Holiday Mini is Leaving Us

Today lets take one last look through the fabulous Holiday Mini that will be leaving us soon. Did you get everything you need/want? If not then today is the day to order. Remember when this catalog ends ( January 4th) most of these items will be gone forever! Aaaaaaah. So take one more look and see if there is anything you missed. You might want to pick up some more of that Holiday DSP you loved so much to use for next year. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help. You can always place your orders online through my store by clicking the icon to the left or you can email your orders to me and I can place the order for you. Happy Shopping!

Country Living A La Carte Stationary Kit

Sorry for the late posting this morning. I have been on the phone with SU! trying to clarify some confusion I had. SU! support is so helpful to me. Anytime I have a question they answer the phone and I have a live person I can chat with. Just another positive about this wonderful company and the support they give us demos. Anyway, back to today. There are so many new and exciting items that I am dieing to share with you. I just had to clarify which ones I can show and which ones I need to hold on to. So if there are any other demos out there that need clarifying maybe this will help.

If it is product you have to wait and if it is promo you can share it.

An easier way to know is if we can pre-order it, we can share it.

So here is today's item:

Country Living Cards a la Carte Stationary Kit

(while Supplies Last)

This exclusive kit (item 119113) Includes the following items:

-Dinner Party Stamp Set (set of Three)

-Ballet Blue Stampin Spot

-Pre-Printed Stationary (24 sheets: 4each of 6 designs)

Available for order January 5-April 30 (or while supplies last)

Click HERE to see view the flyer now!

Be sure to check out the ad for this new product in the upcoming issue of Country Living Magazine. Remember to place your orders through me to receive your preferred pricing. Not a subscriber to Country Living? Well then here is another sweet offer for you. Stampin Up customers can subscribe to the magazine for only $10. That means for only $1 per issue you can receive this great magazine filled with great craft projects, articles on collecting, makeover features, recipes and entertaining ideas-all delivered to your home each month. Click HERE to sign up now!
If you have any question please don't hesitate to ask!

Christmas Pages

Here are a few more pages I added to my 2009 Scrapbook. I send it to the professional printing service yesterday so I hope to have it soon. I am super excited. What do you think about these pages? I love this Christmas Cocoa kit. Another thing I love about making my scrapbook pages Digital is if there is a stamp or embellishment that I love I can add as may times to the page as I want without running out (cant do that with the simply scrappin kits) and if I love a stamp, like this one from Heard from the Heart, I can stretch it to be the right size so it is perfect on the page. Kinda hard to do that with actual stamps. Remember if you have any questions about the program I can answer them. I am MDS Certified now!

My Digital Studio

Have I told you how much I love My Digital Studio? To tell you the truth I thought it was a bad idea when I first heard about it. I told myself I am not going that route. But I eventually figured in case some of my customers wanted to use it, I better be familiar with it too. So I bought the program. Wow! Now I am hooked. It is so easy and fun to use. I can whip up a scrapbook page is seconds. Not to mention the Program has a ton of pages already done. All I have to do is add in my pictures.
So, my first project is a scrapbook (you can also make cards, calendars, home videos and more!) so that I have a hard copy to show you at our next party or class. I love the way the book is turning out. I especially love that it got me scrapbooking again. I mean Ava is going to be three in January and I haven't even finished her baby book!!!! Please don't even ask about my little Sammie:(
So in the next few days I will share with you a few pages that I have created. To see the full copy of the book be sure to reserve your spot in the January class. The Tote and Mini notes class is going to be a great one. And did I mention it will be right after I get back from Leadership and Regionals? Whoo Hoo! I hope to come back with tons of fabulous stuff to show you. See you in January if not sooner!

Christmas Thank Yous. Check.

Yesterday I took full advantage of Ava and Sam's excitement over their new toys. While they were enthralled in a sea of Princess and Tinker Bell goodies I dove into my scrap booking room to whip up some thank yous. I chose a really simple design so I could get them done fast. Not to mention I wanted to use my Delighful Decorations stamp set one more time! Here they are. My part is done. Now I just have to work on Ava and Sammie adding their little signatures to them. Not sure how long that will take me;)

Another Christmas Treat

Today I had to show this treat I received from my cousin on Christmas Eve. I thought that these came out so cute! I believe she said this was a case but I love the way it came out. Under those cute little scallops are four York Peppermint Patties. Yummy. Those are a favorite in our house. Not sure where she got those perfect little bags but they hold the Yorks perfect! Nice job Lorraine.

To check out more of Lorraine's creations stop by her blog by clicking HERE.

