To my PIF gals...

I owe you three *you know who you are :)* a big I'm sorry. Your goodie bags have been ready for some time now, but I've been missing packing tape!!! I know that should be no excuse, but I'm going to remedy it today. Packing tape is on my list for the store today! I will be getting them in the mail on Monday. Please forgive me!

WOW!

How cool is this?!? The gals over at Queen Kat Bloggers have asked me to be a featured blogger! Big excitement!

I'm super honored that they've asked me to be a featured blogger, but can I share a little somethin' with you all? It kinda freaks me out a teeny bit....because I know that I havent' been doing the best job with keeping my blog up lately...especially in the realm on posting creations (well...that could also be due in large part to my lack of creating ANYTHING recently)...wait, I think I did take some pics of the paint cans I made for my aunt and cousin(well, I'm now calling her my cousin, she's really my cousin's SO *they've been together so long she might as well be my cousin!) Anyway, enough rambling...I'm going to try and be better about posting my creations...and actually creating! ***hehehe***

Mish Mash

We had a great Christmas day. Family came over and we had a nice time. Jeff and I waited until the last minute to get our bird for Christmas day. We went out the Friday before looking for a bird. Jeff had always wanted to try goose. So....we ended up getting a goose and turkey! The only problem that we encountered was how to bake both of them at once! I started to peruse http://www.allrecipes.com/ *I LOVE that site!* and found a recipe for grilled turkey. We're always ones to try something new out...so the goose ended up going on the grill. It turned out really good...nice and juicy. The turkey was also good...very juicy too.

On top of being busy with Christmas preparations, I've had a nasty cold the past 2 weeks. At least that's how long I've counted in my head. It started out with a sore throat, then moved to my nose and now I'm dealing with a stuffy nose and congested chest. I'm SO ready for this to be done. I'm sure I haven't helped my healing process by going so much the last couple weeks. We've had his family over, my family, been shopping....etc, etc. It's been busy! So today I had a sick day. Jeff has the week off and I took advantage...took a nice hot bath *which felt incredible* and tried to relax.

Payin' it Forward..

I'm spreading some papercrafting love! So I was blog hoppin' today and peeked in on Tracy over at Eat Sleep Stamp. I was the third person to comment on her post about paying it forward and I'm going to receive some neat stampin' goodies!!! How awesome is that?!?!? My only requirement is that I pass on the love through my blog...easy! So here's your chance for some neat-o stampin' and papercrafting goodness. What you receive will be a surprise! What do you need to do you ask?...all you need to do is be one of the first 3 people to leave a comment on this post and have a blog (you've gotta be able to spread the love, right? *wink*).

Ornaments

These are the ornaments we had made for the craft show I just did. I think we had about 80 of them finished and ready to sell. I have to give the majority of the credit to my mom for getting these done. She spent many an evening glittering and cutting and then glittering and cutting some more! I can only imagine how tired her hands were!

So here's the lowdown on how we made them...the ornaments themselves are either clear glass that we made glittery using the reinker technique or they are colored glass ornaments from the store. After Christmas last year I bought a TON of glass ornaments for this purpose. We still are floating in ornaments at both my house and hers. In total I think we have somewhere around 300 ornaments. Still a whole lot to decorate and hopefully sell!!!

The toppers for the ornaments are made using stamps from Outlines. I got the Poinsettia topper in both large and small, the Holly Leaves in large, the Cut Away topper, and the Ornate topper. I opted to purchase them in unmounted rubber as opposed to mounted. I had heard Outlines was offering the sale of unmounted rubber on there stamps...to order them unmounted you had to either call or email to place your order instead of using their online shopping cart. I saved a ton by ordering them this way...at least in my opinion! When the stamps reached me I spent a few days pondering how I wanted to mount them. I didn't have any wood blocks that were big enough. After playing with ideas I realized I wanted these to be unmounted and use clear blocks with them. The ease of being able to see through the block for placement with these ornaments was priceless! It helped us SO much! We wanted to use every inch of paper and not waste, so having using them with clear blocks was the best! I ended up buying a set of the Cuttlebug clear plates and using those to mount the stamps on (thanks Emily G. for the great idea!) The only problem I encountered was that the rubber came with permanent adhesive instead of cling mount. So...I first tried using Aleene's Tack it Over and Over with no luck. Then I decided to pull the foam off the backs and adhere EZMount. I'm so glad that I chose the EZMount method! Being able to stamp the ornament toppers onto paper and see where I'm stamping really makes a difference in using all of a piece of paper.

So excited!!!

Arabella slept for 7 hours last night!!!! That's right 7 hours...how awesome is that? I'm super excited...can you tell? Hoping and praying that she keeps up with this kind of sleep pattern at night!

Aren't they just the cutest? I'm completely in love with both of them!!! I just couldn't post something about Bella without showing a pic of her too!

Hopefully I'll get some more pics up of things I've been working on!

Craft Show Display

Here's a quick pic of my display at the craft show I'm in this week. As you can see my focal point this year is the tree with ornaments my mom and I made. They are glass ball ornaments with paper toppers. Hopefully I will get more details posted about those soon.

For this show I have a number of different items for sale:

cards

ornaments

lunch tins (both cardholders and recipe tins)

coasters

journals

kid's color-a-card kits

magnets

snowman boxes

decorated teacups

paint cans (filled with spa items)

The snowman boxes and teacups were made by my mother. She is such a crafty and talented lady! I absolutely love her! I'm so glad that I inherited her knack for craftiness...and love of it too! We have a blast when we're together...we also have our moments of frustration with each other (me probably more than her *wink*). But we love each other and are very close.

I'll try and get a list of my prices and all that good stuff up soon. It's amazing how you realize how precious your time is once you have a child. Suddenly I don't have nearly as much time to surf the web as I once did. Maybe it's more that I prioritize better now than before. I know that someone will be needing my attention and don't want to waste what time I do have, especially when I have things to get done! Hmm...anyway, enough of my rambling and musing to you all.