I hope these make a nice birthday gift

My sister's birthday is Tuesday, I know - I am late getting this together. Having a birthday on the first can be hard on family as you get so busy with Thanksgiving and then preparing for Christmas that you forget to turn the calendar over and then it is too late.

You already know I am in the gift tag making mode so I figured why not. Barbie can always use gift tags. Notice the Joy and the Peace tags are made from the same exact piece of card stock and what a difference using different ink makes. The faithful Altoids tin came in vary handy. I love the poinsettia from The Gift of Love stamp set by CTMH. I used vineyard berry and ponderosa pine card stock to make the flowers. I thought they were very elegant looking. Maybe I did go a little overboard with the prisma glitter. I just can't help myself. The holly border around the tin has prisma glitter on the berries and they sure look GREEN, don't they? IRL they actually look gold. You are probably tired of seeing my stamp set called "The Season Defined" by CTMH, I just can't get enough of it.

My sister doesn't check my blog, in fact she probably doesn't even know that I have one so I don't think she will spy her birthday present before it gets to her in the mail.
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Our new baby girl

I went to get a package of bird seed and look what I came home with.
My friend raises these parrotlets and her husband gave me one last year. When I lost my cockatiel last year he was going to give me another one, but it was a male, so today I finally got the female I had been wanting. A baby girl for my little Stormy to play with. My DD has Stormy on her shoulder, my DH has the new baby girl on his shoulder. Stormy and the new baby are Parrotlets. They are parrots only they get no bigger than 4 inches tall. Stormy is full grown now, but I really don't know how old the baby is or if she will grow any more. She is a beautiful teal color (actually she has 3 or 4 colors) while Stormy is a pastel blue with purple on his back. Stormy used to like to sit on our shoulders. He bites too hard for us to take him out any longer. He thinks he is an Amazon Parrot. You know one of those BIG parrots and he bites like one. We put the birds to bed for the night and I can hear them talking behind their covers. How cute.

We need to come up with a name for the baby girl. Our cockatiel was Sunshine and Stormy is our little boy. I am thinking we want to stay with a weather related name. DD suggested weatherby. Nah, she doesn't look like a weatherby. I am picturing the principal from Archie comics. If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment.
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Fun Stuff I worked on this week

I mentioned before that I am doing a secret Santa at work and I wanted to try out some of the cute projects I have seen around on blogs and websites.
The first two photos are of a Christmas count- down calendar. Found the idea for this on Tara Kenyon's blog. She has photos of a workshop she did earlier this month. Check out all her great ideas and creative artwork. The ribbon is to be turned around and tied in a box below the saying "days until Christmas" because it keeps sliding apart and ends up flat on the desk.

This second set of photos I am most pleased with. Remember those tags I made the other day? I made a box to go with them or should I say for them to go in? I still want to make some more tags, but I also want to check out Michael's I have some 50% off coupons that are burning a hole in my pocket. I didn't really brave the crowds yesterday.


This last one is a box I found the tutuorial on Tresa Black's Blog. The only difference is that I glued my top together by leaving a small flap where she cut hers. You can see the adhesive from the outside, but have you ever heard the saying: "Don't sweat the small stuff"? Well, that's me. I am still happy with the box and the Nuggets inside.
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Black Friday

What does that mean? I have never understood that term. I hadn't even heard it before my daughter started working in retail. Does anyone know how long it has been around?

I am sitting here in my jammies - should I be up and dressed and driving to some store somewhere? I think I need to go to JoAnns for some more fleece.
A few weeks ago I was at a training session where the instructor got chilly so she put on this poncho type thingy, after class someone commented and she told us:

Take a piece of fleece 2 yards long
Fold in half lengthwise
ON THE FOLD - cut 3 inches wide (6 if unfolded) and 1 yard long
Around all the edges (except the 6 inch cut up the center) cut in from the edge about 3 inches spaced 1 inch or so apart to make a fringe.

Oh my gosh is it easy. It drapes over your shoulders and stays put. So far I have managed to do dishes and not get it wet. If I can figure out how to photograph it any better than this without actually modeling it, I will. You don't have to sew anything and it makes great gifts for less than $20 if you get your fleece on sale or use a coupon. I am thinking this will make a great Secret Santa gift. I would love to make them for all my family. Guess I better get dressed and go join the crowds at Town Center.
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Gift Tags Galore

Hi all, I hope your Thanksgiving was all you hoped for. Mine was very nice. Would you believe DH and I put together a turkey dinner and I still had time to make ALL THESE TAGS.

I am quite pleased with all I got done. Tell me, I am participating in the secret Santa at the school where I work, would these make a nice gift - not all of them or at least not all at one time? For the first four days we are supposed to give a gift each day with a cost of $1 to $4, on the last day we are supposed to give a gift with a cost of about $20.00. Since I don't know these ladies very well, I wouldn't want to offend anyone. We may love them, but we are into paper crafts.

