Another great day. The talent here is phenomenal! Thanks to Lisa for hosting this absolutely fabulous hop! I have a really great project to share with you today.

I want to decorate my hutch for Christmas really beautiful so I have been making some new home decor items to help with the decor. As always I went to my favorite place for inspiration, Pinterest. I saw this one day and really wanted to duplicate it but since my color scheme for Christmas is green, red, and white I decided to do my Christmas tree up a little different.

I used straight pins with white heads on them to pin the buttons on so they look like they are the white twinkling lights of the tree. Then, the white buttons are the tree topper and red buttons the ornaments. Hope you like it! It took me only about an hour to make it! Oh, for the tree I used a styrofoam cone.

Blog Hop Business: Make sure you check on over at HoneyBearz Designs for the whole lineup and to see today's sponsor and prize package. Also Lisa is given away some prizes at the FB group...for the whole hop. You can find that here. And last but not least check out the wonderful creation that Madge has for you today! See you tomorrow~

Day 6 of 12 Days of Christmas Blog Hop

The talent in this hop is blowing me away! I am sooooo thankful to be counted among such talent. Your comments have been wonderful. Thanks so much for all your support through this hop. Today I went back to my digital scrapping. I wanted to create a new facebook template to use throughout December. The tutorials over at Coffee Shop Blog are absolutely wonderful if you are into digital photography.


My December Facebook Cover...

Blog Hop Business: Make sure you check on over at HoneyBearz Designs for the whole lineup and to see today's sponsor and prize package. Also Lisa is given away some prizes at the FB group...for the whole hop. You can find that here. And last but not least check out the wonderful creation that Madge has for you today! See you tomorrow~

My Cricut Craft Room: Would You Ever Guess Wednesday

For 12 Days Of Christmas Blog Hop Day 5 click here

I am up to my eyeballs in Christmas! And I wouldn't have it any other way! Today I have for you some cute gift packaging. I wanted to provide my 3 primary school grandchildren with a Christmas treat container for their teachers. These ladies were my colleagues for many years as I just retired this year from the school my grandchildren go to. I would have been absolutely thrilled to receive something like this as a teacher. So, since I have the time now I want to give back to some hard working and dedicated ladies.

Recipe: I have been collecting containers lately to use in my crafting projects. 

Cover the container with paper. (This was from my stash...no idea what it was)

I cut this really cute scrolly Christmas tree from Jolly Holidays 

(1st time I have ever used this cartridge!) 

I cut it at 4" and used pop dots to put on front of container.

I have to go to the store today and get candy to fill it up!

Hope you enjoyed my project today!

Day 5 of 12 Days of Christmas Blog Hop

For the Would You Ever Guess Post from My Cricut Craft Room go Here

Hello Fellow Crafters and Blog Hoppers!! This is one fine day and I plan to spend the whole day crafting since I have been inspired by soooo many of the wonderful projects along this hop. If you have not hopped along the whole 12 Days of Christmas Blog Hop so far then you are missing something! You can begin at Honey Bearz Designs and see what Lisa has and then hop along from there. Also, some awesome prizes are being offered...I know there are some I covet...no want...no I really NEED them!! LOL!

Well on to my project today...I was inspired by this on Pinterest and immediately thought of a dear sweet friend that would absolutely love to have this kind of present. Now, the lady in the blog post said she had been collecting vintage ornaments all year. I did not have that kind of time so I decided to see what my thrift stores had...at $1 a whole big bag of ornaments I could not pass them up! They were just perfect even though when I started hot gluing the ornaments on I realized I had too many red ones...so I am going to head back and get a few more to fill in some empty spots. I love the way this turned out!

Blog Hop Business: Make sure you check on over at HoneyBearz Designs for the whole lineup and to see today's sponsor and prize package. Also Lisa is given away some prizes at the FB group...for the whole hop. You can find that here. And last but not least check out the wonderful creation that Madge has for you today! See you tomorrow~

Day 4 of 12 Days of Christmas Blog Hop

Have you hopped yet? If you have not you definitely should. There is some awesome, amazing talent out there. I have a really cute project for you today. My daughter and daughter in law invited me over last week during Thanksgivng vacation to do a craft project with the grandkids. I was so thankful to be able to just spend time with them. So, I wanted to share the pictures of our project! Enjoy!

