Christmas Eve

Good morning and happy Thursday!

You know, of all of the kits from my most recent batch, this is the one my hubby liked the most.  It brought back memories of his childhood when they would drive to Norway, Wisconsin to cut down their Christmas tree and then strap it to the top of the car for the drive home.  And when there was a heavy snow like the one pictured here, there was nothing but quiet all around.  The snow in the tree branches muffled all of the noise.  Even the car tires were silent on the snow-covered roads.  It was all so very peaceful.

And that's what I wish for you; a very peaceful holiday season!

Thanks for stopping by my blog today.  Have a wonderful and blessed day!

Ugly Sweater

Good morning! On Sunday evening my hubby and I went to the Christmas party at his work.  As part of the festivities they had an Ugly Sweater Contest.

Being that we live in Gainesville, Florida, home to the University of Florida Gators, he couldn't think of anything uglier than a Florida State University Seminoles sweater.  Apparently his co-workers agreed as his sweater was declared the ugliest of the evening.

Here is my layout for these fun pictures and many more. This is one of my new kits coming up at the end of this week. 

Thank you for stopping by! Remember that you can buy a gift certificate for our kits. Have a wonderful and blessed Tuesday!

Making Cookies for Santa

Good morning and happy Monday!  I hope that you had a great weekend.  It's hard to believe that Christmas is only one week away!

You know, kids have all of the answers.  When our daughter asked her kids how Santa was going to know that they've recently moved, her five-year-old piped up with "send him a text".

They're leaving for California tomorrow and won't be home until Christmas afternoon.  When our daughter said that it might not be a good idea to leave cookies out for Santa for a week, her three-year-old suggested that they leave them out in a Tupperware container.  Kids these days are too smart for words.

Here's a layout for those pictures of making those cookies to be put into that Tupperware container.

Thanks for visiting my blog today.  Have a wonderful and blessed day!

Happy Friday!

Good morning and happy Friday! Our youngest of 5 grandchildren just turned a month old and I coulnd't believe how alert he is already! Of course, he is always surrounded by Landon (2) and Madison (6). They hold him, sing to him, play with him and we would not be surprised if Liam Daniel talks before he is 9 months old!!!!Look at him smiling with his daddy. I melted when I saw these pictures!

 Here are two of my latest Christmas layouts. I love making those trees! And they are soooo easy to make, just trace a triangle in your favorite Christmas papers and voila! Be inspired and make yours!

Have a fabulous and blessed weekend. Remember to celebrate Jesus because after all, He is the reason for the season. Merry Christmas! 

Happy birthday Valerie

Good morning! Thirty seven years ago the Lord blessed us with our daughter Valerie. She was born in Columbus, Indiana two weeks before a very big blizard that covered our front door with snow! It's a good thing that I was nursing her, my family was in town from Venezuela and were all together enjoying our new babyand the winter in the Midwest. One of my wishes this year is for the Lord to bless you with long life, health  and joy in your heart every day of your life. Happy birthday dear Valerie, we love you!

As promised, here is another Christmas layout. I love the muted/vintage looking papers. 

Have a wonderful and blessed day and don't forget to thank the Lord for all your blessings in your life!

Christmas Layouts

Good morning and happy Wednesday.  Well, yesterday I retrieved the first carload of things from my old studio.  I will continue to bring everything over today and tomorrow and have scheduled all day Friday to put my new studio together.  I'm starting to have SWS (Scrapbook Withdrawal Syndrome).  In the meantime, please enjoy these two layouts from before the move.

Thanks for your visit today.  Have a wonderful and blessed day today.

Bless this Home

Good morning and happy Tuesday!  Well, we completed our move over the weekend.  This is not to say that we moved everything, but we were able to move most everything on Saturday morning from 8:00 to 11:00.  How did we manage this?  Well, an army of angels (about 20 friends) showed up and got to work.  It took just two trips in the rented truck and we were done!  Of course, there is still my studio (which we started bringing over yesterday) and our garage (which is mainly my DH's hot rod) left to go, but we have until the end of the month.  Fortunately there is not that much to do at this end.

What a blessing this has truly been from start to finish.  Here's a layout of mine from earlier this year which sums up my feelings.

Thanks for stopping by mu blog today.  Have a wonderful and blessed day.

Two Christmas Kits

Good morning and happy Friday!  Hooray, the weekend is here.  I hope that you have some great plans for the weekend.  We'll be moving to our new home just three miles away.  We've already moved most of the small stuff.  All that remains are the large things (furniture, washer & dryer, beds, etc.) and my studio.  Oh, yeah...that.  I've not even moved one rhinestone yet.  We have until the end of the month to move out, so my plan is to do it in just one day, with the precision of an Indianapolis 500 pit crew, so I don't have to skip a beat.  There are some things in life that take priority, and this is one of them.

