northern California, and a few stores in the Central Valley and Bay Area. YAY! Samples to play with, new people to meet, and CHA in January! I am a lucky girl!!

To celebrate my little victory, I came home and scrapped just for me. No mandatory scrapping today!! I finished up some WIPs like that wreathe up there. Here's the page I made for my sis's album. It's so much more fun to scrap really pretty people who take even prettier pictures.







It was so awesome to scrap the photo that I wanted, with the materials that I wanted, with no challenge, and no constraints. Not that I'm complaining - I love being on DTs and building kits and teaching classes. LOVE IT. But it has been a while since I have been able to scrap like this and I've really missed it.

Oh! I almost forgot! Check out the Nook's December kit - it's amazing, and right now you could win one free!! All you have to do is upload your projects to the gallery - every upload counts as an entry, so upload a bunch, and while you're there, chat us up a bit! We don't bite. Well... I don't, but you just never know about that Zarah...

Look at the awesome projects our DT has put together using this incredible kit!

Processing the Holidays

That's the name of the game over at the All About Me Challenge Blog. Today is the release of this great new challenge, so jump on over and take a look at the layouts the DT put together.

Here's mine:

This was a hard page to put together, because I am generally nothing but excited for Christmas and all that comes along with it. BUT there have been some difficult feelings in the past about where we (my mom, sis, and I) fit in in all of it.


Ultimately, we are a stronger family for getting through it all, and we've made our own traditions that we look forward to every year. Things are constantly changing, and I love it all!