Last "family" holiday card for 2010; Happy New Year; last day to order from mini-catalog Jan 3

Another year is almost over, wow....just wanted to post a few last pictures!  Since some of you might have gotten snow for Christmas, this snowman cookie is for you!  It's all natural ingredients (yogurt, etc.) but if you look at the snowman's buttons, you will be able to see who this cookie was for! 

Yep, it was for our furbaby....and she absolutely loved it!  She ate it all up on Christmas day.  Isn't she a cutie?  Her fur is soft and silky, since she gets cleaned with doggy wipes and brushed every night before she goes to bed.  What fun we will have on New Year's Eve because we are going to our first owners and dogs' New Years Eve party - pizza for the owners and a fun run for the dogs at the indoor dog agility site we go to for classes. 

I will post some pics later!

To wish you a Happy New Year,  I'm posting and dedicating my last 2 cards made of the year to you all!  It has a family theme and I thought the saying on it was very appropriate to reflect how family and friend memories are - "Carpe diem!" I say (Latin for "seize the day")  Can you see the difference between these 2 cards?  The bottom half of each card is slightly different.  I used Stampin' Up's embossing folder called Vintage Wallpaper, but before I embossed the cardstock, I brayered white craft/pigment ink on one side of the folder.  For the other card, I brayered the other side of the embossing folder - Can't decide which one I like the best....There is a little rhinestone at the top of the tree, along with an antique brad, tinsel trim, and striped grosgrain ribbon (I love that ribbon).

The last day to order some of these Stampin' Up products featured in the holiday mini-catalog is Jan. 3rd - let me know if you want to order anything from it - you can download and view the catalog if you click on the picture of it to the left of my blog....

From our house and furbaby, to yours and your pets, be safe and have a Happy New Year! 

2 more handmade gifts-stamped bags for dog owners

I just had to share these neat bags that I stamped on for our furbaby's dog agility teachers - I took a chance that the Stampin' Up stazon inkpad would work on them and used the D is for dog set.  Then I heat set the pictures and they came out great!   I got some pictures of our teachers' dogs and printed them out on our computer with that special paper that allows you to iron them onto a tee shirt.  But since the bags were colored, I ironed them on white fabric first, then used fabric iron-on adhesive to adhere the pictures to the bag (you can get that from Stampin' Up too).  Here are a few more pictures of the bags.

Merry Christmas to you, from our Aflac duck collection

We started a new family tradition with my husband and furbaby - actually we started our traditional Christmas collection several years ago when he worked for Aflac....These plush ducks are soooo cute - maybe you've seen the tv commercial (Aflac!!). 

There is no way you can't hold and squeezy one of these soft cuties and not smile! We're up to 2 shelves now!!  We almost didn't get one this year because they sold out, so we called several Macy's and finally were able to buy both a big one and a little one - that was a close call - can't break up the duck family!!  lol 

The duck with the light blue hat and scarf is this year's duck. 

One year everyone got an Aflac duck for their Christmas presents! BTW, proceeds from the sale of plush Aflac ducks on this site go to the children's Aflac Cancer Center and Blood Disorders Service.

Look at that duck in the front dressed like a Christmas tree! 

Enjoy and Merry Christmas!!

Gifts, Presents, or Presence?

Whether you have wrapped all your gifts for Christmas giving, or are finishing them up today, wrapping presents can be fun if you are a little bit creative. I got an early start in gift wrapping, since one of my job tasks in my first real job at age 16 was to wrap customers’ gifts. The owner had an awesome tool that made beautiful bows, but the trick was to practice pulling out the loops so you ended up with a fluffy bow. By the time my part-time after-school job ended, I could quickly and efficiently wrap gifts and tie on attractive ribbons and bows. My mother would ask me to wrap the family’s Christmas presents because I was pretty fast, and told me, “don’t look in that box; that’s your present!”

So Christmas presents have become one of my favorite times to use a theme to wrap all the gifts in – I would choose a color theme and then buy only gift-wrapping papers, ribbons, and tags in those colors. Color themes I’ve had fun with have been lime green and pink, purples, silver and gold, red and green…When I became more interested in papercrafting, I started making some of my own papers, tags, and designing ribbons. Here are some pictures of my last year’s presents – can you see what my “theme” was?

Here are some of the presents I wrapped for this year – one theme is masculine,

and the other is feminine.

With the internet, there are oodles of ideas for making last minute items to wrap presents with, as well as unconventional gift wrapping ideas, alternative gift wrapping, and stylish DIY gift wrapping – I am such a packrat and hate to throw away pretty things that might come in handy to put on a present…recycle them! But buying things post-Christmas that you can use on presents is great too – this year I used snowflakes and snowmen.

When I think of gifts and presents, I am reminded by that saying, "The clock is running. Make the most of today. Time waits for no man. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it is called the present." Out of curiosity, I checked online to see who is credited with saying that….can you believe it, not only were there several slight variations of it, it has been quoted by several folk, among them was Eleanor Roosevelt, Bill Keane (the cartoonist), and even someone named Babatunde Olatunji (??). The saying supposedly comes from an ancient phrase and in “modern English,” it is: "the tide abides for, tarrieth for no man, stays no man, tide nor time tarrieth no man" (http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/38400…).

As far as the “presence,” I enjoy the holiday “presence” and “presents” – I love designing and putting together “presents”…making each one special for just that person…having the recipient think for just a minute before tearing it open, “oh, it’s too pretty to unwrap.” And hope that the gift I wrapped makes them not only feel special for that instant, but that they can sense my “presence” in the way I designed the “present” just for them. This quote pretty much summarizes my thoughts on presents: “The manner of giving is worth more than the gift” (Pierre Corneille, Le Menteur; retrieved 12/18/10, from http://www.quotegarden.com/gifts.html).  Hope you will take a second look at some of those pretty presents you might receive!

Our Christmas decorations inside and out

Wanted to share our Christmas decorations that we have put up - I took pictures of them so put into the 2 little Christmas albums I sent to my family - the red and green albums I posted about previously, and realized I didn't share any of our Christmas decorations!  Since we have a furbaby, you will see some decorations that are dog-related!

No snow here - won't get any either, other than the little wooden snowman to the right of the door....I can look at lots of pictures of it, and have lived for most of my life where there was always snow.  I have to say I am enjoying only looking at the pictures now lol!

Calendar bookmarks to enclose with Christmas cards

This year I decided to do something a little different with my Christmas cards (yes, I make them too!) - besides cutting back on how many to send, I wanted to let my family and a few special friends know I think about them....and give them something to remember that throughout the year.  So I made up some calendar bookmarks to enclose with their Christmas cards.