Another day, another page

Another page from the Christmas journal. This time it's Christmas Dinner. The label things come from a digital kit called 'La Cucina'. Journalling up the side is what we ate.

Christmas Journal

I was having difficulty working out how to get all these pictures onto one page. A quick visit to Page Maps and I was sorted. Not that they had anything quite like this, but just looking at those skethes gave me enough ideas to work out how to fit them in!

Papers are 3 Bugs in a Rug 'Oh what fun'
LIttle stickers came from Accessorise last Christmas
Title letters are from a digi alpha by Ellie Lash which I printed and cut out.

Some pages from my Christmas Album

I managed to finish another couple of pages of the Christmas 2009 Album. I'm a bit behind as you can see! The page above shows the food from the 'Feast before the Feast' on 12th December, there is a journalling tag inside the paperbag that makes up the album page.
The second page shows me and DH out and about on the 19th December. Snow had fallen late on Saturday 18th and we thought it would be gone by very soon, however we still have the snow an ice today 29th December and it is not showing any sign of leaving.

The Simple Woman's Daybook - New Year Edition

FOR TODAY...

Outside my window... frozen snow and lots of ice

I am thinking... about making my Christmas Book, photos printed just need to get on with it now!

I am thankful for... everyone having travelled safely over Christmas.

I am wearing... the usual cords, big woolly sweater and angora socks.

I am remembering... how nice it was to spend time with my boys.

I am going... to take my MIL to the hairdressers tomorrow, if I can get the car out of the yard.

I am currently reading...The Pioneer Woman Cookbook

I am hoping... that the ice will thaw tomorrow.

On my mind... whether we will be able to visit our relatives on New Year's Day, they live up a farm road and we might not be able to get up there.

Noticing that... I am enjoying having the house a quiet day at home.

Pondering these words... A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other. ~Author Unknown


From the kitchen... Delia's Bubble & Squeak with sliced ham

Around the house... It's nice not to have much housework to do as everything was tidied up before Christmas.

One of my favorite things... Christmas cake

From my picture journal...

Ice in our yard

Good Day Sunshine

I found a new challenge blog the other day when I was browsing on Ruth's (Altered Geisha) blog. It's called Let's Get Shabby and Challenge 7 is to use the image above and, because it is summer in Australia, create something Summery.

I made a thank you card with a Kathy Black, Sloppy Poppy and some Tim Holtz distress swiping!
I hope the sun shines on you wherever you are.

Some of my Christmas Presents

I thought I would share a little slide show of some of the lovely gifts I received from family and friends.

Somewhere over the Rainbow

This week the Soartful challenge gave us the image of a 'chaise' to alter, I thought I'd give it a colourful makeover with a touch of magic and rainbow colours.

Image of girl and background by Art Freebies
Stars, 'curtain' & bird by Irene Alexeeva

It's Christmas

This is my favourite photo of the day - me and my boys!

Something New

Last Friday the DCM team came up with a challenge that moves us away from Christmas cards, phew! I decided to make a New Year card as this is a celebration that is particularly important in Scotland. I will take this card to the relatives we visit for lunch on New Year's Day.

New Beginnings

As we are coming to the end of the year and fast approaching the start of not only a new year but a new decade, I’d like to see some cards celebrating something new.

It could be the New Year, a New Home, a New Addition to the family or even a New Day.

The stamp came in a swap, I think it is a Crafty Secrets stamp sent by Angelnorth.
Coloured with copics, text created in PSE.

Wishing all my blog readers a very happy festive season.

Dear Santa...

Over at the Soartful Challenge, the image Jeanette has provided is this pen, so I wrote a little note to Santa...


with all this snowy weather the thought of returning to warm and sunny Italy is very appealing.

Simple Woman's Christmas Day Book

The Simple Woman's Daybook

FOR TODAY... from Janice's Daybook

Outside my window... blue skies, bare branches, frozen snow.


I am wearing... lots of layers and my red cashmere cardigan.


I am remembering... the time when we were snowed in for a week and had no electricity for three days :o

I am going... to check the weather before I travel tomorrow.


I am currently reading... The Lover of the Grave (a Lydmouth Mystery) by Andrew Taylor


I am hoping... that the weather will be kind and my mum, sister and great-aunt will be able to travel to us for Christmas.


On my mind... the weather!


Noticing that... we had three Redwings on our holly bush yesterday. They are a type of Thrush that comes to our country from Scandanavia for the winter and they love to eat berries.


