It's That Time of Year!

Are you feeling overwhelmed?  It's that time of year!  I am so behind this year!  Who am I kidding?  I am behind every year and doing things at the last minute on a regular basis!  Marianne and I were discussing this today.  Why don't we do these things in the summer or fall instead of waiting until last minute.  Although, I have to say, I have been working on my 6x6 calendars a little at a time for several months.  But I like to do 2-3 different calendars.  Today I spent most of the day working on the calendars that I give out this time of year.  I am going to have to send them to Office Depot to get printed though.  I tried printing them on my printer and got funny yellow lines going up and down - not pretty!  Don't have time to figure out the problem with my printer either. Tonight while watching TV, I worked on some little punch art reindeer tags that I am going to take to my Mahjong Christmas party on Friday.  When I finish those, I need to start on the gifts I want to make for the bridge party on Monday.  And then work on the projects for Stamp Club next week! We are going to do tags and gift cards and I will be using the Oh What Fun Tag Kit from the Holiday catalog.

Yesterday was the Duplicate Bridge Christmas party.  It was rather bittersweet.  We had a huge void with Sharon not being there this year.  She loved Christmas and we usually had our Christmas party in her home.  We all felt like she was with us this year in spirit; looking down on us.  We also welcomed two new members .... well, they aren't new since they have been subbing for us for the past year but now they will be regular members of the group.

Here's a picture of the group - minus Kathy since she was taking the picture.  We did a gift exchange and Kathy got a Selfie Stick but we couldn't figure out how to use it so we just took turns taking pictures.

At lunch, Diane had napkins on the table that were folded to look like a Christmas tree.  She gave us instructions on how to make them, but mine didn't turn out so good.  Here is the one Diane did:

Be aware that Stampin' Up will have more products on CLEARANCE for their Year End Sale starting December 10 - January 4, while supplies last.  They will be offering discounts up to 60 per cent on select products.  So make sure you check them out starting Thursday.

Also - more good news!!  Because of the popularity of the Woodland Embossing Folder, it will not be retiring!!  It will be available in the next annual catalog!!  I am so glad!

Here are the Weekly Deals - just in time for Christmas!

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Thanksgiving pics

Yay!!  I felt creative this afternoon and changed my blog header. Isn't that little elf the cutest?  Found him somewhere on the wide, wide web, saved him and, using My Digital Studio, made up my blog header and inserted the little guy as a picture!  Easy, peasy!

I had a relaxing massage today and could tell .... I really needed it!  Ashley and I were supposed to have one when she was visiting and I had even booked it a month in advance (which is very unusual for me) but before she even got here, they called to change her masseuse since the one she normally sees when she visits had left.  So we changed the masseuse and the day in order for both of us to go at the same time.  Well, on Friday (the day after she arrived), they called again to say that her masseuse had left and they were scheduling her for Wednesday and me for Monday.  Not what we wanted!!!  So, I ended up cancelling both of them and since they could not work us in at the same time, we had to do without.  Think I am going to look into finding a new place for massages.  I have been going to the same place (in a chiropractors office) for several years but lately, they seem to be having a lot of personnel changes.  Sonny usually gives me 6-8 gift certificates for Christmas and I end up hoarding them until the end of the year.  I have two left but luckily, they do not have expiration dates so I will be using them in 2016.

I finally got my Thanksgiving pictures downloaded to share.

It was a beautiful day!  Ashley and me with my Thanksgiving apron on!

Ashley and her dad

Ashley and Bogey .... it was a long day!

Beautiful flowers - and table runner - from Sharon and Bob.  She quilted the beautiful table runner.

Me and Marianne

Ashley and Grandma

Marianne and Girlfriend (aka Sharon)

Sonny, me, Jack

Table all ready!

Treats I made for everyone

We had to have a little table this year!

Bob, Derek, Greg and Sonny - frying the turkey

Wreath I made

My cousin, Candy, me and Ashley

Candy, me, Mom, Marianne, Sharon, Ashley, Angela

Derek entertaining the gals

Decorations for the Little Table!

Christmas Stamp A Stack 2015

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year.  Mine was excellent.  Having Ashley here for almost 2 weeks was great as well as having my brother in law here for a week.  This is a hard time of year for him as well as myself since it was just before Thanksgiving that my sister died eight years ago.  (Gosh, can't believe it's been that long.)  But it is also nice to get back to normalcy (whatever that is!)  Sonny and I were talking about it tonight.  We loved having everyone here and we were on the go constantly, but it was good to get our routine back and sit down at the kitchen table and eat our left overs.  Know what I mean?  We will be leaving in a few weeks for Texas to spend Christmas with Ashley as well as her birthday.  So just a few weeks of normalcy!  

