Happy holidays!

Wow, I can't believe that time of year has already come and gone! Christmas is over, and tonight is the last night of Hanukkah (much to the dismay of my children, lol). Hubby was good to me this year - not only did I get the zoom lens for my camera, but he also got me a Slice... whoo! My parents also spoiled me with a GPS system for my car and some new clothes. Thanks again to my wonderful hubby and parents!! I wanted to drop off a new layout I just finished for Fancy Pants using the Arctic Chill line.

I cut out six of the cards from the card sheet to create a frame - I put a few of the cards back into the frame and also added a few photos there. I handcut the snowflakes from the papers and added Diamond Dust (one of my new favorite products!) to give them a snowy feel. I also heat embossed the edges of the frame and the background paper to add to the snow effect, as well. I made the frame for my title with my new Slice :-)

Well, my friends, with 2009 being only a few days away, I wish you all a FANTASTIC New Year's!! I hope that 2008 has treated you well and that 2009 treats you even better!

Busy, busy, busy!

Yep, it's that time of year! I'm sure it's crazy busy for everyone right now! Things get super nutso around here in December - we had Chloe's birthday last Thursday, her party on Saturday, we are celebrating Hanukkah right now, and then we also do Christmas in our house! Chloe's birthday was great - I seriously can't believe my "baby" is two!! We had a nice day on her actual birthday and her party was lots of fun. We had a woman come who did music/songs/dancing, bubbles, parachutes, tunnels, etc. The kids had a blast! In keeping with tradition, I made Chloe's cake - she requested a "barbie cake" (even though she doesn't have any barbies, lol).

I just completed a mini-album for my DT work for CMK using more of the Crush line by Teresa Collins. Since this line is love themed, I figured it would be a perfect to make a mini about me and my sweetie. I'm going to give this to him as one of his holiday gifts - he loves the stuff from the heart (although probably not as much as he'll love Rock Band that I bought him for the XBox, lol!) :-)

Let's see... in other news, there is still a little bit of time left for the DT call at CMK. It's a fabulous site to design for so if you're on the fence, I say go for it! :-)

I didn't win the Flippin' for the Holidays contest at AMM. Oh well - as I tell my kids, it's not about winning, it's about having fun and enjoying the process (yeah, yeah, yeah, but we know the winning is a nice bonus, lol).

My awesome hubby got me a new zoom lens for my Canon Rebel as my Hanukkah present. I'm very excited about that! It's also made me more determined to actually learn my camera. I'm embarrased to admit that I usually shoot automatic! Anyone have any good websites/books to recommend?

Lastly, knowing my blogging rate ;-), i'm sure I won't get on here again before Christmas. Soooo, I want to wish all my friends out there a Happy Hanukkah and a Merry Christmas!!

Catching up around here...

Hmm, where to start? Well, how about I start with telling you that a new prompt is up at the Forward Progress blog? The prompt is to imagine that you are 20 years in the future and write a letter to your current self. I used more of the yummy Teresa Collins Crush line to make my layout:
Journaling:
Dear Staci,
I wanted to let you know that life is good. Sure, there have been some bumps in the road, but I have gotten through them, and they have made me appreciate the good in my life even more. While on this journey, there are some things I have learned along the way:
1. Embrace the every day moments in your life. I know it is hard to do with two small children when your days are often chaotic and they sometimes all run together, but try to sit back and take it all in. Breathe in these moments and truly let them surround you, as before you know it, they will be gone.
2. Speaking of moments being gone, don’t live in the past. I know you have a hard time of letting go of each passing phase – your babies no longer being babies is a big one for you. Remember that life goes on and with each new phase, new amazing memories will be formed. Try not to linger so much on the goodbyes but instead embrace the hellos of a new stage.
3. Worrying gets you nowhere. I know it is easy to get lost in all of the endless possibilities out in this big, sometimes bad world, but worrying changes nothing. The only thing worrying does is alter your quality of life in a negative way. So many things that you worry about are out of your control, so breathe in, and let the worries go.
4. Nurture yourself. It is easy to consume yourself with being a good wife and a good mom, not to mention being good at your work. But remember that you are important, too. Don’t let yourself feel guilty for taking the time to nurture hobbies and things that you enjoy. If you live your whole life for others, you are cheating yourself.
I know that a lot of these things you already know, but sometimes a good reminder is important. Please know that in staying true to yourself and living the life you want to live, your life continues to be good to you. Oh, and by the way, you have aged very gracefully :-)
Love always,
Me at 53 (your twenty-year-older self)

Next up: Denise from the Scrapping Out Loud challenge blog asked me to Guest Design for her this week. You can check it out here.

