A day to my self

~ At last I am alone.
Brian has taken Dyllan off for an adventure of riding the train to Los Angeles and back.
They will be gone for hours...
Today is my day of no "4 year old" interruptions of getting my studio in shape for the New Year! I have big plans for the studio this year. Today I'll be just organizing things back in their place so I can get started on new projects.
My plans for the future involve putting up shelves in wasted spaces, those out of reach areas to display my pretty inspirational pieces and to use their old places for shop items and materials to make new art!
I'm pretty good with recycling odd stuff to make new storage holders but am open for idea's on how I can store all my wooden/acrylic stamps for easy access!
~ Hope you are all having a good weekend and I'll post when I can on my studio progress plus photo's of our Christmas Holiday!
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P.s. the above clip art is for you!

Have a Holly Jolly Christmas!

Have a holly, jolly Christmas;

It's the best time of the year

I don't know if there'll be snow

But have a cup of cheer

Have a holly, jolly Christmas;

And when you walk down the street

Say Hello to friends you know

And everyone you meet

Oh Ho The mistletoe

Hung where you can see;
Somebody waits for you;

Kiss her once for me

Have a holly jolly Christmas

And in case you didn't hear
Oh by golly Have a holly Jolly Christmas

this year !

(Burl Ives)

~ Have a safe and happy Holiday everyone!
See you soon!
~Michelle

It's almost time...

I have not really taken any Christmas photo's yet and only have this one tree pic as I took a test shot before posing some friends next to it.
Looking at the tree, I realized I should have taken a picture of it as soon as it was decorated, where every thing was perfect. Now as you can see, the garland is drooping, some ornaments are backwards as the tree has taken the blunt of being a hiding place, or place of adventure for Dyllan's action figures.
It is the perfect tree. So full and fat.
Looks better at night and I promise to take more pictures when It's lit and decorated with silver icicles on Christmas eve.

Baking.
For the record, I don't love to bake gingerbread people cause I'm always second guessing if they are done.
They are already brown so it's hard for me to tell sometimes.
Christmas time is the only time I really and truly bake from scratch. And it's a week long process. I baked from Monday till last Saturday morning.
I cheated on a few items to save some money. That tub of toll house choc. chip cookie dough from Costco? I baked the whole tub. All 96 cookies. I also used Betty Crocker cookie mix for my gingerbread people and oatmeal cookies.
But I did bake from scratch the following:
Fudge krinkle cookies
Peppermint cookies
Sugar cut out cookies made with Cream Cheese
Lemon Stars with Lemon glaze
Raspberry pointsetta cookies , half dipped in chocolate
~ I'll have recipes and more photo's posted soon~
Mon, Tuesday, Wed..we had playdate friends over for cookie decorating.
Sat. we had Brian's family over for my homemade Swedish meatballs and more cookie decorating!
Sunday (yesterday) The girls from my Scrapbook group
came over for scrapbooking, food, prizes, laughter and a cookie exchange.
I made a last minute appetizer that dissapeared with-in minutes! So easy when you are entertaining on a budget!
Line a cookie sheet that will fit in your broiler with parchment paper. Arrange one ream (roll) of Ritz crackers face up on the sheet. Slice 3-4 hotdogs of your choice 1/2" thick, place on crackers. Sprinkle with generous amounts of a chedder/jack shredded cheese blend. Broil till cheese is melted. Delicious!

~ Another rainy day here, to which I can't complain as we need it!
Going to take Dyllan to the store soon for our Christmas day dinner. It just the 3 of us so we are keeping it simple. I have a Jiffy Pop planned for Christmas eve plus some crafts to do with the family. On Christmas morning, I have a ready made Monkey Bread in the freezer and for dinner, I'll do ham, sweet potatoes, scalloped potaoes, mac and cheese, rolls and edamame beans. We all love these and they are fun to eat! Cookies for dessert and we are set!
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Hope you all are having a safe and warm Holiday and I'll catch up with you soon!
~Michelle

Card Swap Crop

~ Last weekend I hosted at my home a Card Swap / Crop with a crafty group I Organize called "West Coast Croppers"
It was our 3rd card swap as a group. The premise is you need to come up with a card for what ever the theme is, make it and then make up kits for the amount of people participating. You pre-cut everything, include the stamps and ink pads and any other embelleshments. It's fun cause you are making the card and sometimes learning new techniques or even old ones!
~ Our theme this time was "Thank You"
This cute card was designed by Brenda. I made mine with just the boy stamp, but love the vibrant colors!
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Pam's daughter, katherine who was visiting from the Navy made this Garden card.
I liked the lavendar and green , same colors as my wedding. :)
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~ Anne made up this practical yet classy card.
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~ Here's mine. It came to me in traffic. I used a threading water punch for the trim and around the stamped circle I added mini hearts.
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~ Here's a pretty card made by Diane, I liked the use of a paper strip in place of a ribbon.
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Pam, made this vintage beauty.
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~here's the girls having fun. All the cards and their pieces are brought in a shoe box with the finished card clipped to the front. We just passed around the boxes till they were all done.

