Our Christmas Decorations

I really like how our Christmas decorating turned out this year.  I've saved some pictures so I'll remember next year how I want to do it!  The house feels so Christmasy and I'm content to be home watching a good movie, sipping hot cocoa, and enjoying our Christmas lights.  Life is good!

I love my Christmas pyramids.  I think I'm now a collector!  Two of them were given to us as wedding gifts from my brother-in-law and his wife while they lived in Germany.  I got another one when I went to the Nutcracker Market one year.  The other one, funny enough, I found at a Home Goods store. I discovered that there's a German shop in Old Towne Spring that sells pyramids, so I might have to start adding to my collection.  I really like them.

I also love my Big Shot!  HO HO HO was made with a big alphabet die from Stampin' Up!.  I always decorate the little tree next to the fireplace.  It reminds me of a Charlie Brown tree.

I have really enjoyed having a Christmas tree right next to our kitchen.  It makes mealtimes festive.  I love to decorate with red and white for Christmas. 

Here's our big Christmas tree.  My husband does an expert job at putting 1000 lights on the tree.  Then me and the kids decorate it......over time because it's a BIG tree.

This year I added some Christmas cheer on top of our TV hutch.  I love the extra touch.  We also have another small tree upstairs in our game room that is decorated with silver and white.  It has a snowflake or winter theme to it.  We put garland around our big entertainment system upstairs, too.  Watching movies feels warm and cozy with the tree and the lights from the garland.  We're having fun down here in Katy, Texas, even though it reached 72 degrees today.  It's Christmas, y'all!

My Favorite Christmas Card

Hi guys!  I wanted to share my favorite Christmas card for this year!  I'm in love with the little trees and the snowy hill.  To make the snow on the hill, I outlined the curve with Stampin' Up!'s 2-way glue pen and sprinkled Dazzling Diamonds glitter on it.  It sparkles so nicely in real life!

This afternoon, my daughter Haley and I attended the Nutcracker presented by the Houston Ballet.  It was a splendid performance and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  I thought I might get a little bored, but that was NOT the case at all.  I was totally enthralled with the performance and the time just flew by.  I'm now realizing that I should have been a ballerina - and it's too late now!  It was a wonderful way to spend the afternoon, so Haley and I have decided that we'll need to make this a Christmas tradition.  Loved going with her.  She's the best and I love her so much!

More Christmas Cards

Hello!  I've been busy wrapping Christmas gifts and baking in anticipation of a wonderful Christmas, but here's a few more cards I've made that I wanted to share with you.

Merry, Merry Christmas to all of you!  We're heading out for a very nice Christmas dinner in a swanky restaurant where we can get ALL dressed up.  Gotta go get ready!

I've Been Working on Christmas Cards

I've been busy stamping lots of Christmas cards.  I wanted to share some of them with you before Christmas comes and goes!  Here's a very simple and sweet one.  The stamps I used for this card are from Papertrey.  I always love stamping on Crumb Cake card stock - it adds such a richness to the inks, in my opinion.  Isn't that little pine bough just adorable?  I love this stamp set because it provides you with different images to hang from the bough and different ways to decorate the bough.  It's one of my favorites!

I made some with white card stock, too.

Here is another card I made this year.

 

The snowflake uses Stampin' Up!'s Silver Glimmer Paper, which isn't showing up very well in the photo.  In real life, it is shimmery and beautiful.  The "Let it Snow" is embossed in pewter embossing powder.  Love this card!  I found the card below on Pinterest; however, the artist used Crumb Cake for the paper, but I changed it to white.  Very sweet little card!  What doesn't show up well is that I embossed the image in white embossing powder on the front panel.  Very classy in real life!

Here's a fun little card!  I love this little tree.  To get all of the different colors on the rhinestones and pearls, I colored them with Stampin' Up!'s Stampin' Blendabilities.  This is an adorable stamp set from Simon Says.  I used jute for the tree.  I'll share more cards soon.  Gotta go fix dinner!

Our Thanksgiving

Every Thanksgiving, I ask Haley to decorate our Thanksgiving dinner table - and this year, she did a great job!  I should say she did ANOTHER great job because the last several years have all been great!  Here is how she decorated our table for 2014.

Those little Tupperware tubs you see at each spot contain homemade butter.  That's one of our Thanksgiving traditions.  Many years ago when the kids were in kindergarten, we learned how to make butter, so every year we each make some butter to spread on our rolls at Thanksgiving.  All you do is mix 1/4 cup of heavy whipping cream with a pinch of salt in a container with a lid - and then shake the heck out of it until it forms into a little ball.  When you open the lid, you pour off the liquid, and then you have a nice amount of butter to spread on your bread.  It's a nice tradition that we will continue to do for years!  Since my mom was joining us this year, I used the china that she and my dad got for wedding presents.  She gave her china to me when she moved to Katy.  Thanksgiving was a very special opportunity to use it!  I also had fun decorating our mantel for Thanksgiving.  As you can see, my Big Shot is still coming in handy!

I simply adore fall colors.  We had such a nice Thanksgiving.  Our meal turned out perfectly, which is always nice (because you never know)!  Now it's on to Christmas!

I'm Still Here!

HELLO to my blogging buddies!  Yes, I'm still here!  Occasionally I'll receive an email from someone out there asking if I'm okay and asking why I'm not blogging anymore.  My life has been VERY different over the past six months from my Stampin' Up! days, and I'm still adjusting to my new lifestyle, but things are fine.  In fact, things aren't just fine, they're GRAND!  I'm very happy, immensely enjoying my retirement, and loving the fact that my time is my own.  I feel healthier than I've ever felt in all aspects of my life - mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually!  So, see?  All is GOOD!  I fully intend to get back to blogging because for me, it's how I scrapbook.  I love being able to go back and see pictures of old vacations, special trips, great friends and family members, and the papercrafts I've made.  I've been incredibly busy with my new lifestyle!  I love to spend time with my mother and her friends, and I've also been making 200 Christmas cards!  I still get together with lovely people in my life to share stamping and to share life in general.  And now, with Christmas approaching, I've been busy shopping, wrapping gifts, baking, addressing envelopes to send cards, and having coffee and lunches with my mom and her friends.  My kids are now home from college for the holidays and we are looking forward to a very nice Christmas!  For the first time in about 25 years, I have some family members coming to spend Christmas with us, so it's going to be a very special Christmas!

I have LOTS to catch you up on, but I do want to make sure I post a picture of our 2014 First Annual Crafting Getaway Weekend, which occurred back in October.  I had always planned an annual retreat for the demonstrators in my downline and after retiring, I felt blue, knowing that I was going to miss out on that special event each year.  It then occurred to me that I could plan the same type of event every year for my stamping friends.  We had our first retreat a couple of months ago at Jordan Ranch in Schulenburg.  It was a lovely weekend filled with beautiful people I love and great crafts of all types, so it's now going to be a part of my life each year.  YAY!  Here is a picture that we took before we left.  A couple of people had already left, so we missed having them in the photograph, but all the rest of us made it into the picture.  I'll be posting some Christmas cards on my blog soon, but I wanted to say thank you to those of you who have been wondering if I'm okay and contacted me with your concern.  You are very nice people!