Beautiful Cards Received

Aren't these card BEAUTIFUL! They were done by my extremely talented cousin, Debbie. Check out her blog for more of her wonderful creations, http://debscreativeheart.blogspot.com/ .
She is soooo talented and I am so envious. Everything she makes looks so professional. She does it all: knits (and I'm sure she probably crochets too), calligraphy, stamping and combines that with graphics and or wording from her computer, and amateur photographer and I'm sure more that I don't even know about. She has more talent in her pinky than I do in my whole body. I tried knitting and crocheting and hated both. I do like to cross-stitch, but haven't done that in quite awhile. But even in my stamping - I don't have half the talent or creativity she does.

Here's to a Very Merry Christmas

Jacob returned home from Basic Training on the 20th and we all went out later that day to pick out our tree (he wanted to buy us a real one this year vs putting up the artificial one). Well, he and George picked out the tree and we got home and went to put it up and discovered it was a lot taller than we thought and wouldn't fit in front of the window where we normally put it, so we had to move some furniture around and put it in the middle of the room against one wall where the ceiling peaked to get it up and it barely fit there. We measured and the ceiling was 12ft. at that point and the tree ended up once in the stand to be about 11.5ft. Harold wouldn't agree to buy a larger stand for it and went and got 10 lb. bags of cat litter to put around the base to keep it from toppling over. Well, it made it thru Christmas, but this morning when they got up they discovered it had fallen over during the night (now keep in mind I did not go to bed until about 3:30am and it happened by the time Jacob was up around 8am), by the time I got up they had all the ornaments off of it (only one broke - one I got in an ornament exchange)... Oh yes, the cats DID NOT knock the tree down as they were shut-up in the basement for the night. So this is the earliest we have ever had our tree down, we usually don't take it down until some time in Jan. and have even been known to go into the 1st week of Feb. before taking it down. I figure once I put up all the decorations I want to enjoy them for a while. So I procrastinate on it, but this year I had no choice. We will definitely be getting a new tree stand (since this one cracked) for next year.





Well anyway, Santa paid us a visit and left some lovely gifts. The boys and I each got a new camera and are having fun taking pics of everything in sight. You know me - I usually have my camera in hand and if I don't, I have my cellphone and use the camera on it for lack of not having mine on me. The digital screen on my camera has a cracked effect going on on the display image, so I decided to ask Santa for a new one and to upgrade me and he very gratiously did. I now have a Sony DSLR-A200 and a 75mm-300mm lens to also put on it (however that one is on backorder). (Note: most of these pics are using my old camera as taken before I got the new one). The boys each got a Casio Exilim - Jacob a 10.1mp and George an 8.1 mp. Harold got the double volume books of Willie & Joe (Army cartoons from WWII) and was very happy with that and several other books he had on his list. So Santa was good to us all this year - Again!




I didn't decorate a lot this year, so only a few of my tons of junk were put out, so this was pretty much it for this year. Li'l Bit proclaimed Santa's lap as hers, Tigger and Angel had to settle for the floor or on a chair with us.


Oh yes, I had a Secret Santa this year that left a little something on my door Christmas morning and the boys discovered it for me. It was determined that my friend Mary was the sneaky culprit (it was a toss-up between her and Margarethe). Here is a picture of that surprise gift - isn't it cute! It is filled with fibers, star brads and eyelets in red and green and the little note on it says "In case of emergency - Break Glass!"

Welcome, Cole T. Russell

A special welcome to the newest member of the family, our great-nephew - Cole T. Russell. He was born Dec. 14th, 8 lbs. 1 oz., 20 inches. Isn't he adorable. Risa is doing well and I am sure Patrick is excited about now officially being a BIG Brother.

Open House items

Here are the items I made to sell at a recent Home Demo Open House at a friends house. I did pretty good this time and sold most of it. The pails on the end are filled with decorated peppermint patties and mini Hershey's candy and they are then put on lollipop sticks. some of the peppermint patties were sold individually on and off the stick. The Santa and Snowmen are wrapped around small Hershey's candy bars and Kit Kats. The rectangular tins are ones I got at Michaels and decorated and the round tins had an M (for M&M) on them and I covered the M and added ribbon and a tag. I also made some other gift card holders (above the Santa candy) and also decorated a pringles can and a clear paint can as gift containers and decorated a couple of gift bags. The jars I got at Ikea and decorated, added ribbon and a tag and filled with M&M's plain or peanut and Hershey's Kisses. What I had left over has been used as gifts and or door prizes for my Red Hat groups.

I found these pails with the fur at Target along with the others and just had to use them for my Red Hat group as gifts for the Queen Mother and Co-Queens of my Scarlet Sophisticates group and had to decorate in red and purple, of course. (Note: I had to keep them put up high as my cats kept wanting to steal them to play with the fur on them). The jars I gave to the girls that rode up to the Christmas party with me and gave one as a door prize. That function was on Sat. and we had a great time. My Busy Bee group had their party last Monday and I gave one of the pails that was left from the open house to use as one of our Christmas Bingo Door Prizes.

Jake's 1st Birthday

Here is the invitation I made for my niece, Roxie, for her son Jake's 1st birthday. We picked out the stamp set and later she went out shopping and found the napkin (below) and decorations to match. They were perfect. She also made his birthday cake and put a small dump truck on it. It was sooooo cute. I just did the front of the cards and decided to stamp all the images in the set multiple times and sent her the stamp/colored images and she added them to the inside with birthday party info.

I just had to share this picture of Jake eating his birthday cake - Dove right in didn't he...too cute!