I love Christmas!  I love it because of what it means, the birth of my Lord.  I love it because my family seems closer, I love it because people seem to be nicer.  I love it because of the sparkle and glimmer that comes to a dreary world.  I love it because of the excitement in my grand children’s anticipation.  I love the music, the thought of winter wonderland, snowflakes, hot chocolate, pumpkin spice lattes.  I could go on forever!

The tree is decked out in red, black, white and silver.  It is mainly silver because I’m in the process of collecting mercury glass ornaments.   I love the way the light dances off of the mercury glass.

Doesn’t look as cool without the glimmer of lights, now does it?  It’s hard to see the clear or mercury glass when the light is not bouncing off of it.

The mantel is difficult to get a full picture because it is really long.  We have a corner fireplace so the mantel is large.

These two Mercury Glass Trees are the latest addition to the mantel.  They are from Pottery Barn (pretty expensive) but I gave myself an early Christmas present.  You can put a string of lights in side of the trees (they even notched the glass so it would sit flat).  If you click on the picture before this one you can see the trees lite.

 Now the weather is going to be cold this weekend, so the fireplace will be lite too and this entire side of the wall will be sparkly and warm.

Finally, I got my Santa collection out and displayed.  With the furniture redone this year, this makes the Santa collection really pop.

That is a Santa hanging in the middle of the mirror….you gotta love 3m products.

Revamped my believe banner, using some silver cord instead of a black and red ribbon.

Secured it with hooks on the mirror.

There are Santas even in the China Cabinet.  Oh by the way I have seen another Santa that I am going to have to get, can’t wait, still hope they have one!

There are 3 windows across the front of our house and I hang a wreath in each window on the inside.

I bought these from Bath and Body probably a good 7-8 years ago.  This year I changed the ribbon from black and silver to burlap.  It works with the new color of the dining room.

Now I need to add some red poinsettias in the center piece on the table.  Micheal’s, HL or Joann’s? Maybe!

Ok, grandkid story….we saw the Muppet Movie last night and I was holding my 6 yr old grandson.  Kermit and Miss Piggy was singing Rainbow Connection.  I started singing with them and Gareth says, s “NaeNae,  have you seen this movie?”.  I explained no, the Muppets sang this song when his Momma was a child.  I instantly felt really old!

Our church, Elevate Church, participated in their 1st Dallas Metro Ministries for the Inner City Kidz.

We made, passed out and filled about 80 stockings.

Here is the collection of the “stuffed” stockings and we got them all ready to go to Dallas Metro Ministries.  The deadline is 12/1/2011, so they can get them ready to be handed out at Christmas.

A huge thanks to everyone who participated, and to Phyllis for helping me finish getting the stocking ready to be delivered  and then taking them down to Dallas Metro Ministries.

If you haven’t taken the time to get an Angel from an Angel tree, be sure and give back this year, it will bless your life through the entire year.  The word says “if you do it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me”.   Let God bless your life as you give unselfishly this year.

This picture is Tim Holtz’s altered pumpkin that he designed using Ranger’s Foil Tape Sheets and some alcohol inks.  You can find Tim’s creation here along with the how to’s, what to use and how to finish.  Tim’s work is always so outstanding!

So here is what me and my BFF (Phyllis) found at HL @ 80% off.  We paid $5.00 for each one of them.  Not exactly like the round pumpkin but it will work.  The initial will be covered up so that won’t matter.

This is just a teaser, I’ll be back to show you our steps, what we discovered and the finish product.

So after me and my BFF saw what Tim Holtz did to his pumpkin we started on our quest to find one.

We found pumpkins at HL @ 80% off.  The Pumpkin was $5 and this damaged Acorn was $3.00. 

Oh yes I did, I asked for an additional discount since it was broken.  Didn’t get it but I sure asked just in case.

So, I’m trying an experiment to see if this paperclay will work on making a stem on this acorn.

Here is what it looks like out of the package.  I’ve had this for a while and it is a little dry but I just spritzed it with water to give it some added moisture.

Pinched off a hunk and started building the base up to make a stem.  I googled acorns out on the web to see what the stems on acorns looked like and I liked this one.

Molded, shaped (using my circut pick tool) until I got it close to what I wanted.  Now it is in the drying stage.

Next I’ll sand the stem to get it smooth and then start the re-finishing.

My mind is spinning, do I paint this (I have some Annie Sloan paint), do I foil tape this like TH did his pumpkin.  I think I’m going to paint and wax, that way I can play with the paint a little before I start painting cabinets.  Oh yes, you read correctly, I’m getting ready to re-paint my hall bathroom cabinets with Annie Sloan paint.

Yep! I found my camera.

