Starting to decorate for Christmas...sort of

I am so excited about decorating my house for Christmas.  This will be our first Christmas in this house and I have mentally decorated it in my mind several times over but now I am slowly bringing the two seasons together by decorating the entry way with fall colors.    My pumpkins will hang out a little longer and I plan on bringing the big tree to have in the dining area on Thanksgiving day, with lights only of course.  We are going to have over 20 people over for Thanksgiving and I am so excited to host this year!   I have also been working on another banner and I hope to take a pic and post it tomorrow.   Till then, have a wonderful day!

Thankful

Bought a new Cricut Cartridge "Pretty Pennants" and I love it!  I got it on sale at Micheal's for $19.99 Gotta love that!  I don't buy very many carts but  when I do, I try to make sure that they are ones that I am really going to use and this one surely fits the bill!  

 I made this Thankful banner with it and I have plans to make so many more!   I love the way that it turned out and I am now thinking of all of the different ones that I can make for Christmas!  Stay tuned for a banner bonanza!  I wish that would have taken a closer shot because it is hard to tell from these pics but, I inked the edges and the orange pennant is scalloped.  I used my Making Memory foam letter stamps for the letters.  I bought them from QVC  eons ago and I was thrilled to pull those bad boys out and dust them off!

Have a great week and I hope to have more to share in the upcoming weeks!

Holy Cow, it's November!

 Just wanted to add a few shots from yesterday.  We had fun carving our pumpkins..I was so proud of Sophia, she carved hers from beginning to end!  It turned out great!

 Here's my little hero...he looked adorable in his Captain America costume!

 Hubby took this picture of the kids while I was at work.  I really didn't get any good images of Sophia.  She couldn't dress up for school so I missed out on seeing her till after work.  She looked adorable though.

Here I am at work as Belle.  I had so much fun.  I sang the song from the movie several times.  I loved playing the part! Wonder what I will be next year!

My Ever Evolving Scrap Space

Aside from the fact that I am unpacking more of my supplies, I think that the most recent addition to my scrap space is the skirt and glass table top for my crafting table.  Now I can hide supplies down there and no one will know...well, not from the front anyways! 

 Here is another angle.  I hope to add a cork board soon but I haven't found the right one yet.

                                     
                                                                      Cricut storage.

                                               Another angle and view of my craft table.

My space hasn't changed that much but as I work in it I am finding out what works and doesn't work as far as placement goes.  Love the evolution of it all.  One of these days I will take pics of the other side of the room.  The computer sits in the other corner and there is a closet along the other wall.  Since we don't have a closet in our room our clothes are in it but hopefully soon.....it will house more scrapbooking supplies.  A girl can dream!

Still working on Pumpkin patch pics! Love these paper pumpkins from Making Memories, I picked them up awhile back at Tuesday Morning.  The flowers are Prima, I bought them on clearance at Micheals.  Gotta love a good deal.  Just like my LO from yesterday I used some Scenic Route paper that I have had for years!   One of these days I need to go through my stash and really be ruthless and actually get rid of some stuff, but it is just so hard for me to part with scrapbook product!  I wonder if I am alone in this..I can imagine that I am not! I used to buy new product that I loved but  was afraid to use it because I was saving it for "that perfect LO",  years down the line...I still have that paper and wonder why I ever bought it! Thankfully that phase of my scrapbooking psychosis only lasted for a little while and I quickly got over it! Now I use whatever strikes my fancy because hey, if I use it... I can always buy more! 

Speaking of buying more...I foresee a trip to my LSS in the near future! I have been out of the loop for so long I really don't even know what is out there right now.  What manufacturers are still available? What are the current trends? I can't wait to see!

Sunflower Power

Since I had the fall products out I figured I might as well continue on the fall theme! I pulled out some of my favorite Scenic Route paper and crafted this LO.  I still have so many pieces of Scenic Route, I was so sad when they went out of business. I had fun with these pics! I love the one with my hubby and the flowers, I also opted to use color selection, which I don't do very often.  Since it was pretty early when I took the picture of the LO this morning the light was not great and the LO did not photograph as well as I had hoped. 

I still have a few more fall pics to scrap but after that I have to catch up on summer and pics from last Christmas! I will save the pics from last Christmas till December though.  It will create the illusion that I am super on top of things although I am an entire year behind! LOL

I finally scrapbooked!

I was actually able to get two LOS done but one had all of Evan's classmates so I didn't post that one.  I have been in such a busy state lately, between work, house and school work for the kids it has been difficult for me to find the energy to scrap.  Sunday, however, I made myself sit down with the kids and create! Evan had fun with the caterpillar (my Cricut) , Sophia is working on her own album and hubby watched football in the living room..the perfect creative storm!  I had a fresh batch of pictures and I was off!

I can't tell you how good it felt to create again!   I get so busy and caught up in things that I forget that scrapbooking is such a huge stress reliever for me!  Yesterday I had lunch with a couple of my scrap girls and we planned a few scrappy outings and crop swaps.  It feels so good to be getting back into the swing of things.  I pray that this forward momentum holds because I am a much happier person when I am crafting!  Thankfully with cooler weather more time will be spent indoors.  So....let crafting begin!

Happy Fall

I have always loved fall.  I took these back in September.  I have added a few items since then but I have been so horribley updating my blog lately that I figured I had better get moving!  I love this red table and will try to get a better shot of it next time.  It is a great place to merchandise my holiday items!  Come Christmas time it will house my village.