Merrrrrry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! Okay I think I finally got all my Christmas Projects in here. These were the cookies we decorated for our family. I love these because they are perfect for little ones. All they have to do is dip the Oreo in the white chocolate mold and then into the sprinkles. They always come out pretty no matter how messy the girls are. If only this picture had sound on it. This is what you would hear, " NO Sam! No. No. No. Those are for our Family!" Sadly a few didn't make it as you can see;)

Awwwww! Aren't they pretty? And believe it or not they are super yummy! Who would have thought you could make an Oreo even better?

Here is the final project. I just love those treat bags. Now go my faithful followers and enjoy your families! Hey, why are you on the computer anyway!?! Its Christmas!!!!!!!!!!

Ornaments For Our Grandmas

Here was another project we made yesterday. Salt Dough Ornaments. If you need a fun project to do with your kiddos today this is a good one. You probably have everything you need in your pantry.

2 cups of Flour

1 cup of salt

1 cup of water

Using some cute cookie cutters cut some shapes in your rolled out dough. You can leave your dough white or add some coffee or food coloring for some colored dough.

bake at 325 until dry

(Don't forget to poke a hole in each one for threading some cord)

When they are done you can paint them like we did (Auntie Raine, do you like Ava's dress?) or glue on some beads or glitter.

Then using your Stampin Write Marker don't forget to personalize them. Add a bit of Silver Cord for hanging and there you have them. I am purposely not showing the finished product in case the Grandmas are reading.

Embellish a few gift bags with your Christmas Jingle Simply Scrappin Kit and there you have it. Hope everyone has a Wonderful Christmas. God Bless!

From the Desk of

I recently purchase a few templates from PapertreyInk's Timeless Templates to use to make a few Christmas gifts with. I loved them. They are super simple. All I had to do was print out the template on my card stock and put them together. I decided to make a couple of the "From the Desk of " templates for the ladies at my husbands work. I filled the desk organizers with some printer paper cut to 4 1/4 by 5 1/2, a handful of personalized note cards, a cellophane bag of cookies and a few mini candy canes. I hope they like them.

Cocoa Packets

Today I will be delivering some goodies that we made yesterday. The first set of goodies are these hot cocoa packets that we made for some of the teachers at Ava's school. Today is our last day of school before Christmas so we will come bearing gifts. We also still have a handful of our M&M Christmas Jingle Boxes to hand out as well. As for the Cocoa Packets they are the same ingredients for Snowman Soup minus the cute little poem. I just ran out of time. Instead they will get the hot cocoa packets, a small bag of marshmallows and a few candy cane stir sticks. I used the large cellophane bags to hold all the goodies and the medium bags for the marshmallows. I added the snowman tag from the Christmas Punch stamp set so they know who the gifts are from. Then finally I doubled up my ribbon to make the packets look a bit fancier. What do you think. Not bad for some quick and inexpensive gifts, right?

Breakfast with Santa

Saturday I was asked to put together a display for the Breakfast with Santa Event at Ava's Preschool. Here are a few pictures of the set up. If you stopped by to see the creations then I thank you. I hope I piqued some interest in this hobby that I love so much. You can click on the pictures to see a closer look at some of the goodies. Unfortunately, by the end of the day my board was falling apart a bit. I should have snapped my picture right away but I forgot my camera at home.

We are now in our count down to Christmas but I still have a few more goodies to show you before Christmas is here. Today is suppose to be a rainy day and we don't have much to do (no more shopping and no school today) so we will be decorating cookies for our neighbors and finishing up the last minute goodies we have to hand out. I will have everything ready to show you soon. Stay tuned.......

Dear Santa,

Today's post is a project I made for one of our Stampin Up contests. I wanted to make a box that we could leave our wish lists in for Santa. This box will be left next to Santa's milk and cookies so he can read the girls' wish lists while he is enjoying a yummy little snack of some cookies that we will be making.

Inside you will see the note cards are in the shape of Chocolate Chip cookies. I thought that was appropriate;) The note space is small but I think that's fair. I will let the girls know that they can ask Santa for one special gift. After all there are lots of good kids out there that Santa has to give to and we need to share. After they make their wish on there cookie card I will turn the cookie note card into an ornament so I can remember what they asked for each year. Example: this year Ava wants a spider............Santa, please don't bring her that!

More Christmas Creations

Here are a few more Christmas creations I received as part of the gifts for Ava and Sam. I do included all the handmade cards and gift tags as part of the gift because while the girls are excited about the gifts they receive, I am excited about the handmade creations. And yes, I do keep them! These were all made by their Auntie Raine (Lorraine.) First, we got a cute 3X3 card made with that fabulous Christmas Jingle Simply Scrappin' Kit. Then we got a few tags on some gifts that were given to us by Grammy Dolly (it was a give-a-way that Lorraine wrapped them:)) We loved it all: Gifts and Gift tags! Thanks Auntie Raine.