Felt Christmas Tree

all materials needed for our project

very serious about his cutting...he drew one of the dudes from
"Rise of the Guardians"

he was so into this and so excited!

Finished ornaments

Finished tree up on the wall...the kids now have their own

tree to decorate over and over again!

Blog Hop Business: Make sure you check on over at HoneyBearz Designs for the whole lineup and to see today's sponsor and prize package. Also Lisa is given away some prizes at the FB group...for the whole hop. You can find that here. And last but not least check out the wonderful creation that Madge has for you today! See you tomorrow~

Day 3 of the 12 Days of Christmas Blog Hop

Have you been enjoying the hop so far? I know I have. The inspiration is wonderful. I sure hope I can get that craft room cleaned today so I can get in there and craft. It is a mess! 


This wreath is to go on my craftroom door...I love traditional green and red for Christmas. I cut the wreath from the Christmas Solution cartridge. I made it as large as I could on my gypsy to "fit the page."  Then, cut the leaves to go on the wreath twice and pop-dotted each set. The second set I outlined in gold glitter and put some red gems on them. I did the same with the bow only outlined it in red stickles. A girl's gotta have her bling right? Hope you enjoy today's project. 

Thanks so much for all the wonderful comments you have been leaving. I have a surprise at the end of the hop so make sure you comment each day!


Blog Hop Business:  Make sure you check on over at HoneyBearz Designs for the whole lineup and to see today's sponsor and prize package. Also Lisa is given away some prizes at the FB group...for the whole hop. You can find that here. And last but not least check out the wonderful creation that Madge has for you today! See you tomorrow~

Day 2 of the 12 Days of Christmas!

Wow! There were some awesome posts yesterday. I was soooo inspired by all the creativity. Today, I have some layouts for you. I used to run a scrapbooking retreat facility and one of the things we used to do on our scrap weekends was to make pre-made layouts so we would have a stash ready to grab and just put photos on when it got hectic! Well, these are some Christmas layouts that were in my stash that I have never shared anywhere on line so I thought what better place than a Christmas blog hop! There are several of them...I hope at least 1 inspires you to go scrap something.

And now for my favorite of all of them!!

Blog Hop Business: Make sure you check on over at HoneyBearz Designs for the whole lineup and to see today's sponsor and prize package. Also Lisa is given away some prizes at the FB group...for the whole hop. You can find that here. And last but not least check out the wonderful creation that Madge has for you today! See you tomorrow~

Welcome to Day 1 of the 12 Days of Christmas Blog Hop!

Boy, do I have some great things in store for you over the next 12 days. I am in a 12 Day of Christmas Blog Hop. So why don't you commit to hop along with us? There will be some FABULOUS Christmas projects over the next 12 days. I also have some blog posts showing some projects for the wonderful My Cricut Craft Room where I am a new Design Team Member. Be sure and follow me or sign up by email so you will not miss any of the crafty goodness this month! By the way, my regularly scheduled posts may be suspended while all this craft awesomeness is going on! Thanks for your support of my blog.

So for my Day 1 Project I thought I would let you see the Christmas card photo that I created in Photoshop Elements 7. Now, I am a paper crafter/scrapbooker at heart but I like to dabble in digital for certain things and I really wanted to create my own Christmas Card this year, no template, no pre-made from any particular photo site just pure total creation from my own little mind.

                                                                                                                                       

If you are new to Photoshop and need somewhere to get some help in figuring it all out Jessica Sprague is an awesome site and has lots of help and digital goodies for purchase. A wealth of help and goodies can be found over there!!

So without further adieu...here is our Christmas Photo Card. This is my hubby and I and our 7 grandchildren! These are the most precious treasures in all the world to me!

Blog Hop Business: Our wonderful hostess of this blog hop...Lisa over at Honey Bearz Designs has some really cool sponsors of this 12 day hop...so make sure you read all the requirements to be able to win some great prizes! 

Now if you will hop on over to the greatly artistically talented Madge she has some awesome projects to share over the next 12 days as all of our designers do! I am soooo excited to see what everyone has to share. I know I have some really cool projects planned for you.

Join the Fun...Mickey Fun that is!!