Pondering these words... "There is no ideal Christmas; only the one Christmas you decide to make as a reflection of your values, desires, affections, traditions." Bill McKibben


From the kitchen... I bought my turkey this morning and I need to make the second batch of Stem Ginger ice-cream tonight.

Around the house... must finish wrapping the presents tonight.

One of my favorite things...cashmere ;)

From my picture journal...

Muffin in the snow

Here is a pic of my son's dog, Muffin out in the snow.

Snow!

So last week we had frost and this week we have snow! Quite a lot of snow fell last night and a bit this morning, but it cleared away so we went up to deliver pressies to our neighbours and I took a few pics along the way.

I don't mind snow when I don't have to go out in the car, but hope it starts to thaw tonight as the roads will be treacherous otherwise. Hope you are all keeping safe and warm if you have snow.

Frost!

It was very frosty at the weekend and I managed to get a few photographs which I made into a layout for one of the Digital Craft Cottage challenges - using your Macro lens.

On the 13th Day of Christmas...

Of course, I know that it's not the 13th day of Christmas as the countdown doesn't start till Christmas! However, it kind of starts today at our house as, every year we have my DH's cousins over before Christmas for a lunch of cold ham and turkey, salads and roast potatoes followed by lots of lovely dessert. Today was the day and it co-incides nicely with this week's challenge over on Bubbly Scrumptious Challenge Blog which The Food of Christmas.

I've created an LO showing my dining table before everyone arrived and some pictures of some of the food we ate, with apologies to my veggie friends.

Papers - La Cucina
Snowflake Elements - Ellie Lash, Winter Wonderland
Template - By Sine

Dancing with Joy

This is the lovely image provided by Soartful Challenges and the theme is Dancing with Joy

I used a lovely kit by Ellie Lash 'Pixie-mini' which provided the word art and the wings. The other papers and elements come from Ziggle Designs.

First Christmas Flashback

No, not mine! This is my DS1, the one who is getting married next year. As his birthday is in January he was able to take in all that was going on on his first Christmas in 1987.

The story begins...

Yesterday I showed you the front cover of my Christmas 2009 paperbag book, today you can see the first two pages. Hopefully I will manage to do some more pages and will post them as I go along.

Page 1 features my Secret Santa Advent parcel from Bubbly Funk Forum. We were all allocated a forum member to send a 'crafty' advent calendar and we have a lot of fun every day telling each other what we got in our little parcels and trying to guess who sent the
m! They are small things like buttons, gems, die-cut shapes nothing too expensive but it's just great to open a little parcel every day. My Advent parcel came beautifully presented in a box lined with vintage images and every little package made from folded gold paper with a red tag. I included the first tag in my page. There is a journallying tag tucked under the photo explaining about the swap.

Page 2 is about my Christmas Tree which is an eclectic mix of ornaments that I have chosen, made or have been given as gifts and there are a few that the boys made too. When I considered my tree I was very aware that it leans towards a 'folk art' style with a bit of bling thrown in, which probably sums me up too lol!
I wanted to show some of the tree decorations, so I made a little concertina book. Mickey and Goofy came from the Christmas Shop at Epcot in Disney World, my Mum gave me the rag doll angel last year and my crafting friend Tracey R gave me the gorgeous glittery shoe dec when we met at the NEC in November 2008. The one Karen gave me is on the tree too, but I couldn't take pics of them all or there would have been nothing but tree ornaments in the book!
On the back of the concertina, I have a pic of a salt dough wreath that I made about 15 years ago, I resurrected it this year as it hasn't been out for a while. The last pic is of the holly branches and pine boughs that I cut from the garden, they are soaking in a bucket of water....but you will have to wait and see what I did with them next, hee hee.

Paper Bag Writer

As usual I started out with good intentions. I signed up for the Jessica Sprague class, 'Holidays in Hand', however I have to say that it just didn't hit the spot for me. I'm not sure what it was, most of the prompts were really geared for people with children and things like 'taking a photo of everyone in your family' falls a little flat when it's only me, DH and MIL!!!

Anyway, I decided that I would just play it by ear and not be driven by a fixed plan, this seemed to work with my stated 'values' of being more relaxed about Christmas (not something I find easy). I decided to make a paper bag book after seeing the one made by Sarah on Bubbly Scrumptious blog, I left mine full bag size rather than cutting it down to 6 x 6 the way Sarah did.

I have done two pages so far, I'll let you see them soon.

Papers are Dream Street, label is digi by Ellie Lash.

Once upon a time...