Be sure to check out more of Lorraine's creations by clicking HERE.

Another Envelope Card

Here is another envelope card. These are so great for the Holidays especially if you are giving gift cards. This is a great way to make a gift card more personal: add it to a handmade card! With the nice little pockets that this card has you wont have to worry about the gift card accidentally falling out of the card. When you use and envelope to create the inside you will have two great pockets to add your gift card and a sweet little note too. I once again used my Christmas Jingle Simply Scrappin Kit to decorate this card. Hope you like it!

Craft Kits

Today I have to share these fabulous gifts that Ava and Sam received from our friend Jenn. I should have snapped the pictures as soon as we got them because Ava has already smudged some ink on the cover of hers.

I love, love ,love these. And so do the girls, by the way! They use them everyday. Jenn, you decorated the covers so cute! And we already have a stack of art projects that the girls have made with their supplies.

Look at all the goodies inside: Princess crayons, scissors, pom-poms, glue, glitter pens, and these great jumbo stamps and ink pads. The stamps are so cute. Just look at that little owl. These are perfect practice for my little "Down-Lines in the making!" Thank you!

January Class

Sorry it has taken me so long to post our next class. I guess December is getting away from me. So here it is:

Mini Notes and Tote Class

This is the perfect class to start your New Year with. At this class you will make a total of 10 3X3 cards perfect for placing with all those gifts you will be handing out though out the 2010 Stampin' Year. We will use an assortment of different picture stamp sets and greetings stamp sets to supply you with the perfect amount of cards for a variety of different occasions such as : Birthdays, Baby, Wedding, Thank you, Mother's Day, Father's Day and more!

You will also learn how to make this adorable (and easy) tote to take them home in.

The cost of the class is only $7 and a minimum order of $10 the day of the class

(and remember our new Mini and Sale-A-Bration will be available for orders at this class)

Thursday January 14th at 6:00

Email me for Location info.

Hope you can all make it!

Treat Tents

This creation is not my own but I thought it was too cute not to share. Did you know that us Demonstrators have our own site with tons of cute project ideas, tips and more! Yep, I love our Demonstrator website there are a lot of talented demos out there and this truly is a little (or Big) family. We help each other and share ideas. It's great! Thinking about signing up? Talk to me about it. I'll tell you why I love it.

Anyway, these treats are so cute and easy to make when you have the Two Tags Dies. Remember, you have until December 22 to collect all those Dies you have on your wish list at a discounted price! Just click on the 12 Days of Holidays Sale buttons to the left to start shopping. Don't think you can make these in time for Christmas? Remember, Valentines Day will be here sooner than you think;)

Special Christmas

Here is a card that I worked on yesterday. When I started out I had a totally different game plan for the card but the idea I was throwing around in my head just wasn't working. I will have to play around with the idea a bit more to get it to work. Nevertheless, I am happy with the outcome of this card. I used some of the NEW satin ribbon (which you will soon see in the new Occasions Mini coming out) and my favorite Christmas stamp set Delightful Decorations. The card is a 5X5 and I made it for someone that is incredibly important to me and much appreciated. I will be delivering in soon. I am not sure if you can see in the picture but I used a Silver Encore ink pad for some of the accents. I love the silver look just remember when you are using it to take your time because the ink does not dry right away and you don't want to smear you creation.

Birthday 3X3 Card

This a quick card I made up to give to my mom. She had a little gift she was giving to a co-worker (actually, it was one of the Christmas totes with a stack of 4X4 Christmas Jingle cards like we made in our last class) and she needed a card to go with it. Now I know the 3X3 card won't exactly coordinate with the gift but it's a birthday gift and not a Christmas gift so I thought I should make a card to reflect that. It's okay that they don't match , right?

Anyway, I just love those little Library Clips. You probably have noticed that I have been using them on just about everything lately. But aren't they cute? I just cant resist! My supply is running low though. Time to re-order?

Christmas Treats

My Christmas treats are finished. As you can see I did make one big change. As much as I liked the gift tags I was worried about having to get the gift tags out to everyone before they wrapped their gifts. I did still make a few boxes with the tags and I will be sure to give them out early but the majority will get these. Who doesn't like M&M's anyway?

These little boxes couldn't be easier with the Big shot. I ran the Die through the Big Shot and there they were. Just embellish and fill. Done. This is a great way to be able to hand out lots of little goodies without breaking the bank. Hope everyone enjoys them.