~ Top left- Diane, Anne, Pam
Bottom left- Brenda, Katherine, Me.
As of now my group has 29 members with up to 3 meeting per month. We like to craft and we like hanging out with each other!

Disneyland and Dyllan

~ I'm glad I took Dyllan to Disneyland earlier this month, before the rains started. We went on a few rides and he participated in Jedi training again. He's getting really good at it and follows instructions well!

Here he is goofing off in pictures , just having a good time.

~ I was alittle bummed when I found out the park was closing at 6pm for a cast party. That meant heading over to California adventure would be out of the question as everyone else would be there too.

The main thing I wanted Dyllan to see was the parade. Because the older he get's ...the more wonderful things are! My favorite's were the toy soldiers and reindeer. Dyllan loved them all!

~ While we aere waiting for the parade, some nice people scooted over and gave us some curb space. I entertained Dyllan the best I could for 30 minutes. 1 minute before the parade starts Dyllan whispers alittle too loud that he has to go "poop"! Because the parade was about to start and I did not have a friend with me...I told him to hold it. I was glad I packed a spare change of clothes and envisioned having to throw away his underware. He did hold it during the parade but not before he "tooted" a few, and it was quite smelley. I hoped people thought that the smell might be coming from the babies behind us!

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So sfter the parade, we make a bee-line to the bathroom where he proceeds to go nothing, saying he really did not have to poop, he just had to fart!

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So we head over towards the exit where there is a film about the history of Disneyland hosted by Steve Martin and Donald Duck. Dyllan LOVES Donald Duck and cracks up everytime we see that fim. 3/4 of the way through the film.."Mom, I hafta go poop" , ' No you don't', "yes I do!", 'No you don't, now just watch the movie.'

~ after the movie, we went to the bathroom, again.

still nothing.

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Now that's it's getting dark and the lights are coming on, I dragged Dyllan by the hand back 'up' mainstreet to get a decent picture of the castle with all its beautiful icicle lights. And because of the early closing, they decide to do the fireworks early as apposed to 9:45pm.

So I'm half holding Dyllan and half not when who should be standing behind us to view the fireworks too..but the nice people that gave us some curb space for the parade!

Everything would have been peachy keen if Dyllan did not start fart while I was holding him for the fireworks! It's cute when they are a baby, not when they are 4.

After the fireworks, we said good bye to the nice people, who said they Dyllan was so well behaved and they enjoyed are company. (???)

Then I took Dyllan to a bathroom outside the parks entrance and told him we would not be going home till he pooped. And he did. Then he fell asleep on the way home where I had a beer.

All day fun

~ Last Saturday, the 6th, I went to a all day crop with my good friend Teresa. I just found out that her husband landed a new job which means she won't have to move back to New York any time soon! Good friends are hard to come by, especially ones that really "get" you!

Until I went brunette, we were practically twins!

(look how cute she is!)
~ One of my Fiskateer friends host this crop once per month and it's a nice chance to catch up, plus - we get our own 8' table!


~ Here's a project that took up most of my time. It's a wooden tray that I painted, then mod pauged little squares that I hand punched and hand distressed. It still needs some paint touch up's and a few more coats of MOD. It's a gift for my Mother in Law since she uses a walker that has a place for a tray to hold things as she moves about the house.

We took a close to my heart class hosted by a super nice lady. This is what we made for only $5!

Totally fun!

This one is mine...can't wait to add photo's!

Here's my front...

~ and here's Teresa's

~ Since it was a Christmas themed crop, we also brought a wrapped gift for a gift exchange.

I got this! Way cool!

Lauri was doing a bingo all day, giving out prizes to everyone who yelled "bingo" till everyone had won.

I got this cute kit, perfect for crafting with Dyllan and Teresa got one too, but with more girly colors which was perfect as she has a girl.

~ Here's what Teresa scored from her gift exchange!

~ we had a potluck, muchin all day on ham, turkey, salads, (I brought meatballs in a crock pot) sweets and fun!

They encourage people to bring stuff to sell, or give away and there is always this one gal that brings Scrapbook stuff marked down. For Christmas...everything was an additional %50 off!

I got the above prima flowers for $3 each!

~ And I "scored" on these chalk inks for 1 stinkin dollar each!

So overall, it was good to get away and be with good friends.

:0)

Mystery Bird

~ Can anyone tell me what kind of bird this is?

I took the picture through the kitchen window with the farthest my camera would zoom.

I''ve never seen him before. I call him "little John" ~

as he looks to belong with Robin Hood!

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We are off today to spend a Mommy and Dyllan day at Disneyland...We have not been back since Halloween and I can't believe November flew by so fast! I'm looking forward to taking lot's of glittery pictures and to rejuvenate my Christmas spirit as this falling economy is starting to get me down.

See you later!

~Michelle

Ho! Ho! Ho!

~ Just got home from a all day crop with a friend! 9am-9pm. So fun! I got a ton done including these "cute" cards! I really like how they came out! I started one for a online challenge and enjoyed making it so much that I made some more for a swap and am making a few more for personal greetings!

~ You can't see it, but the Santa is 'raised' with foam tape and don't you love how I made his cheeks rosy?

Here is the prep that went into it...all stamped by hand!

~ Happy Holidays!

~Michelle