Fa la la la la....

I feel like i've been doing tons of Cristmas-y stuff, but i don't have a lot to show for it. I made my christmas cards in time and sent out half. (wtf?? I don't know!!) I've shopped and mailed almost all the gifts i need to get for people. I even stamped some of the shipping boxes. We went and cut down a tree, in 70 degree weather with sungleasses on. I'm even making my hubby a stocking.

But, i don't feel that most of this is blog worthy. I DID however make the cutest darn snowflakes i have EVER seen. My christmas tree was looking bland. It was in the corner against two blank white walls. So I thought I'd hang some snowflakes. Oh no, I won't be able to see white snow flakes on white walls. But wait. I had saved all the cute catalogs from Crate and Barrel and Pier One and such. I just knew I could do something with those adoreable christmas colored pages of Stuff.

Sharing my Spark

So, after many guilt ridden months, i've finnally succeeded in doing the project from my freind Heather's "Share you Spark".....thingy. O.K., so i had already made some tags, but still, i feel very accomplished to have gotten it done and to her. Yay me. (Embrace the small things in your life)...The first one is made with my favorite tab shaped punch. I use it a ton, love it.

These little ones i made for my nephews. I color coded their gifts, so i made color coded tags. They were easy and simple, but they do the job, and i think they whimsical.

The reason i had some tags done already is because i am going to wrap christmas gifts AS I GO this year. I love wrapping gifts, and i hate that it's a chore all at once every year. It may be helping that i have a craft room now. Yay! I don't have any guests for a while, so i finally got to put my new desk in the guest room, and i love having a dedicated workspace. It's so inviting. I'm finding myself doing a lot more projects that've been hard to get to before. Happy sigh. I'm in a good crafty rut.

itinerary

We are going to WDW. (Walt Disney World for those of you who don't know the approved abbreviation). My daughter is 4, the perfect age to go right? I wanted to make her something that would help her out and be a little interactive. I made her an itinerary.





It's a little book that shows her in Pics what we are doing each day. We're going with Heather and Dave who are Disney experts, so everything is planned and organized. They made a scedule that i printed out that has every morning , afternoon, evening activity plus meals, resturaunts and reservation numbers. This helped a lot. I went to Flickr and chose a good pic of everything we were going to do. So now Ella will be able to have fun trying to find how the picture ties into what we're doing each day. Hopefully.





I left space on each day so that she can tuck souvenirs in, and there are pages in the back too. If I REALLY need to, i can take the book apart and add pages between days. I think it'll work out really well. I'll let you know.

So, my freind Heather, whose super powers include stamping and uber organization, has done a gorgeous days of october book. This was supposed to be something that we both did, together, on lazy afternoons in her crafty room, but alas, i was yanked from one armpit geographic area to an armpit financial area. So no Heathery goodness. But i have attempted to do (and photo) something fun and halloweeny everyday, in the hopes that i'll do a book in retrospect.

Fun Halloween Purchases

SO, i moved to San Jose. See? I have a good reason why ii haven't posted in a long time.

I'm a little bit settled now, have my computer and printer and stuff set up at least. I unpacked my crafty stuff yesterday, but it's nowhere NEAR as organized as Heather's space yet. I'm working on getting everything around here pretty so i can show you my house. It was built in the 50's. I feel very much like a 50's housewife here because the neighbors are SO nice. Seriously, i've met more of my neighbors here than i have everywhere else combined.

I found a little scrappy store just around the corner and went shopping today. It's all so pretty together.

Halloweeny Goodness.

So, Heather has been at me to photo some of the little books and such that i've made over the last few years, so here goes.
This one is an album of Strausbourg that i made in an altoid box. I painted the box first, then did some stamping on it, and finally Mod Podged it. Not sure that I laquered it the best way. There were air bubbles, and it ended up soaking into the little tag on the front. Live and Learn. I love the numbered pages with the corresponding list of captions on the inside cover. I mounted the photos on a

ribbon and used that to do the accordion thing. I really like the "tab" type function of the end of the ribbon so you can easily pull out the photos. There is a little red rivet on the end of the folded ribbon. It makes me happy.

Birthday cards and bad photos

So i appparently need to work on photographing cards and such. This is BAD bad bad. But hopefully it's enough to get an idea accross.



I always make my baby's birthday cards, and this year we're going to do a pool party. I stole the basic idea from a Martha Magazine. I do like mine better though. In the one pic, you can see the whole card, but the second pic has better color representation. It was hard to not get a glare from the transparency film that I printed the text on.

Heather had a new circle cutter that made this very easy. I think that the hardest part was printing on the transparency. You DO have to buy the ones that are FOR ink jet printers, or else it really won't dry. OOoooh ooooooh, a great tip today. There is a setting when printing that is for faster drying ink. I had no idea. A random remark fromt the nice ladies at Archivers led me to it. I am the least patient person in the universe, so even if it's not a time crunch i am always going to use it. It was in the print properties. A little slider bar. Dry faster, or dry slower. (why would we want it to take longer?) I'm gonna try it and see if it works for printing photos too.

Aloha

Went to Hawaii this last weekend. The first trip there for my little girl Ella. I used to think that taking kids on vacation was pointless. "Will they even remember it? I can't do anything by myself." But, I did enjoy myself with her, and i think it was a great experience for her. She loved it. She wasn't excited by things that i thought she would be. Hula lessons? Nah . Finding every tiki on the island? Why not.

I went to Archivers today and did a little page layout that they were highlighting. It'll be perfect for some pics of Ella and John on the beach. I'll post pics when it's finnished.