My first blog award

Tracy from Inside the ScrapHeap picked my blog for an award. How cool is that?

( will pick my seven tonight when I am off of work instead of now.)

Edited:
Okay, so I totally forgot about picking my favorite blogs to pass this on to, so I am going to start working on this now. I must admit, that I have a ton of blogs in my reader and it will be hard to pick 7. If you are reading this and I didn't pick you don't feel bad. Matter of fact, feel free to just add this award to your blog, because if I take the time to follow you then I like your blog.

1. Candy's Creations
2.Brandie's Thoughts
3. Bren's Stuff
4. Bush Life
5. Debby's Dare
6.I Scrap, you scrap, we scrap
7. Jennie's Scrap Space

There I have choosen 7. Please don't feel bad if you were choosen, I just ran out of space to list all of the blogs.

Date Stamps

Tonight, I took a break from decorating the tree to begin my JYC project. I created my date stamps for each page. I decided for my first year to go with something a little simple. I simply punched the 37 circles and 74 holly leaves. After putting the numbers on, I attached two holly leaves to each circle. I decided not to distress the edges as I am not sure what papers I will be using this year. I know some people are using the page maps to create their pages ahead of time, but since I don't know what I am doing, I will make my pages as I go along.

Journal Your Christmas

Last year while surfing some blogs, I came across one blog where the blogger had posted a page from her Christmas Journal. I really liked the idea and decided to ask the blogger about where she got her idea and her prompts. She referred me to Shimelle's blog. I chose not to sign up last year as it was already half way through the month of December and I felt that I was too far behind. I kept watching the sight and signed up once the post was up for this years class. I am really excited about doing this and hoping I can stay on top of things. Usually December is very busy, but since Sarah is in high school we have two fewer programs to attend for the month. I plan on posting my layouts to this site, so check back often, this may help keep me accountable.

All I need now is some time.

I must say that even though this has been a very busy week with a few things, the mail this week has been great. On Tuesday I received my final package from my fiskateer secret sister. She sent me the coolest things including a wonderful orange(fiskars) colored ornament, and a holly squeeze punch from fiskars. Plus a few other scraping goodies. She has been a wonderful secret sister. If you don't know what a fiskateer is please click here to find out. This group is so friendly and supporting. On Tuesday I also received my embellishment swap back from another great yahoo group. There were 10 of us and we each created an embellishment kit for paper crafting. We each had a color and created 10 kits Then sent the package to our fearless leader, who redistributed the kit and sent it back to us. I received 10 different colored packages. Finally today, I received the frame kit that I won from Kelly Jo, one of the fiskateer leads. This kit looks like so much fun, it even included a fiskars tape runner. I love this adhesive, but have never seen it in a store.
Now all I need is the time to spend many hours creating. Do you think that Santa would bring me at least 72 hours of total free time, without any other distractions so that I can create and scrap and rest? Please Santa, that is all I really want, besides a clean house and children that actually help verses hinder.

Spit Rags

When Kristen was a baby, I received a very nice gift that had some decorated spit rags. The person had simply taken a cloth diaper and found some cute ribbon then sewed it down the edge. I loved this look and also the fact that when we went out, or for something nice, I could take a nicer looking spit rag. I saved those rags for outings, church, family holidays etc. Because I love those so, I decided to make a few for my new great niece Allison. I did two with the ribbon down the side, and then I did two with my embroidery machine. I will be meeting Allison later today, at the birthday party for Austin and Kristen. She is about 6 weeks old, so can't wait to see her. I am hoping that she enjoys these spit rags as much as Kristen enjoyed hers.

Mail Time

Yesterday was such a fun mail day. I regularly read a blog Debby's Dares, and had won a chance to get some of the Fiskar's new Halloween and Christmas punch shapes. Not the actual punches, but 10 of each shape. I received such a big envelope just full of the punches, some are on paper that I haven't seen before. I had also won one of the bazzill monochromatic little albums from Lisa Bearnson's blog from Creating Keepsakes. She was giving away 25 of those adorable little albums a couple of weeks ago for a project started by Stacy Julian. She wanted everyone to take 10 photos of the people or items in their life right now and then put them into a small album that could be carried in a purse or put in a drawer at work. Then you are to open the album up each day and look at it to be reminded of all that is important in your life. I love idea and can't wait to put together my mini album on Saturday. Anyway, Lisa B enclosed some other fun scrapbooking goodies besides the mini album. I so can't wait to play.

Kristen's Halloween costume

This year Kristen has decided to skip the usual princess costume to be a cheerleader just like her older sister. When Sarah was in Kindergarten, I made her a cheerleader costume for Halloween. While Kristen liked that costume, she decided that she really needed a new one that more closely resembles Sarah's uniform. We found a pattern with several different designs on it and I managed to talk her into one that didn't have quite as much bling to it as the other ones, which is good because we had a hard time finding any trim that would work. I had the skirt almost made, when I had Kristen try it on. At this point I realized that I would need to trim almost 3 inches off of the sides so that the skirt would stay up. Wouldn't I love to have no hips like that child, however 2 children and eating way to many Halloween treats have given me hips. The pattern came with a pattern for a spankie. I wasn't going to make the spankie for Kristen, but after seeing how short the skirt is, I decided to go ahead and make it. I will wait for tomorrow night to get it finished. It is Kristen's bedtime and I have a feeling that I will need to resize the spankie also.