12 Days of Holiday Sales

Stampin has just announced the 12 Days of Holiday Sales. If you are a Big Shot fan then you are going to be super excited to see all the goodies on sale now thru December 22. Not only are there an amazing assortment of Dies and Sizzlets on Sale but there are 14 NEW colors of our Decor Element Sheets also. These sheet are great creating your own elements using any of our Big Shot Dies or Sizzlets. I actually just bought some of these myself. I hope to make some fun projects to show you real soon. Please let me know if you have any questions. Click HERE to see the sales now! Happy Shopping!!!

I got Published!

I got Published! Well, kinda. Not for my excellent stamping;) But for one of those funny mom moments. If anyone reads Parents magazine like I do check out the last page of the mag. My favorite parts of the Parents magazine is the "It worked for me" section and the "Baby Bloopers" section. I sent in a funny story about my 2 year old Ava and while ago and I forgot all about it. Then, yesterday I received two copies of the mag. I threw one away and sat down for a read. Then my phone went off, it was my cousin. She said, " Hey, I was just reading Parents magazine and you are in it!" So I quickly flipped to the back and there it was.

It may be hard to read and they did chop my story a bit so here is what happened. We stopped by a fountain one evening after dinner with our girls. We gave Ava some pennies to throw in and told her to make a wish. When she was done we asked her what she wished for. She said," I wish I had my money back!"

Now, here is my attempt to tie this into Stamping. In the "It worked for me" section a mom wrote in about teaching her little one to stamp. She noticed that her little one was having trouble so she decided to teach her to stamp by pressing the images into a bit of Play-Doh. That way she wouldn't have to worry about the ink mess and her daughter got some practice. Cute, huh?

Occasions Pre-Order

I received my pre-order in the mail yesterday. If you are on my mailing list then you will be getting your own copy of the 2010 Occasions Mini and the new Sale-A-Bration catalogs soon. If you are not already on my mailing list and would like a copy please let me know and I will get a copy to you. I have to say I am super excited about some of the new lines of product coming out this January! New stamps of course, a new punch style, clear stamps, new chalk board Decor Elements, ribbon, DSP, embellishments and MORE!!!!! Here is just a few of the goodies that I got. I am especially excited about Tote-ally Tess. She reminds me of the old "Swell News" gal we used to have. As a demonstrator I plan on using her for special gifts and thank yous for my customers. But maybe you aren't a demonstrator, you can use her not only for your own cards but she would be great on scrapbook pages or maybe you can use her and her adorable accessories to personalize the back of your cards so your friends and family know that your cards are home-made;)

I couldn't get Tess out of her box fast enough. Here are a few 3X3 cards that I made to slip into a few orders that I will be dropping off today. Stay tuned for more creations.....

Happy Birthday Emi

This is a card that I made for one of my customers/friends last week. I just got the Chic Boutique stamp set for my birthday and I love to play around with it. I love the change the bodices to patterned DSP. This card has a simple layout. The only time consuming part is cutting out the DSP. Try this technique with all your stamp sets to give your images a really fancy look. Hope you liked the card Emi.

Tag Bag

At my last class a couple of my customers/friends gave me this adorable bag filled with Christmas Tags. I love it! Emi and Alyssa made a bunch of these as favors for a dinner party that they had and they made one for me too. That was so nice of you guys! They did a great job on everything and what a great gift to give. I know you cant see it in the picture but the bag is embossed. I had to snap these pictures right away because I have already used about 5 of my tags! Love, Love, Love it!! Thanks for thinking of me guys!

Class Favors

These are some little goodies I threw together as favors for my last class. I am not a huge fan of candy canes but these ones are really yummy. I picked up a box a Target. My girls love them because they are fruit flavored not peppermint. I have a hug box of them so I gathered some up for treats for the Stampin' Ladies. I used three each and bundled them using some of that fabulous Double Stitched Ribbon in Bashful Blue. Then I added a punched tag in Real Red and Bashful Blue that reads "for you." Not a Christmas set but it still works. The stamp is from the Great Friend Stamp set.

Another Kitty Sympathy

It hasn't been the best week for our fury little family members. I made this card for another friend who had to put her cat down. That is so hard to do. I am sorry for your loss.

This card I wanted to be different because the last two pet sympathy cards I made were CASes of each other. For this card MDS came to the rescue. I don't have any of the pet sets (D is for Dog or C is for Cat) but the MDS has a set called Cute Cats. So, that is what I used. I add a mouse to the kitty's paws and that was all that I printed out on MDS. The rest of the card is actual card stock and supplies. I love that thick double stiched ribbon. I swooped up some of that in the Huge Holiday Sale. I hope my friend liked the card. What do you think?