Each one of these has a tiny bit of prisma glitter on it and you cannot see any of it in these photos. That is probably a good thing. It means I didn't go overboard. I need to find or make something that I can put these in. I tried the little box that you put the dividers in and then put an acetate sleeve over it, but that wasn't big enough. Maybe I will make an origami box and put a smattering of tags in it. The box could be a gift in itself.

I guess I will go try to put together an origami box.
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JOY Again

Does this look familiar? It should - it's the third one I have made. The first one was with Evensong papers, the second with Aspen, this one uses Jingle. I really like the way the Merry Christmas came out with the rock & roll technique. Notice the shaker technique on the O. I also picked up some sparkly circle things at Michael's. You may not even be able to see them, but check out Sarah's Paper Tray blog. She used some red ones. Her card is beautiful. It is a wreath hanging on a door. She cased it from our friend, Cibele, over at Flower Foot Designs. Cibele has a video tutorial on this link about making the wreath. I am most anxious to try it, but I think I need to watch the video a few more times. My snowflakes are transparancies punched then covered in prisma glitter. The center of the snowflakes are dew drops. I covered the J in the red polka dot paper and then in the prisma glitter. Only if you look closely can you see the polka dots. I used the Rock & Roll technique on the Cheer sentiment too.
It's getting late and I have a lot to do tomorrow so I will say good night.
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Poorman's Turtles- Not for Cibele or Sarah

Oh my goodness, these are almost as good as the real thing. These are called Poor man's Turtles.

I found the recipe on some one's blog a few weeks ago and HAD, just HAD to try them. Really wish I had included the name on the recipe that I copied, but I didn't, so I can't give credit.

The base is one of those little square pretzels. You lay them on the cookie sheet, hire a kid to unwrap all the Rollo's (Find one that doesn't like chocolate). bake on the cookie sheet in a 325 degree oven for 5 minutes, as soon as they come out of the oven place a pecan on top and smoosh (not too hard just very lightly). If you hold the pecan at the two ends rather than in the middle you get less chocolate under your fingernails.
Try not to eat them all in one sitting.

Oh yeah, in case you are wondering about the Cibele and Sarah reference - they are always getting on me about showing food shots as they are on perpetual diets. I could take a page from their books, but what fun is that?
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remake of a layout

You have already seen the right side of this layout before, but I put the photo on it and made a new companion piece to go with it. The original companion piece I used as a hostess gift and then sold copies of it to the other ladies at the gathering. I changed this one subtly added the center photo, used different papers added brads to the corners and put a couple teeny tiny ones. Any way this is all I have accomplished today.

I think I will go paint my bathroom. Seriously, I picked up a sampler at the big box store and I want to try it out and see how it looks before I paint the entire room. I am so glad I did that before or I would have a lavender bathroom that doesn't match anything. This time I picked the palest yellow I could find. we'll see how that looks.
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Santa's List & Stocking Style

How do you know what a card is going to turn out to look like? I spent quite a while stamping, coloring and cutting and gluing just to get this card and it is not what I had anticipated. I got these stamp sets a few months ago and wanted to play with them. This must be why I haven't played much in the scrap room lately.
I did finish a layout that I had been working on about a month ago. Maybe I will take photos of that. I am quite pleased with that. Of course, it is starring my princess, Casey. While I was putting the layout in her album I decided to move stuff around, change around the timeline of layouts and put in the new SnapEase Album System. That is a pretty cool tool. It wouldn't have taken me nearly as long to take out some photo storage pages and to flip a page protector right side up, (yes I actually put a page protector in her album upside down - grins - ). With the SnapEase system in place, I can add to or remove pages from her album with ease. Okay, do I sound like a commercial? I am going to post this and go take photos of the layout I just finished. Check back later.

Digital Image by Louby Loo

Isn't this guy precious? His name is Cappuccino. I made two thank you cards using this image. I colored in the foam with an eggshell Copic and I thought it needed something else so I used a stipple brush to make it look like it had cinnamon on it, but now it just looks moldy.
To find this image go to Paper Craft Planet and check out the group Digital Delights by Louby Loo. In fact, while you are there check out more groups. If there isn't one that fits your style you can create one.
I am going there right now and check out some of the other groups.
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Easel card

My friend, Cibele, had the neatest easel card on her blog. Check it out.
I just had to try one.
As you can see I made it a size that would go into one of the CD envelopes. I love playing with these little elves. Aren't they just the cutest? I didn't have the Copics in the colors I needed for this paper so I had to use my CTMH markers. They are good markers and match all our papers so nicely, they just are a little rougher on our papers than the copics.
I am trying to find just the right Christmas card for this year so every chance I get to play I have been taking it. Snow will not be in the picture since I live in Florida, but I like the easel card idea.
I have some work to do before I can call it a night. Listen to me getting ready for bed and it is only 7 pm. 9:30 rolls around way to quickly though.
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