The 12 tags of christmas. Day 1

So, Tim Holtz does this every year. And I admire and think 'wow', 'awsome', 'fantastic'.....and I really do have some intention of trying out his techniques. I never do. I finally have. I tried the first tag of 2011. And it's ok. I really like his. Mine.....well I'm working at a disadvantage. My big shot is broken. So I can't die cut or emboss. Anyhow here is my tag.

Please excuse the picture. Took it with the point and shoot...it didn`t want to focus. Anyhow let me explain this tag....
1.) Big shot...bah. Who needs that? I got out my pencil and scissors to cut out the required shapes...and my rolling pin to dry emboss the background. Yes. My ROLLING PIN!
2.) Specialty dies to create the pine cones. Not this sister...sister. Good ol' edge punch, some water misting and a whack of glimmermist. Done.
3.) Fancy schmancy ribbon? Nada. Using up something I think I cut off of a gift bag. Har!
4.) Expensive scrapbooking bauble thingys? Not from this gal. Swarovski people! Swarovski!
5.) Exclusive holiday ink pads? Oh, wait...yeah I did buy those. And can I say that the distress ink 'iced spruce' is really really cool!
Well, anyhow...there she be!!!!!
Oh yeah...I'm really not expecting to keep up with every tag. Might be a bit time consuming. I might try just to do the ones that I like. Aaannnd... I probably should attempt some housework!

And now, let's move on to cupcakes, shall we?

 A pink fairy house in case Tinkerbell drops by?

 Maybe a traffic pylon for the shopping cart/ stroller races one puts on when your friends come over to play.

 Or perhaps just a bucket of flowers because flowers are just good for any occasion.

This past weekend was a 3 year old birthday party... for 3 wonderful children. Fun was had by all. It was held at a gymnastics club, and what a good idea that was. 1 hour of rolling and tumbling, jumping and running. Followed by 30 minutes of refreshments, 15 minutes of cake and 15 minutes of clean up. Then homeward bound. Doesn't get too much better than that. Other than perhaps Chuck E Cheeze (according to one particular 3 year old. Although she kept asking to go back to the gym after we were done. Then proceeded to have a temper tantrum when she was told she couldn't. Oh well. She is 3.) Anyhow. I'm about partied out. Time to move onto Christmas.

Here Comes the Snow

Welcome to Winter! It's  a  'ye olde blizzarde' out there right now. Winter is coming in with a POW! and a BAM!

How fitting that I cranked out these cookies last week. They were made for a birthday boy's super hero party. I made 2 dozen of these cookies along with a birthday cake (for the same party) and 4 dozen christmas themed  cupcakes in 4 different flavours (for a totally different event...obviously). What a week. And you would think that I'm cupcaked out. But I'm not....I mean what else does one do on a very very wintery cold day, but make cupcakes? Oh wait...go to the pool with kiddos. Right. We're off!

Oh yes, I am a sucker for giveaways right now. And this one looks especially good! Check it out!
http://elizabethkartchner.blogspot.com/2011/11/december-daily-sc-kit-giveaway.html
:)

Ok people, hopefully the comments section is fixed. You should be able to post comments now. Thanks for the heads up!

Welcome to the new blog. I've branched away from the old blog with the hopes that this one would be the 'crafty endevours' blog. Not too much family stuff, but mostly scrapbook layouts, crafty projects and inspiration, and some baking thrown in. We'll see what happens.

Let's christen this blog with some pictures from the online crop I participated in this weekend. Scrapshotz, the local online super scrapbook store, held an online virtual crop. I've not participated in something like this before; I never really thought it would be that much fun or different from just scrapping alone in my craftroom. I guess it could be like that, except I chose to participate in the challenges put out by their design team and I was ON FIRE! The scrapbooking mojo? Alive and RUNNING!!!! I was a furious scrapbooker come Sunday night and Monday morning, trying to get my challenges done so I could enter my name in their grand prize, online cropping prize of Smashbook stuff. Whether or not I win isn't really the point here, the point is...I finished 4 layouts, 2(ish) cards, and a christmas tag! That is a biiiiiiig deal for me....the person who can drag out finishing a scrapbook layout for a week, sometimes 2 weeks. That is just darn amazing. And now I shall show you just what kept me busy for the whole weekend. Remember, I didn't ignore the kids, but I did ignore the housework.

This layout I was just finishing up as the crop started on friday. I figured it was fair game and it fit into one of the crop challenge categories, so I used it. The layout depicts a really great evening we had on the beach on our holiday this year in Sicamous BC. I have a whole series of these particular layouts from that night and this is the last one (thank goodness....now I can move on to a new topic. I enjoyed scrapbooking these memories, but it's definately time to find some new pictures and new papers to scrapbook!).

As I started getting into the crop, I vowed I would try to keep my projects simple and quick. I did manage to do that with this layout. This layout goes back to that Sicamous vacation of this past summer, but it's of the morning we left. Definately the last layout on that topic....for awhile anyhow.

I perused the crop challenges and found one I thought would be fun to do. Then I spotted my glimmermisting surface I use when glimmermisting embellishments and paper. I tend to use brown bags as the protective surface as they soak up the excess glimmermist really good while providing a half decent stable surface (balanced on my garbage can). The challenge stated to just go wild with whatever you chose to do....so that is what I did. I figured it was time to throw the bag out anyhow, so I used it as my layout background! How exciting is that! I was so excited and these pictures were just laying around waiting to be used. So I literally threw this layout together. Took me about an hour. Impressive! And really kind of cool too.

Next I broke away from doing layouts and attempted a christmas tag. Not something I normally do as I don't really know what to do with papercrafting knickknacks after I've made them. Look out sisters....someone may be getting this attached to their christmas gift this year!!!!

I then moved onto trying my hand at making a card. Something else I haven't done for a long while. Besides, it doesn't hurt to have birthday cards on hand, right?

Then finally, into the wee hours of sunday night, I went to town on this layout. Once again, I had these pictures kicking around, waiting to be used and I was in another glimmermisting mood. So I spritzed until my little heart was content until about midnight...then I got up early monday morning and frantically assembled this layout, along with getting Lil' Miss ready for the dayhome halloween party, taking her to the dayhome halloween party and juggling Mr.Mister on my lap because he felt the need to be held and hugged. I'm happy with how it turned out. Think there would be a few things I would do differently if I had had the time and an extra arm (tough to cut and glue while holding an 8 month old Mr. GrabbyHands on your knee)...but it's done and that's that!

So not bad, considering all this was done over the span of Friday to Monday, on a busy Halloween weekend. And now I requre a bit of a break and the office requires a bit of a clean-up. Any volunteers??????