Finally, I finished my project for Round 4 of the contest at A Million Memories. Ack! It took me forever, but I sure had fun with it! I made a Winter Village. I found patterns for the tree, houses, church and schoolhouse online. I made them out of chipboard and covered the body of each building in pp. I painted the windows, doors and roof and applied lots and lots of diamond dust to the rooftops to look like snow. I painted my tree and covered it with a garland. I used a cotton ball to make smoke coming out of one of the chimneys. I used fake snow to cover my base and again added a lot of diamond dust and glitter. The fence probably took me the longest, lol - I freehanded each piece out of chipboard, painted all of the pieces white and then glued it together. Finally, no village would be complete without people! I dug out some Basic Grey pp from last year (Mellow line) - the people and dogs were the perfect size for my village, so I cut them out and placed them within the village.
Wish me luck!

How is everyone's week going so far?

I've got a crush...

Who has this new Crush line by Teresa Collins? It is sooo stinkin' cute!! She's our manufacturer sponsor at CMK this month, so i've been having fun playing. These papers were perfect for this photo of Noah and Savanna next door - I just adore this photo!!Journaling for "Remember your first crush": Yours is Savanna and the feeling is definitely mutual! I love how she is looking at you so adoringly!

The CMK design team is doing Secret Santas, and my secret santa sent me this yesterday:

Am I lucky or what?? I got a big stack of yummy new papers, some Scenic Route chipboard, Prima's lollipop flowers, some bling and a Blackboard mini. THANK YOU Secret Santa!! I can not wait to play with my new stash!!

So, both my parents are retiring this month - isn't that exciting?? My dad's work threw him a big party yesterday, and my mom had a party thrown for her today. I'm so excited for them! Here is a picture of Noah and my cousin Kaela from yesterday:

And, of course, I can't leave my little girl out. Here is a photo I took last night after we got home while she was tending to her baby:

I can not believe she is going to be TWO next week!! This is our next few weeks: Chloe's birthday, Chloe's birthday party, Hanukkah, Christmas and then (hopefully) our New Years trip away with our friends. Crazy busy, but lots of fun! :-)

Hope everyone had a great week! Enjoy your weekend!!

Using up my kit...

I have a couple of more projects to share that I made as the guest designer for AMM. This kit was so much fun to work with!!

The kit came with a whole Maya Road house album. I used one of the houses on the layout in my last post, and I used another for this project. I still have several more left to make a mini with, too! For this project, I made a little sign to hang on my fridge that holds our phone numbers for easy reference for a babysitter. I prettied up the front side with papers from the kit, and then I attached some dry erase board to the back (I used one of those free dry erase magnet boards I had gotten in the mail advertising a realtor). Now you all know how to get ahold of me with my 555 numbers, too, hehea!

This next layout documents our never-ending quest for a family photo in which we're all looking and smiling at the same time. I just want one... is that too hard to ask?? :-)

Today was a happy mail day for me! I got lots of fun goodies from CMK, so my next mission is to scrap some photos with the yummy new Crush line by Teresa Collins.

Did I mention that I made it onto the 4th and final round for the AMM contest to get the flip camera and the goodies? It's down to 6 of us, and we have until the 16th to post our projects. We have to make a home decor project with a holiday theme. I started working on mine this weekend... wish me luck!

Happy Monday everyone! Hope your week is starting out great!

Whoo hoo for the weekend!

I love Fridays! I'm not really sure why, though, because Saturdays are just like any other day around here since Tony usually works. But I do love Sundays, since that's our big family day! What is everyone up to this weekend?

Anyway, onto some business :-) Deanne, from the Inspirational blog, featured me the other day. You can see it here. The girls at the inspirational blog feature people regularly who they find to be inspiring, and there is lots of awesome work on there!

Did you all know Create My Keepsake is having a DT call? Lisa is going to change things around a bit and is looking for 2 new designers. Being on this team has been such an amazing experience for me, so I encourage you all to check out the call here. The way Lisa is doing the application process is really cool, too!

Lastly, I have two new layouts to share from my Guest DT work for A Million Memories. I'm having so much fun with this gorgeous kit!

Journaling reads: There are days when it seems like the dishes will never get done, the toys will never get put away, and the children will never stop fighting. In the grand scheme of things, however, none of that matters one bit. What does matter is that within these four walls, amazing memories are being formed every single day. This is where we laugh. This is where we love. This is where we live... THIS IS HOME.

Journaling reads: Not a day goes by that I'm not incredibly thankful for the privilege of being your mommy!

Fancy that...

I had a project up on the Fancy Pants blog yesterday - this Photo Ornament:

I also finished my 2-page Layout for the third round of the contest at AMM. It was a huge challenge for me to do a 2-pager - I don't do them very often, but I really enjoyed it! We had to use red and green, and I ended up making a New Year's layout since the green paper seemed very festive to me. I handcut a bunch of silver swirls and added some bling to add to the festive feel.

Have you checked out the Luxe blog recently? They've been posting awesome new holiday card ideas every day!

I just found out I won an awesome prize pack from Label Tulip - they had a contest to see who had the messiest scraproom. Now that is a contest made for me!! This is the photo that I shared - it's of my scrapdesk right after I finished my tree mini last week. Yikes!!

Lastly, I received my gorgeous kit from A Million Memories for my Guest Designer gig for December. I'm hoping to tear into it tonight and will hopefully have some more projects to share soon!