Here are a couple of layout kits that I still have a few of for sale.  To see these and others, just click on the shopper to the left.

Thanks for visiting today.  Have a wonderful and blessed day and a safe and restful weekend!

Warm & Cozy

Good morning and happy Thursday!  Our first house as newlyweds nearly 40 years ago in Indiana had a fireplace.  Although my DH loved it and put some kind of a thing in it that blew warm air into the house, I was not a huge fan.  The soot and the ashes always managed to find their way into the house and him dragging firewood in from outside made a big mess, as well.

Our daughter's house is the same way.  Although they liked their fireplace at first, they quickly tired of it and if you want to make a fire these days, you're going to have to remove all of the candles and figurines first.

That's why I was a bit hesitant about our new house.  It has a fireplace.  However, as soon as I found out that it was gas, I got on board right away.  Hooray!  No fuss, no muss!  You want a fire?  Turn a valve and push a button.  Whoosh!  Instant fire.  Time to go to bed?  Turn the valve off and say "night, night".  What could be more convenient?

Well, we've moving in on Saturday and the temperature is supposed to get down to freezing.  Me?  I'll be right there in front of my CLEAN fireplace on the first night, sipping a cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows floating on top!  In other words; warm and cozy.

I'll just need four photos; two horizontal, one vertical and one square.  I'm going to get some new jammies for hubby, too.  Can't have him clashing with the colors in this layout.

Thanks for visiting today.  Have a wonderful and blessed day.

Black Friday

Good morning and happy Tuesday!  I thought I would share some photos from Black Friday, a huge tradition in out family.  My daughter and I started out at about 5 pm on Thanksgiving.  And didn't finish until around noon on Friday.  This year, we figured that we would really find some mega-deals at the outlet stores in Orlando, about and hour and a half south of here.  Well, not only were there no deals at the outlets, but the regular stores had the same things at the same prices as in Gainesville.  At least we had a lovely car ride!

Here is Valerie trying on an elf outfit.

And here she is sitting on the Bumble's lap.  (There's something odd about his face.)

Here we are getting ready for a coffee so that we can stay awake.

OK.  This is a scrapbooking blog, so I need to show at least one layout.  Here's a single page layout I recently made.

Thanks for stopping by.  Have a wonderful and blessed day!

Happy Monday

Good morning! Hope you had a lovely weekend. I spent mine in Dothan, Alabama, cropping with the Hive. We had our annual Christmas weekend crop, played games, ate, and cropped til we dropped! The hotel where we stayed had a lovely Christmas tree in the lobby so it was perfect for some of our group pictures.

Shirley and Linda made these awesome top hats out of cans and paper plates! They decorated our tables. Soooo pretty!

I love snowmen! I found this pair at Hobby Lobby and couldn't help to pose with them!

 I think I made 18 layouts throughout the weekend. Here are two of them.

As always, my heart is filled wityh love for all my Bees and I thank the Lord for putting us all together. This is our Christmas number 9 together. Don't forget to tell your friends you love them and appreciate everything about them.

Have a wonderful and blessed day!

December is Here!

Happy December!  I have to admit that I love Christmas!  I have already started practicing the Nativity Story with my grandkids.  We put a whole production for each holiday.  Their mom has a photography backdrop curtain and they love to play theater with it

I will be posting Christmas layouts all month.  I am off to Alabama this morning and that's what we will be working on the entire weekend.  My goal is to make an entire Christmas album and have it ready for my soon-to-be-taken holiday pictures. Now that we have a total of 5 grandchildren I only make one album for each occasion and try to include all their doings and fun activities in it.

This was one of my kits this month but it sold out an hour after it was posted! The papers are soooo much fun!

Have a wonderful and blessed weekend. Be safe and hope you get to scrap and play a lot as well!

Home for the Holidays

Good morning and happy Wednesday.  Well, today is the day that we finally close on our new house.  I'm so excited!!!  Since we're moving only a few miles and we have things we want to do at our new place before we move in, we've left the entire month of December for the move.  However, we hope to be Home for the Holidays, which is the title of one of my recent kits.

To see this one and others, just click on the shopper to the left.  Thanks for stopping by.  Have a wonderful and blessed day.

Get Well Soon

Good morning and happy Tuesday!  I really appreciate the support from all of you purchasing my latest kits.  Here's one called Get Well Soon. How appropriate this is for me as they found an old hip fracture of mine that is causing me a lot of pain.  The last thing I want or need is another surgery so they're trying to do something tomorrow with an injection of sorts.

