Another amazing Christmas

Ooooops, thought I posted this last week!!!


Once again, I have had an amazing Christmas. The best part to me is family! Although this was the first year I have been without any grandparents, I still had the memories of them in my heart and plenty of family still surrounding me. Christmas Eve is spent with the DH's family, which is much bigger than mine. We have a great time with them, but being around my family is so much different...we are all a little more goofy and there is much more laughter and silliness. Christmas is my favorite time of year. I love celebrating the birth of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ! I feel like everyone is so full of joy and happiness this time of year. It really is a magical time to me. I am very blessed, and I thank God for his ultimate sacrifice.


So, here is a list of the goodies I received for Christmas...DH bought me a new digital camera that I picked out (Nikon P90-point and shoot with all the manual settings of a SLR camera), an extra battery and a camera bag along with a few other little things. My parents bought me 10, yes I said ten, Cricut Cartridges and some 3-D pens!!! They got me some of the cartridges that were on my wish list that I just wouldn't buy on my own. Mom also got me this really gorgeous basket; it is a root carving...made from the root of a Chinese Fir Tree. It is very interesting and unique; I just love it. Then my Aunt and Uncle surprised me with an Olympus E-600 (a Digital SLR camera)!!!! I was floored!!! So now I have to pick up my game and learn how to use it LOL. My choosing the P90 was to help with that because it had all the manual settings like a SLR, but not the lenses and quality of a SLR. I am truly blessed to have the family I have.

I thought I would share with you one of our goofy Christmas traditions. My Aunt started getting these funny hats from her sister quite a few years ago and so she brings them out and we all have a good time trying them on and getting pictures. We spend a good half hour belly laughing at these and how everyone looks with them on. Here are a couple of pics of our posing with the hats...



I hope you all had a blessed Christmas and I wish you the very best of New Years.

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A Thank You...!

You know these days it seems hard to find a teenager with a good sense of work ethic or one with a giving heart. Well today I found one…well I already knew him, but I have gained a new respect for him and was proud to know him. This may seem little to most, but it just touched my heart, so I thought I would share.

To make a long story short…because of all the snow we had over the weekend and the lack of direct sunlight on my driveway and that the four wheel drive is not working on my Envoy, I got stuck trying to get out of my driveway this morning. While trying to get names of people I could call to plow my driveway a friend offered up her teenage son to come shovel my driveway. He showed up and shoveled my driveway and when he was done he told me to call him if I had anymore problems and he would come right back. I handed him $20 and he refused to take it and said “I consider it community service”. SERIOUSLY?! A 15 year old boy just turned down twenty bucks AND called it community service! I begged him to take it and he just absolutely refused. I told him I didn’t expect him to do this for nothing and he just shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.

I decided that I would make him a thank you card and go ahead and send the money in it anyway. Good guys deserve good things! He is one of the good guys. So here is the card I whipped up this afternoon…I thought the snowflakes border was fitting J.

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It's official, I am snowed in!!

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Snow, snow and more snow!!

So here it is...this is what 4 inches of snow looks like over my front yard display (dubbed "the Guys")! My Dad made them for me aren't they awesome? Ok, so really that is not why I was posting...but the snow is!! I got home at 3:00 and we had 2 1/4 inches and then by 3:30 we had 3 inches; checked again at 4:00 and had 4 inches. It is 5:40 right now and we are at 5 1/2 inches and it is STILL snowing!! These pics are from 4:00...

Here are the pics from 5:00...

OK...it is now 9:00, we have over 8 inches and it is still pouring down. The weather reports aren't saying it will stop until 2:00 - 3:00 am...holy moly! Here are some shots from around 8:00 when we had 7 or so inches...

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Christmas Cards

Well, this may be a bit premature, but these are my Christmas cards; they went out Monday. For your viewing pleasure...

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Christmas Craft Projects

Here are some of the craft projects I have done for Christmas presents...

Glass ornaments:
As you can see here, I have two types of ornaments. I took clear glass ornaments and used the floor wax technique to adhere glitter to the inside of the ball. For the frosted glass ornament I cut snowflakes using the Cricut and wonder film from PK Glitz adhered them to the outside of the balls and "glitzed" with PK Glitz glitter.



better pic of the frosted glass ornament. I just love the way these
turned out!



And here we have a glass etched mug and canister. The mug has been filled with a cellophane bag of marshmallows and some chocolate covered peppermint sticks. The canister is filled with homemade hot chocolate.

It was really hard to get good pics that show the etching...I hope you can see it.



maybe this shows up better...