Thanksgiving today was at Daughter #2′s home.  Here she is sporting her A&M jersey dress and her new boots.  In Texas boots go with everything!

As usual she out did herself.  Stuffed Cornish Hens, prosciutto wrapped asparagus,  homemade green casserole, rosemary and dill blue, gold new potatoes, corn casserole, and a roll!  The cake was carrot and so moist and to top it off sweet tea.

I’m so thankful for so many things in my life but there is not enough time to list everything.  If I tried I would surely leave something out.  So with my grateful heart, I praise God for His blessing on me and my family.  I’m thankful for great friends the grace that God has allowed me the privilege of being in their lives and them in ours.

I’m so thankful for the freedom I experience in living in America and the men and women who protect us and allow us to walk and live in a free nation.

“Happy Thanksgiving Everyone”

I know it has been a while since I posted………life is so crazy busy sometimes…..or it could be I’ve been lazy.

Unfortunately, I have lost my camera so I have no way of taking pictures.  But I’m going to see if I can figure out where I left it, or put it, or maybe that will have to be my Christmas present this year.

Anyway, my BFF and I have been making some of the TH tags from years past and loving the time spent together and creating.  I’ve also added some new pieces of furniture to the “Woman Cave” so I wanted to show you that new arrangement.

I also found a new piece of equipment (it’s old but I re-purposed it) that now holds my ever growing inventory of embossing folders. Oh you so need to see that too.

Hang in there with me and I’ll see if I can’t get some pictures taken and up for you to see.

The Mercury Glass hunt is on and I found what I want at Pottery Barn……trees for the mantel!

My BFF (Phyllis) and I are trying our hands at re-creating various Tim Holtz’s (THs) Christmas tags that he has created over the years.

We both have so much of his “stuff” that we decided to start using it instead of just buying it and saying “one day we need to use this stuff”.

So, that is what we are doing.  Football season is going on and those Friday nights we are taking advantage of a Girl’s night to Create!  Of course, there is food involved because when you create that long and that much you need energy.

I did this knock off last Christmas.  At that time I didn’t have all the die cuts to match THs tag exactly, but I improvised using what I had on hand and my Cricut.  It’s very close, but a little big.  

This year after collecting some of the items we knew we would need this is the first tag we attempted to make.

Now I will confess, they are not exactly like THs, because I always have to add something different or extra.  Note, the extra on this tag is the vellum tag with the crystal 25.  We didn’t have the typewriter tag so we filled in with what we had.  Joyful was cut on the Cricut using SCA and a font I had on my computer.

Next on the list is the peace on earth tag.  We had everything to make this tag except for the center of the rosette.  Luckily, I had found some great charms at Canton (local junk swap/meet).  Phyllis used a dove and I used an angel.  We also didn’t have all the buttons from TH, so we pulled out my stash and used what we could find.

This tag had a long saying, but we just choose a stamp of our choice to use.  Phyllis used Noel and I use Peace.  This tag taught us how to frost the ornaments and use embossing powder on the the plastic ornaments.

I didn’t have all the colors of distressed inks but Stampin Up inks came to the rescue.  We also decided that the stamping really needed to be embossed with black.  The words and flourishes don’t really stand out that well without an added deepening.

I think this was one of THs earlier tags because I was left feeling like it needed more and added the white and silver snowflakes.

You can click on each photo to get a closer look.  We will be making more of them so stay tuned.  The best part is spending creative time with someone you care deeply about and have so much fun in making things.  Up next is Santa in his sleigh using a masking technique.

Finally, got my perpetual calendar finished.  Hmm, my beads look a little off in the picture…not so much in real life.

Started out with a base that looked like this one.

Painted it black and decided I wanted to do some tin work on it.

Started out with black and using a plate that had numbers and alphabet typography.

My BFF helped with this part, and glued it on the sides and back.

Glued in pattern paper and dressed that up with some Stickles and ink.

Stamped numbers on the block and darkened up with Copics.  I also inked the edges of the blocks.  The block with 4 on the left sided has the edges inked.  The block with 2 does not have any inking.

I added some feet, some ribbon and a little silver beading….cute!!  Now if I can remember to change the days.

My #1 Daughter is dressing up her last year Halloween wreath.  This year we adding the stripped wired ribbon.

The rest of it looks like an old vintage Halloween card.  Sorry, no pics!  The rest of the wreath is at her house.

My #1 Daughter got these cute metal signs off of Pick your Plum.  This is one for my grandson’s teacher.  We added Read for a Spell in black vinyl.

Another little metal sign.  This is dry erase board vinyl.  I had some left over when I made a dry erase board for our woman’s ministry at church.  Worked just like regular vinyl.

Fun stuff and now on to things I want to do.