How crazy this will be.  At 9:30 tomorrow we close on our new house and at 11:45 I get this shot, after which I have to go straight home to bed.  I won't even get a chance to see my new home until Thursday.  What a bummer!

Thanks for stopping by today.  Pray that everything goes well for me tomorrow.  Have a wonderful and blessed day!

New Kits for November

Good morning and happy Monday, the first day of the first week of the Christmas season!  I hope that everyone had a  great Thanksgiving Day weekend and did not overdo it on Black Friday.  I stayed out all night on Thursday with my daughter.  I didn't buy all that much, but had a fun time on this yearly family tradition.

I am releasing today a new batch of kits for sale, most of them with a Christmas theme.  Included in this batch is Memories, the monthly installment in the Heritage Series.

I also have a number of Fall kits still available for those of you who are still scrapping for Fall.

To see all of the kits, just click on the Happy Shopper to the left.  Send me an e-mail letting me know which kits you would like to purchase.  Thanks for all of your support.  Have a wonderful and blessed day!

Food, Food, Food

Good morning and happy Wednesday, Thanksgiving eve!  Today is traditionally the day that we fully prepare for the Thanksgiving feast, especially the baking!  After all, unless you have two ovens, they'll be no room as the turkey is cooking.

Here's a layout that I thought would be great for scrapping snapshots of us showcasing out culinary talents.  The papers are from Authentique.  They have a wonderful 50's vintage look about them.

Thanks for stopping by today.  Have a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving eve!

Weekend Crop in Deerfield Beach

Happy Tuesday!  Over the weekend at the Vero Scrapbook crop in Deerfield Beach, I got to play some new Graphic 45 papers and made this layout about family.  I love their graphics and the colors are so rich.

Since my sister lives in South Florida an hour or so past Deerfield Beach, I got a chance to spend time with her. We had some great food and and even greater laughs together. I love her so much!

Thanks for visiting today!  Have a wonderful and blessed day/

Vero Scrapbook Crop Event in Deerfield Beach

Good morning and happy new week!  I just got back from a four-day crop in Deerfield Beach sponsored by Vero Scrapbook Store.  What a terrific time we all had.  (So ... I've only got four days to recover before Black Friday, one of my favorite events of the year!)

Of course, even though we're at these events on the pretext that we're scrapping, there's always time and opportunities for clowning around.  Here's some proof of that!

But of course, some amount of scrapping was done.  Here are a couple of layouts that I made over the weekend.

And yes, there are many more that I'll be showing you throughout the week.

Thanks for stopping by today.   Have a wonderful and blessed day!

Vintage Layouts

Good morning and happy Wednesday.  Here are a couple of layouts that I recently made.  I love playing around with this vintage style of papers and embellishments.

Thanks for visiting my blog this morning.  Have a wonderful and blessed day.

Santa is Coming, but Liam is Here

Good morning and happy Tuesday.  Here is another layout from my weekend with the Hive.  As I mentioned yesterday, I was in a Christmas mood.

And here is a photo of our newest grandchild who arrived Sunday.  His name is Liam Daniel.

And here he is with his proud papa who is now the father of three!

Isn't technology a wonderful thing?  Even though we're on opposite sides of the country, we're able to video-conference across the miles.  Here's a photo of me watching my daughter-in-law holding our newest grandson.  How long will it be before we're able to reach into the phone and hold them ourselves?

Thanks for stopping by today!  Have a wonderful and blessed day!

Weekend with the Hive

Good morning and happy Monday.  I just got back from a weekend with the Hive in Dothan, Alabama.  What a terrific time we had!

I was in a Christmas-y mood so most of the layouts I made were Christmas.  Here's just one of them!

And one of the things that we like to do during these get-togethers is to go to Hobby Lobby and Michael's and take pictures for out layouts.  Here are just a few of them.

Oh, my!  Now I will have to spend a couple of day recuperating and catching up on sleep!  Thanks for visiting my blog today.  Have a wonderful and blessed day

Patterns and Textures

Good morning and happy Friday!  Woo hoo, the weekend is here!  Hope you have great plans for the weekend.  I know that I do.

One of my favorite things about making layouts is mixing no only different colors, but different textures and patterns, as well.  These are not things which are achievable with digital layouts.  Here is another layout I made over the weekend using the Hungarian papers I wrote about a few days ago.

And here are some close-ups showing the joining of distressed papers, paper flowers, painted chipboard, metals, bling, and so on.  These photographs do not do it justice.

Thanks for visiting my blog today!  Have a wonderful and blessed day and a safe and restful weekend, filled with scrapbooking!