I had a busy day today.  This morning was our Newcomers Christmas party.  This year it was held at the Catholic church and we had so much more room than our regular location.  Half of the membership brings food for the event and the other half bring canned goods for The Christian Mission.  We also make baskets for the elderly and toys for children whose families are struggling.  All these are given to The Christian Mission who distributes them to needy people in our community.  We provided 85 baskets today so there will be a lot of happy people at Christmas time.

After the party, I had an eye doctor appointment for a procedure on my right eye for posterior capsule opacification .... what a mouthful!  It is a common complication after cataract surgery where the part of the lens covering (or capsule) that remains after surgery gets cloudy.  The procedure itself is called Yag laser.  The doctor uses a laser to cut a hole in the clouded back lining of the lens capsule which allows light to pass through the membrane to the retina at the back of the eye.  Sonny was with me and they had a special tool that he could look into and see the entire procedure.    I'll be having my left eye done on Monday and hopefully by then, I'll be able to tell the difference.

I am having my annual card class this Saturday and have been busy the past couple of days prepping for the event.  It is always a fun time.  We get our Christmas cards made, eat some goodies, have a few give-aways and just have fun!  If you'd like to come, let me know SOON (like today!) so I can get prepped for you.  It will be at my house from 10 - 1 this Saturday, Dec. 5.  I have so much fun designing the different cards for this event and the choices seem to increase every year because I can't decide.  The way it works is that you make 20 cards for $35, in groups of 5 each.  You can also make more than 20 at an additional cost.

Happy Thanksgiving

I know my posts on my blog have been few and far between lately.  But I have been enjoying my daughter and my brother-in-law's visit with us during this thankful season.  I hope your Thanksgiving is spent with friends and family and you will be thankful for all you have.  Enjoy the day!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Holiday Online Extravaganza Sale!

Stampin' Up is having a Holiday Extravaganza SALE starting on Monday.  There are some great deals to be had so don't miss out!

I will be putting an order in on Monday if you want me to add something for you OR you can order online by clicking on the "Order Online" button at the top of my blog.

Tag Christmas Tree Card

I have been working on Christmas cards for my Christmas Stamp a Stack.  This is one of the cards I will be offering.

This card uses the Gently Falling embossing folder along with the Tag Punch.

Here is another card using items from the Holiday Catalog.  This one uses the Woodland embossing folder (which is on the retiring list - what is that about???).  The stamp set I used is Among the Branches.

I have not been feeling well this week.  I got a good ole' sinus infection I believe.  I went to the doctor this afternoon and saw his P.A. who gave me an antibiotic.  Plus, I have been drinking my secret concoction - apple cider vinegar, honey and hot water.  It seems to be helping!  So hopefully this will take care of everything before Thanksgiving!  Ashley will be here Thursday and we plan on going to the Southern Living Christmas Show on Friday.  I took Sonny to his ortho. doc today too.  They removed the bandage and said it looked really good.  Today is his final day of in-home PT and his doctor said he did not have to go to physical therapy as long as he was good about exercising it himself, which I know he will be.  He is itching to drive and get away from the house!!  I second that!

Almost Time for Goodbye for Holiday Catalog Items

Stampin' Up is saying good-bye to retiring products from the Holiday Catalog.  BUT before they do, they are giving us an opportunity to order some of our favorites.  Retiring products will only be available until January 4, or while supplies last!!  So, now is a great time to order them before they are gone!


Click HERE to see the list of retiring products.  These lists will be updated daily to show their availability.

If you order on-line, please use my Hostess Code #V V 469SWT

Enjoy Coloring?

If you enjoy coloring, I have the perfect stamp set for you!  As a child, I loved to color and when my children were little, I enjoyed coloring with them in their coloring books.  Guess that was the creative side of me trying to get out and express itself with different colors.  Remember getting those big boxes of crayons with 60-something different colors in it?  No stinking little box of 8 crayons for me!  And they had to be Crayola.  I'm not sure what the other brands were but they just weren't the same.  Now you can get a custom box of 64 crayons where you can pick your colors.  That would be too many choices for me!!  I prefer the Classic Colors and let someone else pick!

When I first saw Lighthearted Leaves in the Holiday Mini Catalog, I was not impressed.  (How many times have I said that?!!)  But when I started seeing the beautiful cards that were made with this set, my mind was changed.  I think I told you that in this post using Lighthearted Leaves.

For the following cards, I tried a new technique using the Woodland embossing folder. Emboss a piece of Watercolor paper with the Woodlands Embossing Folder.  Next rub the Embossing Buddy over it.  Using a VersaMark pen (or squeeze some VersaMark Reinker out and use a paintbrush), go over the trees with the Versamark ink.  Pour white embossing powder over it and heat set the trees.  Next  wet your paper and watercolor by using your Aqua Pen and the ink squeezed into the lid of the stamp pad..  The colors I used were:  Pool Party, Cajun Craze, Hello Honey, Soft Suede and Pear Pizazz but use your imagination.  As you can see, they all come out differently.  Go over the trees with Early Espresso and get some dark ink on them a little bit.  When you are pleased with it, let it dry.  (I am impatient and used my heat gun on front and back to dry.)  After it is dry, rub the Embossing Buddy over it again and use VersaMark ink and stamp a few leaves from Sheltering Tree and emboss them.  I embossed one of the cards below with Copper embossing powder (retired from SU) and the other two with Gold powder.