... a very poor woodcutter lived in a tiny cottage in the forest with his two children, Hansel and Gretel.

When I saw that the weekly challenge on Bubbly Scrumptious was 'Fairytale' I knew that the time had come to open the Maya Road 'house' that I had won in another BS challenge and turn it into a Gingerbread House for Hansel and Gretel!

I painted the cottage with acrylic paint to get a 'gingerbread' finish. I had almost finished the cottage last night but hadn't put any decoration either side of this window. I'm so glad I left it because I found these little Gingerbread people when I was putting my Christmas decorations up, they were right at the bottom of the box and I remember that my Mum had used them on her Christmas cake one year and gave these two to me. They were just the perfect finishing touch.
I had to make my own candy canes and they are probably the thing I am least satisfied with, however, they are recognisable as candy canes.
Here is the opposite side of the cottage. I am most pleased with the roof which is simply made with punched circles of different coloured brown card. The 'snow' is made with the 'velvet' pen I bought last year at NEC, you use your heat gun and it puffs up.
The little hearts came with the cottage set and the charms were in my stash, I remember I bought them for the Recipe card swap we did on Bubbly Funk and I did the gingerbread man recipe.

Finally, the lid lifts off and there is a little book which you can make up and put inside. Of course, you could fill it with yummy treats!

Baby look at you now!

Many thanks to everyone who left kind comments for me about the loss of my cat, Jenny. They are really appreciated.

It's Daring Card Making time again and this week the dare is:

Say it in "Sepia"

This was perfect timing for the card I needed to make for my Great Aunt whose birthday is next week, she is one of those relatives who really appreciates my home made cards and I had this cute scan of a photograph of her as a small child on the beach. Now as she will be 89 on her birthday, you can imagine how rare a photo like this would be! Inside the card is an insert with a photo of her as she is now.

Background: download from Stampington
Text paper: K&Co Verbena
Watch image: Last Door Down the Hall
Vintage Lace/flowers/brads etc : from my stash

Oops forgot to say that I used Kathy Black's latest sketch (#17 ) for this card.

Goodbye Jenny

We took Jenny to the vet first thing this morning and she was put to sleep. She was 17 and painfully thin, over the last month she had deteriorated considerably and had not eaten properly for a week. It was kinder to let her go now than have her carry on in such a state.

I would rather remember her when she was plump and sleek with her beautiful pink nose. Here she is sitting on my paperwork with a self-satisfied look on her face in April 2008.

Easel does it!

My friend's nephew will be 21 in December and she asked me to make a special card for him. From her description he is a kind of a classic type of guy, so I blagged some Cornish Heritage Farm stamped images from a very generous Angelnorth.

I've been looking at all the easel cards that people have been making and wanted to have a go. I made a little circle of mirror card and stuck on some glitter thickers for 21, I had to make a little tab for the easel as I wasn't convinced it would stay up without it and didn't want the thickers to come unstuck with the pressure of the card.

Papers - Papermania, Touch of Teal
Stamps - Cornish Heritage Farm, car is 1955 Corvette and registration plate from Camaro Style.

Believe

Here is the card I made for my friend to send. That's William the Westie (West Highland Terrier) with a little PSE magic (I told you my role model was Samantha from Bewitched!) you can see what William gets up to on Christmas Eve.

St Andrew's Day Tribute

I've blogged about St Andrew's Day, 30th November over on Farmersgirl Kitchen.

Kreativ Blogger Award

Sue of Sue's Snippets has given me this lovely Kreativ Blogger Award. Thank you Sue.

I have to share 5 facts about myself and then pass the award to 7 other deserving people so that we can find out a little about them as well.

Hmm, now I wonder what I can share with you without incriminating myself lol!

1. I used to work for a Member of Parliament.
2. Samantha from Bewitched is my role model (wish I had her powers).
3. I've met Prince Charles and Princess Anne and been to the Royal Garden Party at Holyrood in Edinburgh, where I didn't meet the Queen (they are all very short, in case you were wondering).
4. Two days a week I drive 100 mile round trip to work.
5. I gave up alcohol for a month, but I couldn't give up coffee.

I'm not sure I know 7 deserving people but I'll pass this on to a couple of Trac(e)ys

Tracey - Searching My Art
Tracy - Crafty Me

Ink, stamps and sticky stuff - lets play!

