A Little Christmas Cheer to End the Year

Hi Everyone! Yes, yes, I know Christmas is over. Thing is, I have had these pics on my camera for a few weeks and haven't had time to post. So here it all is!

As I have been saying and saying, I want to make a Christmas village. So I made another house to go into it. It doesn't fit the same theme of papers as my house from last year, but I figured it was how all the houses will end up being anyway. As much as I love the one I made the one I made last year, I LOVE this one even more!

Here are the pics:

I am totally in love with picnik. It's so easy to use, it's free and it's tons of fun. As you can tell from the pictures, I was playing around with adding the words to my photos. Not to mention this paper from Crate Paper makes me want to use the 1960s photo edit to every picture of projects made with it! 

Here are all the supplies used to make the house:

Deco Podge House - Hobby Lobby {mid size}

Patterned Paper - Crate Paper

Cardstock - Stampin' Up! Chocolate Chip {used for reindeer}

Mini Ornaments, Bells and Lights - Michael's Crafts

Mini Jingle Bells - Stampin' Up!

Baker's Twine - my stash

Ribbon - Stampin' Up, Michael's

Cricut Cartridges - Cindy Loo {reindeer reins, flourish below roof}, Christmas Cheer {sleigh, reindeer, wreath}, Forever Young {flower on Santa's sleigh}

Pre-made Cutouts - Crate Paper {Santa and Tree}

Jewels and Half Pearls - Stampin' Up!, Reflections; Doodlebug Designs

Border Punches - Stampin' Up!, Martha Stewart

Punch - EK Success {corner rounder to make large scallop trim below roof}

Glues - Mod Podge, Crystal Effects, glue gun

Well, I hope everyone had a great Christmas! We sure did. I asked Peyton what her favorite present was and she said, "Everything Mom. I love everything!" It made my Christmas for sure.

Happy New Year!

Linking to Paper Issues

Thank You Cards Bundle

Hi Everyone! I made these thank you cards a while back. They were a requested order. I think they turned out pretty cute. I love small cards, as I have said many times before. These cards are all made by Stampin' Up! And they have coordinating envelopes for each that fit perfectly. They are all retired cards, so you can't order these particular ones anymore. But they still do have some currently in their catalog.

Here are the ones I made:

Stampin' Up!; Cricut, Baker's Twine, October Afternoon

Stampin' Up!

Stampin' Up, Cricut, May Arts, Target $1 Spot

Stampin' Up!; October Afternoon; My Mind's Eye; Cricut

These cards were all really simple and fun to make. My favorite turned out to be the button one. But I actually loved all of them.

I have Friday off this week, so 4 more working days, then 4 days off!!!

Packaging and Sugar Cookies - What Could Be Better

Hi Everyone! Are you all ready for Christmas? I'm getting close. A few loose ends to tie up. But lots and lots of presents to wrap.

Last night, my mom had me wrap a present for her work Christmas party. What's inside is pretty cute, but I think the packaging turned out pretty cute too!!!!

Thanks to Amber, I am obsessed with making these bows on anything I can. And then I have been having more fun adding mini ornaments or regular size ornaments to them! I like to add some of the tinsel ribbon and silver elastic cord too. Or even baker's twine. I add as much ribbon and tulle as I want and always a little bit of type style paper, or a book page. Sometimes I will distress the paper with ink. A lot of times, I have just left it plain. The last touch is usually a little tag of some kind. And walah! There you have it! A fun and festive package just ready to be given away!

So this week, Peyton and I made sugar cookies. It was a lot of fun and very messy!! She wasn't crazy about frosting the cookies, but she loved the cookie cutter part, playing in the flour and topping the cookies with sprinkles! Okay, love is an understatement! She went crazy and went through a whole bottle of sprinkles. It was pretty funny.

It started off calm. Peyton didn't like the sour cream frosting, so I frosted some with chocolate frosting just for her. 

She decided on the pink and purple Barbie sprinkles that we still had. And then she wanted to mix it up with the Christmas sprinkles too :).

It is so hard to get a picture of Peyton looking at the camera. She just doesn't do it usually. All of our tricks to get her to, usually fail. So she sort of has scary eyes in this picture, but she is actually looking at the camera!

There ended up being more sprinkles on the plate than there were on the cookies!!!! It was pretty funny. And really pretty cute.

We are making cookies this week for the neighbors, so wish me luck that I don't run completely out of sprinkles before we get them all done! This time around I am making gingerbread cookies! Yum, yum!

Hope you all have a great last week before Christmas! 

Christmas Banner

Hi Everyone!

Hope you are all having a crafty and wonderful holiday season. Last night we took Peyton to see Christmas lights at Temple Square. It was cold, but we bundled up warmly and had a lot of fun. It has been a while since we had ventured downtown Salt Lake so it was great to see all the changes that have been going on there. It's going to be really nice when it's all finished. Hopefully it will help bring back small businesses when it's all finished too. All the construction didn't stop there from being Christmas decorations everywhere!!!

So for my sister's baby shower, I borrowed my friend, Marci's standard Cricut. She also let me use some of her lettering cartridges. They came in super handy. And I admit, I totally fell in love with it! So I started talking to my mom about it, and sure enough, that's the very thing she got me for Christmas! I got the standard Cricut too, thinking of price and portability as the key factors. After I had it, I started looking more and more into the Cricut, and found a brand new one they came out with recently called the Cricut Mini. So I have decided to list mine for sale - along with a few other things - on the local classified listing site, ksl.com. And then I am going to get the Mini. I am pretty excited either way though.

But enough about that...

I have been a busy little beaver making all sorts of fun things with my Cricut. Thanks to being trampled on Black Friday, for $10 cartridges, borrower some from Marci, and my hubby's cousin's Bea and Thia, I have been able to do quite a lot. I went down to the American Crafts Warehouse Sale that is going on this entire month and picked up really cute paper by Crate Paper super cheap. I brought it home, and made a darling banner with it!!!

What I love most about the Cricut is how much you can do with just one cartridge.

Supplies Used:

Cardstock - Bazzill Basics Textured, Stampin' Up!
Patterned Paper - Crate Paper
Die Cut Machine - Cricut
Cartridges - Christmas Cheer,
Ribbon - Mostly my stash, May Arts, Stampin' Up!, Offray, tulle, American Crafts, baker's twine, stretchy silver elastic cord is from Stampin' Up!
Little Somethings - bells Stampin' Up!; Red Jewels Reflections; button Autumn Leaves
Adhesives - 3M glue stick, glue gun, foam adhesive, Crystal Effects from Stampin' Up!

Cutest Tree Hugger Ever!

Peyton loved all the lights, but she was slightly disappointed by the lack of blue lights! I know, she is pretty silly. So when we found some blue trees though, she was pretty excited. She ran right up to one so we could take her picture in it.

The Reason for the Season

Part of the road was converted into this garden at the side of Temple Square. It was sort of a big controversy here when it all happened. Literally, the road was torn out and a garden was put in, so traffic has to go around now to get down the road, instead of being able to go through like they used to. I have to admit, it is rather beautiful though. And right now, with it being Christmas and all, they have the big tree, you can see in the distance, plus animals, shepherds, Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus and lights everywhere. I love the little bubble lights on top of the water. Those were my favorite. I was really happy, that despite all the people around, I was able to actually get this photo. It's so peaceful and it's such a great reminder what all the fuss around this time of year is actually all about.

Hope you are all enjoying your holidays this year!! Merry Christmas!

P.S. All the photo editing was done using picnik.com. Check it out! It's a great site and it's free!