Happy New Year

As we head into the new year I want to say happy 2013 to all my friends and family! Wishing you the best as you enter this new year. Thank you for joining me on my blogging journey. I can't wait for what's to come.

        Lisa

12 For 2012

I have seen several posts of bloggy friends sharing their favorite projects from 2012. That prompted me to take a look back at all that I had scrapped in 2012  and I was surprised by the fact that I had finished 88 layouts as well as many cards and gifts. Yeah me! :) This year I am hoping for even more and am excited to expand my crafty horizon through new design team opportunities. But today is about looking back so here goes.

My top 12: (in no particular order)

1. Love this girl! A majority of my pages were made for my sweet niece Mikayla. She graduated high school this year and I made a book for her.

2. I think it's the colors of this layout that draw me to it. I don't get to do to many girly colors!

3. Need I say more?? Love how this one turned out!

4.This is just one of the pages in the guest album I made for my niece, Ashleigh's wedding this summer. I loved how it turned out.

5. I like the mosaic look on this, but mostly I just  like that it shows my favorite place.

6. With senior pics like this to steal the spotlight, how can any layout go wrong? Love the Echo Park line used here. It was a fave this year.

7. My first layout of my sweet pup. Had to add this one in there!

8. Love the simplicity of this against the kraft background.

 9. I think this is a fave because I added so many photos yet kept it not too busy. I had too many big photos and couldn't choose which ones to leave out. Love that I got them all on.

10. My experiment with layering and adding more and more :) This was off a sketch from Citrus Twist and I loved it with the Pink Paislee Portfolio.

 11. This one is framed and hangs in our bedroom. It was for a scraplift challenge and it is one of my most favorite of all times. I love this man!

12. Welcoming our new "nephew" Lee into the family. Great guy!

There you have it. I'm sure if I went back and did this whole post over I would probably have 12 different layouts because it was so hard to pick. I feel like I'm leaving some of my babies out. lol!
Can't wait to share more with you in the new year! If you have a favorite layout or project I would love to have you link it up in the comments below. I want to see what you are working on. Maybe I will take a day and showcase my reader's faves to start the new year. What do you think??
Lisa

12 Days of Christmas

For  Christmas this year I decided to do the 12 days of Christmas for David. Each day I left him a little gift that coincided with the day it was. I had so much fun with it. Some of the gifts I gave were bigger, some just a small token. Some of the days were simple to figure out, others took a little more work and scouring of stores and my brain to come up with the certain number of things for that day.  I will share a list of all the things I did at the end of this post, but today I want to share my gift for the last day, 12 reasons I love you. This was probably the best day just because it had meaning behind it and he really enjoyed reading through my reasons. I used my Cricut and my new Teresa Collins Christmas cartridge to design the outside of the card.

I made tags for each separate reason and placed them inside the card. I then tied the card with twine and placed the set in his stocking for Christmas morning. Here is a look at the whole set. I used some Simple Stories Documented for the tag backgrounds and embellished with some green washi tape I had, some twine, buttons and some Jillibean Soup letters. 

I had so much fun making this as it's the first think I have crafted in a very long time! It was a bit of a struggle though because I just can't twist and use my right arm the way it wants to to put all those small embellishments on with this cast in the way.  Can't wait to get this off and get to crafting again. This totally created the itch again!

Here is a list of the things I did for each day:

Day 1: 1 package of Starbucks Christmas blend, his new fave.

Day 2: A pair of movie tickets...(wonder who he'll take on a date!)

Day 3: A 3 pack of the gum he likes to chew

Day 4: 4 pieces of a candy he likes from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory

Day 5: 5x5  Garden dollars... this one is a little bit of a stretch. I couldn't think of 5 golden things so I  

            gave him an Olive Garden certificate for $25. He's been wanting to go because he loves their               

            salad and breadsticks.

Day 6: A six pack of Coke

Day 7: A set of 7 ratchet wrenches from Home Depot

Day 8: An 8 pack of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

Day 9: 9 Hugs and Kisses ( I hid 9 Hershey's hugs and kisses under his pillow

Day 10: 10 Cow dollars from his favorite Chick! ($10 to Chick Fil A)

Day 11: 11 ounces of his favorite Toffee candy. (this one was a hard one!! It is hard to find 11 of 

              anything.)

Had so much fun hiding the little gifts each day and fun watching him go through the day finding them. Did any of you do the twelve days or anything else really fun for someone else?? I would love to hear.

Hope you had a Merry Christmas!

Lisa

Off the Page

Good morning!
Today I'm going to take you off the page and show you some wooden 7 Gypsy trays that I altered as Christmas gifts last year. They were so fun to make and I actually planned to make a few more this year for some other family members. These were made with photos we had taken with David's family as an anniversary gift for his parents.

I liked theirs so much I ended up making one for myself. This one sits in a little stand on our fireplace mantle.

3 more days?? Who's ready? I still have a laundry list of things to accomplish. I'm going to go tackle some baking right now.
Lisa

15 Years

My oldest son turned 15 today. That fact simply blows me away! It doesn't feel possible to have that many years already in the books as his mom.  I can remember the anticipation of his arrival, the very first moment he looked up at me as they laid him on my tummy, the feel of his soft skin and his finger wrapped around mine. Now I have to look up to see his face, and when I gave him a hug this morning he actually lifted me off my feet.  He is no longer my little boy... he's a young man who is maturing and growing daily before my eyes.  I am amazed and excited to see the person that he is becoming.  He is a great kid and it's been fun to watch him as he has entered  high school this year and has begun to make his way into a whole new world. I know these next few years will go by fast, so tonight I will just hold him close as I hug him before bed and relish the time with my boy.

Love you, Nathan!

I'll be back later this week with some more Christmas fun.

Lisa

Holiday Spirit

Hi. I'm back after a little break for the craziness of life. There has been a lot happening around our house as I'm sure it is the same for many of you during the holiday season. I am trying to wrap my head around the short amount of time that is left to get everything done before the big day gets here. My mother in law is coming to town tomorrow and we are going to have a shopping day so hopefully that will take a big chunk off my list of things left to do. I am usually more on top of things but I seriously haven't even started most of my shopping.

I went back to the orthopedist last week hoping that they would tell me everything was great and I could get out of my cast. That was not the case. Instead they told me that the x ray showed a break in the radius that they had missed the first time and it was not healing the way they wanted it to. I am now in my cast for another 4 weeks and then we will see what happens. I am getting used to doing things with it for the most part, but it gets in the way and makes most things harder. I haven't been crafting much for that reason, but I thought I would get into the spirit of the season and start showing you some of the layouts I've made for Christmas' past.

Today I want to share a page I made for my in laws last Christmas. Every year I make pages to put into their album. I absolutely love the design of this page and loved how many pictures were able to fit. This was a lift of a layout in the Creating Keepsakes December 2011 Issue.

What do you think?

I'll be back with more Christmas inspiration soon.

Lisa