I saw this post on Little Birdie Secrets which showed how you could embed a printed image in a ring blank with resin. I had come across these brooch backs which I'd had for ages, so long in fact that some of them had little cross stitch pictures in them :o

I used a round punch to cut a circle then inked up with Distress Inks in Red Lipstick & Peeled Paint, stamped a design from a Tanda oriental stamp in Silver Brilliance. I stuck it in the brooch blank with glossy accents then more GA round the edge and embedded some silvery beads in it, filled in the middle with more GA and left it to dry overnight. There were a couple of bubbles in the GA so it's not perfect, but I'm thinking that I may have another go with a collage style print.
If you have alcohol inks they would work well for colouring the metal brooch setting.

All in all I had a great time making this, it's not for anyone, it's not a challenge, it was pure indulgence!

Jolly Holly-days

Here is the background provided by Jeanette over on Soartful for this week's challenge.

Here is my take on this background. The Father Christmas image is from Last Door Down the Hall, the ivy is from my own photograph and the snowflake overlay is by Flergs for Scrapbookgraphics. I did a little colouring on the holly berries in PSE too.

All the colours of the rainbow

We've got Red and Green Snowmen

Blue and White Snowflakes

and a Pink Christmas Tree

Yes it's catch up time for me on the Something Completely Different Challenge Blog! It's been a busy old time what with trips to Newcastle then London then flooding and finally going down with a cold, so I got a bit behind with my cards and my challenges.

The Snowmen image came in an image swap, the Joy sentiment is a Studio G stamp which I use a lot. Paper is from Colorful Christmas (My Mind's Eye).

The Snowflake stamp came from a magazine I used to buy in the 90's called 'Insirations' and Joanne will be pleased to know that I managed to use my cuttlebug to cut and emboss the circles - hurrah! Sentiment is a Personal Impression stamp.

The Pink Christmas Tree looks better than that, it is embossed with holographic embossing powder and the stamp is from the same Personal impressions set as the sentiment. Paper is Colorful Christmas again.

A little announcement

I'm sorry to have to say that I've been having a bit of trouble with anonymous comments coming through on my blog. It is obviously some kind of software, but I'm getting two or three of them to reject every day. So I'm going to put the word verification back on for a while. I know it's a pain, but hopefully it will stop these messages and then I'll take it back off.

There'll be tree tops glistening...

Those Daring Card Makers are at it again this time it's Jozza's turn to dare:

"I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas"

I want to see Christmas cards that are mainly white with just a hint of colouring on your embellishments or stamped image. I can't wait to see the cards you all create!

I used the Cuttlebug Christmas Tree embossing folder, swiped it with Dazzle Versamark and heat embossed with holographic powder. Then there's a bit more of that Tesco ribbon!

Happy Thanksgiving

A very Happy Thanksgiving to all my US Blog Friends

Thanksgiving Day is a harvest festival celebrated primarily in Canada and the United States. Traditionally, it is a time to give thanks for the harvest and express gratitude in general. While perhaps religious in origin, Thanksgiving is now primarily identified as a secular holiday.

The date and location of the first Thanksgiving celebration is a topic of modest contention. The traditional "first Thanksgiving" is the celebration that occurred at the site of Plymouth Plantation, in 1621. The Plymouth celebration occurred early in the history of what would become one of the original thirteen colonies that became the United States. The celebration became an important part of the American myth by the 1800s.^{[citation needed]} This Thanksgiving, modeled after celebrations that were commonplace in contemporary Europe, is generally regarded as America's first. Elementary school teacher Robyn Gioia has argued that the earliest attested "thanksgiving" celebration in what is now the United States was celebrated by the Spanish on September 8, 1565 in what is now Saint Augustine, Florida.^[1][2] Today, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States. Thanksgiving dinner is held on this day, usually as a gathering of family members and friends. Wikipedia

Thanksgiving is not a holiday that we celebrate in the UK our 'Harvest Thanksgiving' is usually in late September or early October and is celebrated only in churches, not the big deal it is in the USA. However, it's not long until St Andrew's Day in Scotland which is celebrated on 30th November.

Holidays in Hand and a Bubbly Scrumptious Bauble!

I signed up for Jessica Sprague's free class Holidays in Hand which aims to "refocus you on what matters most to you in your holiday celebrations as you go through them this year, and also to help you create an album for recording your stories of holidays past."

I haven't got very far, what with being away in Newcastle and then in London, but I did manage to print off the prompts last week and when I saw the lovely Christmas Pledge Bauble wall hanging that Ruth made on Bubbly Scrumptious I knew I had found the perfect display for my prompts!

Papers are Colourful Christmas and the ribbon is Christmas wrapping ribbon from Tesco last year.