1.04.2008

Holy moly, I'm a blog slacker

A month without a post? Whoa. Not abnormal, but certainly not ok! lol

So, I'll get a little update going. We had a GREAT Christmas! Both my sister and my brother came to Virginia from California and they got to stay with us for the first few days they were here. We had SO much fun! Ian also brought his girlfriend, Teryn, who is this sweet, funny, down-to-earth girl. She is SO perfect for my brother. Ahhh, young love. heh ;) So we did the usual Christmas-y stuff: Christmas Eve at Dave's parent's house in the morning and my Aunt Valerie's house in the evening, and Christmas day at my mom's with the kids and my grandma. This year we did something a little different at my mom's house as far as presents go. My mom gave each of us kids a $25 gift card to Michael's as well as the name of someone else in the family. The idea was that we go to Michael's and use the money to buy something that we could make for that person and that would be our present to them. Of course every year my mom also does stockings for each of us (including those married into the family and dating us) and includes some of the coolest, unique things. Example...in my grandma's stocking this year she put a pair of racing grannies. Yes, racing grannies:
















Isn't that awesome!? lol You literally wind them up, put them down on the ground, and watch them go! Totally awesome. And also, if you look closely, they're um...anatomically correct from the waist up. Bwahaha!

I also got the most incredibly awesome sock monkey slippers along with monkey tissues, a pen, and tons of other goodies (B's nickname is monkey if you didn't already know).

And then, for the piece de resistance. The kids and I got together and decided that we wanted to make a little collage for my mom. We had to put my childhood dog, Cassie, down last year and we wanted to get a little memorial for my mom because they were so close. She was my mom's best friend. So we got her this:
















And we got THIS awesome reaction from her:














Ahh! Couldn't have asked for better! It's a 16 x 20 photo of Cassie made up of tons of pictures of us as kids, us now, pictures of Cassie from when she was alive, and other pictures of our family. I mean, this thing was truly amazing! THIS is why I love Christmas and buying presents for other people. I love getting an honest to goodness, gut-wrenching reaction from people, KNOWING that they love it. It makes my heart happy. :)

And my favorite present from Christmas this year? This gleaming, heavy, wonderful, perfect piece of metal from Aunt and her family:



















*Squeal* Isn't it beautiful!? I've been coveting and dreaming about owning this beauty and now it's mine! It's actually mine! I'm so glad my Aunt works at Williams-Sonoma! hehe She also gave us a wonderful, heavy-duty set of chili bowls and a jar of chili starter along with it, so guess what we had for dinner last week? ;) It was SO good and I seriously got giddy using this pot. lol I'm not even kidding you. What was even better is that AFTER I made the chili my sweet hubby cleaned the pot for me! Mmm hmmm. Perfection. *sigh*

Alrighty...so aside from Christmas I've also been busy preparing my design team entry for
Create my Keepsake. All non-scrappy people, prepare to be confused. This site is totally awesome and all the scrappy ladies on it are wonderful! Their monthly kits are to DIE for! No kidding...they're thoughtfully put together and chock FULL of great scrappy goods. So when the DT call for 2008 went out I thought about trying out for oh, I dunno...3 seconds and then promptly began preparing my entry. Heh. We had to design one layout, one card, and one altered item. And here are my designs in all their scrappy glory.

This was my altered item (a 16 x 20 canvas). Actually, this is the gift we made for Dave's parents for Christmas, but no one besides the family had seen it and it fit the call perfectly so I used it. ;)




















This was my layout entry. I used a picture of my niece, Samantha, that I'd been wanting to scrap since she'd been born (um, 2.5 years ago...lol) and didn't really know what to do with. I totally whipped this one up in like MAYBE 15 minutes and I LOVE how it turned out!





And this was my card entry. We had to use an everyday object in a unique way and I chose a couple of objects, actually. I used a photo corner for her skirt, metal swirls for her hair, and I cut some American Crafts stars in half for her crown. :)




















Soooooooooo is that like the LONGEST blog post from me in history or what!? ;) I'll be back soon to update some more, but this is the last week before school starts so I'm also planning on studying a bit. LAST SEMESTER BAYBEEEEEEEEEEE!! Wish me luck!
 
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