Next stamp a few leaves onto Vanilla card stock from the Lighthearted Leaves set with VeraMark ink.  Emboss with gold (or copper).  Color them and mount them in the corner of your card.  I just loved coloring these leaves with my markers.  Here are the close-ups of the leaves:

Card Box with Cards

My sister and mom are going to a Lions Club Convention this weekend.  My sister, Angela, asked me if I could donate some items for the cause.  I made them a few calendars (digital) and Sonny made a couple of wooden calendar holders for them.  Then I pulled out all my Paper Pumpkin kits that I had not totally used all the parts and pieces and made several cards plus a little box to put them in.  These are two of the sets below.

Today was bittersweet.  I went to the my friend's funeral.  It was a lovely tribute to her but oh so sad. I started crying driving to town and the flood works kept going through the ceremony.  She and Julian had a combined family of 5 boys - 2 hers and 3 his but she raised them all.  They were all there with their families.  Her grandson is in the Marines and looked so handsome in his dress blues.  I just about lost it when he walked down the church aisle carrying the urn with her ashes and at the end, when he retrieved them from the altar and carried them out of the church.  And then, more crying when I heard the bagpipes playing outside the church as we all departed.  I don't think I've ever attended a Catholic funeral.  I told one of my friends who I was sitting with and who is also Catholic, that they sure do a lot of getting up and sitting down.  She told me that was their version of aerobics! After the church service, we visited with the family and had lunch that the Womens Auxillary had prepared.  There was a slide show of pictures of Sharon over the years that was nice to watch.  They also had music playing - a lot of 60s music with a lot of Aretha Franklin!  Sharon's ringtone was an Aretha song so it was very fitting.

I got my new refrigerator today!  So glad.  Tomorrow will be spent transferring all my food into it!

Shoebox Cards from Quarterly PLUS Weekly Deals!

Finally getting around to sharing the Shoebox Swap cards I made at the Wilmington Quarterly.  I finished a little over half the cards Friday night (stamping cards for Marianne also!).  So, when Margaret was visiting, while she worked on the club projects, I finished up these cards.  Hope they give you some inspiration.

This week's Weekly Deals are great!  I have already ordered the tree framelits today!

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Sonny is getting along pretty good.   He pushed himself a little too much on Sunday with taking a shower that morning (his first since surgery) and then going to Big Al's to watch the football game.   He was wiped out and hurting a little bit when we got home.  Plus, he didn't like the fact that he had to pull the Steelers through without a beer!!  But we got a win .... as usual, in the last seconds!  Yesterday the Physical Therapist came and worked with him.  And today, we had to go looking for a new refrigerator so he has slept a lot this afternoon.  When it rains, it pours!  We had noticed since he came home from the hospital, that the cold packs he puts on his hip were not freezing totally.  (I change them out every 2-3 hours for him.)  I pulled out the bottom piece of the 'fridge and vacuumed the coils but it didn't seem to do much.  So, I have taken most of the food and put it in our outside freezer and put what I can in our small beer refrigerator in the garage.  I called Sears yesterday about getting a 'fridge from them, but their delivery date was going to be Nov. 19!  So we went to Lowe's Home Imp. today but the one we wanted was not in stock.   I ended up going online and found one at Home Depot and it will be delivered on Thursday!!  Yay!

I lost one of my best Lake Norman friends yesterday - the "good Sharon" as she always told me.  Sharon has been battling a blood disorder (similar to what Robin Roberts from GMA had) for about five years.  For the past year or so, she has been doing great.  But she started feeling bad in August shortly before they were supposed to go on a cruise.  They ended up canceling the cruise and she had several blood transfusions and platelets over the past couple of months.  I visited her in the hospital last Sunday and she was did not look good at all.  It scared me. Wednesday after Sonny's surgery, I went to see her again and she looked so much better.  But that evening, I stopped by her room as I was leaving and she was not in the room.  I was told that she was moved to Critical Care where she stayed for a couple of days.  She was taken to Hospice late Friday.  I went to see her Saturday morning, knowing I was saying my final good bye to her.  She told me she just couldn't fight any more but she wanted to make it through Sunday since that was their 40th wedding anniversary.  She died Monday at noon.  Luckily her children were able to get here in time.  Sharon was the first friend I made when I moved here nine years ago and I will miss her terribly.  We played bridge together every Monday.  We will have a big gap at the bridge table now.