Over at My Cricut Craft Room today you can see all sorts of Mickey projects. Back in May my grandson had a Mickey Mouse birthday party. I have some of those projects for you to view today. I wish I had taken better pictures. I had no idea at the time I was going to use them for a design team project. They are mighty cute though!

**click on pictures to view larger and see the detail.

Banner:

Table Decor:

Party Hat:

I used the Mickey Mouse Cricut cartridges to create all of these projects...I apologize again for not being able to give your specific details of each item.

So head on over to My Cricut Craft Room and check out all the Mickey Projects posted there. And to all a Magical Day!!

Turkey Shirt

I saw this really cute shirt last year on Pinterest and wanted to make it for my granddaughter. Well, not enough time last year to do that kind of stuff but a whole different ball game this year. So, I got all the stuff and made this cute shirt for her today. I am very excited that I now have the time to be able to do crafty projects for my family and my home.

First picture is the pic from Pinterest:

                                              

And then here is my project...my sewing machine is not working at the moment so I was unable to put her name on it or applique around the turkey body...so I did a hand stitch. I really liked how it turned out. I think it has lots of character.

A close up of the turkey!

Taking a 2 week Vacation Break....

Just wanted to let all my readers know that I am going to take a 2 week vacation break from Monday Menus. Hubby is on vacation for 2 weeks and we are going to be in and out and also going out of town to NC to visit family for a few days. So check back on Monday, November 26 for a weekly menu.

My First Post for My Cricut Craft Room

Hello my crafty friends!  Welcome to Theme Day Thursday over at My Cricut Craft Room. We were asked to make a Thanksgiving Home Decor or Table setting project today.

I am so happy to share with you my first creation as a new member of Erica's team over at My Cricut Craft Room. I have so wanted to do this for sooo long. So you get to see lots more of my creations in the future because this is just the motivation I need to keep me crafting all the time, even when I am all by myself. I will let you in on a little secret...I hate to scrapbook/craft alone and can get soooo much more accomplished when I am with others. They give me lots of motivation. So just knowing that there will be so many people looking at my posts and creations will keep that "mo-jo" flowing!

Now on to my project.  I wanted to make a Thanksgiving wreath for my front door but did not have a wreath on hand. So I went looking on Pinterest, one of my favorite places to go for inspiration, and found something similar to my project. So here are my pictures with the details:



I started by cutting out 3 circles at 9" out of chipboard. Then, I cut circles out of my 2 chosen pieces of patterned paper. They are DCWV Doodlin' Around Stack. I inked them with CTMH chocolate ink and then adhered them to the chipboard.

The wreath hanging on my front door. Gather Together was cut from the
Thanksgiving Seasonal cartridge. Sorry, I don't know the size because I cut it at a crop long ago.
Gotta love when someone lets you use a cartridge you like!

Mr. Turkey was cut from Create a Critter at 5". I stickled up his feathers, hat, and wattle.

The pumpkin was also cut from Create a Critter at 5".
Again, I used some stickles to spruce him up!

The cornucopia was cut from Paper Doll Dress Up. I cut the image at 5"
and used stickles on all the fruit and the horn of plenty.

I finished off my "wreath" by hot glueing a length (I forgot to measure) of teal and chocolate ribbon to the backs of the two top circles.

Hope you got some inspiration from my Thanksgiving decor'. Be sure to hop over to My Cricut Craft Room to see the rest of today's awesomeness from my Design Team Sisters!!

Late Monday Menu Post!

Well, I am late with this week's Monday Menu post. I was gone or taking care of some important matters most of the day yesterday. So, here is this week's menu and a little critique for you.










*Monday
Tacos
Refried Beans w/Cheese

*My critique of Monday's dinner: I tried a different brand of taco shells, a different brand of sauce, and had made my own homemade taco seasoning...all failures! My hubby hated it all. Which made for a very tenseful (is that a word?) dinner last night. :(


Tuesday
Italian Sausage Sandwiches w/ Carmelized Onions
French Fries

Wednesday
*Alice Springs Chicken (like Outback's)
Broccoli
Roasted Potatoes
*Pea Salad (my hubby loves this)
Rolls

Thursday
Pizza!! Yippeee..

And we are going out of town for 3 days. A nice get away just to be together.