 Today the urn is surrounded my many pumpkins plus a smiling jack o lantern on the chair. The flowers don"t look as good as they did in the beginning though! Right now they are blooming again though and they will be lovely again! (I hope)

 My white shelves...I love these things.  They flank the fireplace and took more coats of paint than I care to remember!

I actually scrapbooked today and tomorrow I hope to have some los uploaded and ready to share!

I am doing the happy dance!

Oh happy day, I discovered that there was a LSS in Chico.  I am so thrilled!  Apparently it has been open since June but I have been so preoccupied with work, the house search and the move that I had no clue. I hadn't been to a LSS in what feels like years!  I stopped in on Thursday before work & picked up some Graphic 45 pp & stickers.  I love them! 

 I had never used Graphic 45 before (at least I don't think that I have) They worked beautifully with these pics that I took at the beg. of the month.  So fun!

 For my Disney LO I used white cb glitter letters in the title, they don't photograph well!  The Mickey pic is from a wall calendar that I had.  I added the frame because it had an art deco feel to it...which reminds me of the tower of terror.

 One more Disney Lo.  Despite the rain the kids insisted on playing with this large marble fountain ball in Tommorowland.  I don't recall the pp but the cb is BG.   The cardstock on all four LOs are Bazzil.

Just because

The kids and I had a fun little photo shoot on Monday.  Fia had a couple of girlfriends over and they got all gussied up & we went out into our property & took some fun shots.  I am still working on editing them but I posted a few to share! 

 She had to get a picture on the bike.  It was her "vision"  LOL.  I took several shots of the  girls in the creek & I love how they  turned out!

.Have a very happy Easter.  I am looking forward to hosting Easter dinner at my house this year.  I can't wait! We are going to have a huge Easter egg hunt!  With over 20 guests the house will be a little crowded but it should be fun!

We are moving along

I was able to scrap a little last night after I put the kiddos in bed.   I really need to start scrapping on a regular basis.  Now that I have my room a little more put together hopefully I will be able to scrap a little bit every day.  Gone are the long chunks of time that I could devote to scrapping.  I am going to focus on getting a little done here and there, when I can spare a bit of time. 

 I had fun with this LO.  I colored the cb frame with a white water color crayon & added the blue on top.  I used a scrap of mm star pp and the bugs are mm as well.  I chose the bugs because I really don't have to many boy embellishments & the bugs' color palette seemed to go well enough.    I do call both the kids my love bug so it wasn't to far of a reach! LOL

 I have added a few more things to my walls.  As I scrap and get more use of my new space I am sure that I will continue to move things around.  My mom is going to sew a skirt for my table & we are going do try to do something with the top.  I am looking forward to working on that project & will post after pics for sure!   Half the fun is the journey & I want to fill this space with stuff I love.  I love re purposing items & giving them new life.  As soon as I get my computer area cleaned up & the doors put back on my closets I will take pics from another angle of the room!

Have a great week! 

Some new critters

Here are three of the newest members of our little family.  We adopted Lola from the SPCA and she is the sweetest little girl ever!    Lola and Belle get along pretty well.  I will catch them sleeping together , so sweet!   We haven't had a cat in years and she is a wonderful addition to the family!

 The other two critters that we have added to our menagerie?  Goats.  Two Alpine males.  They are three weeks old and we are still feeding them by bottle.  Eventually we would like to get females  They are super sweet and the kids love playing with them!

 Jared is Sophia's:

 Brutus is Evan's:

Looking forward to scrapping these pics.....I wonder if I have any goat embellishments! :)

we are off to a good start!

I have started putting my scrapbook room together.  It is so nice to have a place to create again.  I still have a long way to go with the unpacking but I am thrilled to have a start!  I still have some stuff at the other place and there are still things that I need to find.  I love that I can now have a friend over to scrap.  There's plenty of room for two, maybe even three. 

 I will shoot more angles of the room once I start getting everything where I want it.  I still have more shelves to hang & I hope to make a skirt of some sort for the table so I can pretend that they match.  I would love to better camouflage them!

 I found this LO already mostly completed so I added some pics of the kids being sweet .  Evan is blowing a kiss in the bottom one.

 I am not even sure of any of the product...It has been so long.  I think that I made it before Evan was even born.  I do really like the feel of it though.

we are in the new place!

We have been working and trying to get the new place ready.  I have posted some before and afters. 

 Here is a before.  The family room was missing some trim work and I didn't like the chopped up feel with the different colors.  I knew right away that I wanted to paint the shelves white.  Eventually we will work on the fireplace mantle but for now it will do.

 Another before shot.  The windows were a door to the backyard several owners ago, but for some reason they closed them up and now they are an odd collection of windows, highlighted by the blue it made them stand out way to much!

 Here is an after.  We painted and added the missing trim. (that was a theme throughout the entire house)  We plan on doing away with  the entertainment unit & mounting a tv on the fireplace... but that's down the line.

 another view of the freshly painted window.  I like the white it brings a little more unity to the space and it's a perfect little place for reading.

 This is the entry way.  They had this nasty carpet in such a high traffic area.

 Here is the new space with new paint and tile.

Another view of the entryway into the kitchen.  I added the scripture.
The house is a work in progress.  We only took  one week off to get the house move it ready and we still have boxes everywhere! My scrapbook room is starting to take shape & I hope to post pics on Monday.
Have a great weekend all!