Thanks for looking! I hope you have enjoyed and been inspired by something. If you have questions, please feel free to ask!

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Radio City Christmas Spectacular!!!

My parents came to visit this weekend. We had a fabulous time. Friday night we went to 21 and Main, a gourmet restaurant in Elkin, and stuffed ourselves silly. The food is fabulous. Saturday we went to see the Rockettes in Winston Salem. I purchased tickets for my parents birthdays (yes both in December!). We had a great time! The show was great, but we were disappointed that it was only an hour and twenty minutes LOL. We could have handled another 30 minutes or so J. The show started at 4:00 so we left at 2:00 to make sure we had plenty of time to allow for traffic, parking and finding our seats. We got there in plenty of time and then they started the show late anyway! Prior to the show these girls came around taking complimentary pictures (no, really truly complimentary! – OK, this may not be new, but I have never heard of it before). I have included the one of me and my husband. They would scan these cards and then take your picture and then tell you to go online 24 hours later, enter the code on the card and your picture is there. It can be saved, printed, emailed, whatever…all for nothing. Anyway, I thought this one turned out pretty good and I hate having my picture taken…I like to be behind the camera.

I think I got some great shots of the show, but haven’t downloaded them to my computer yet, but I will post some later. I may try to get to it tonight. Anyway, after the show we ate at a local pizza restaurant and then when we got home Mom and I started crafting!! We had a blast. She is not a crafty person, but she has a great eye and can do it, she just doesn’t take the time to do it. She helped me do a lot of my planned crafty Christmas presents. She liked them so much we had to run to Wal-Mart to buy some for her to do. We stayed up until 2:00 am crafting! I am going to take some pics and post them too, when I have time. They left this morning around 11:30 and since I had already missed church I decided continued on with my day of crafting. I got a lot done. I still have several things to get done, but I am doing good on time right now. Well, that is all I have to share for now. I hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas season so far. I LOVE this time of year…it really is the most wonderful time of the year J. Happy crafting and Merry Christmas!

Updated with pics...

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A day of shopping

The Holiday Market was in Greensboro NC this weekend. So my friend, Susan, and I decided we need to see what all the fuss was about and we got our butts up early on Saturday and drove over an hour to get there. She picked me up at 7:30 and we hit the road. First we had to stop for breakfast at Chick-fil-a…super yummmmmmmm! We got to the market around 10:00; traffic was a bear, but boy, was it worth it!! We spent about 5 hours at the Market and then we grabbed a bite at Steak n’ Shake. After that we hit Garden Ridge. This was my first ever trip to Garden Ridge, but I promise it won’t be my last! We spent well over an hour paroozing around there. I was able to buy a lot of things there that I need to make my Christmas gifts this year, so that was a huge plus. When we were finished there we popped back in the car and headed towards home, but first we had a few more stops on the way J…you really didn’t think we were done, did you? We went to AC Moore and bought a few items, then on to Hanes Mall and hit a few stores there. Then it was time for our 6:00 dinner reservation at Arigato (Japanese Steakhouse – the best in the area!!). We stuffed ourselves silly and then hit Krispy Kreme (after all that shopping for ourselves we had to bring something home for the family J), Sam’s, Michael’s and Target. I KNOW…we were just glutens for punishment. We finally had enough, our bodies and pockets could take no more! We headed home and Susan dropped me off around 10:00. I put my stuff in their respective rooms and hit the sack! I slept hard. I thought I would share a pic of the two goofballs we are…these are the fun hats we bought at Garden Ridge…we just couldn’t resist LOL! We are already talking about doing this again next year! Can’t wait!

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Birthday Present for 5 Year Old Niece

So my outgoing, energetic five year old niece tells me about a month ago that she wants a “pink guitar with real strings” for her birthday. Well, after searching around I found a guitar that was the right size and the right price (I mean she is five!). Unfortunately it wasn’t pink. As I was standing there contemplating whether I wanted to spend the time spray painting it and worrying it may damage the instrument, a light bulb came on! PINK VINYL!!! BUTTERFLIES, FLOWERS, GLITTER!!! CRIIIIIIIIIIIIIICUT!!!!!! That was it! I knew exactly what to do to girly it up. Here is what I came up with…I thought it would be cool to put her first and middle name on it too…isn’t her name the perfect rock star name? Emma Raye, rocker chick. Isn’t it the coolest?! She sure thought so. Scored some points for Uncle Alan and Aunt Brandi! Here are before and after pics…

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