Wednesday Words

Welcome back to my second big December Daily catch up.

Day 21 - And the first big family get together when everyone came to lunch and ate me out of house and home!

The transparency sequin pocket was inspired by Mandy at Let's December Daily - here.

Love, love, love this photo! To me it just captures everything about family and Christmas.

Day 22 - An indication of how stretched my time has been this year, the cards are usually put up as they arrive. This year I just piled them up!

Can't believe how lucky I am to have two such helpful and happy grandsons.

Day 23 - Just had to document meeting Eddie the Elf, think I was almost as excited about him as William. Leo, of course, just played it cool - growing up so fast!
The doodling was inspired by Julie at Let's December Daily - here.

I took a lovely photo of William looking at Eddie, but he complained because only half of his face was showing. So I had to reshoot and he was right because this shot captured the sheer delight on his face.

Day 24 - And then the magic began to happen!

Two very excited little boys - well one not so little but still excited!

Day 25 - At last it's here! And my day was just about perfect. All the hard slog of cooking and taking care of my dad neatly sandwiched between early morning and late evening grandsons.

They were well pleased with this stash. Leo almost stopped after his second present - a Lord of the Rings book and William was totally distracted by some lego. Love that this delight overtook the ripping paper for a few seconds.

So that's today's installment, final pages to share tomorrow if all goes to plan. Once again linking up with Let's December Daily.

Thanks so much for looking, hope you've enjoyed this insight to what's been going on in my house this Christmas.

Tuesday Talk

Time to catch up with posting my December Daily. I did manage to keep up with the journalling and photo cards, but kept missing the light to photo the completed pages.

And time on the computer was never going to happen when my grandsons were here! Now I'm missing them and trying to fill the gaps in my day by sharing what we got up to.

Day 17 - Just beginning to get that overwhelmed sort of feeling and forcing myself to slow down.

A glimpse at my gold themed wrapping paper rolls. This page was very influenced by Ali Edwards - here.

Day 18 - The first of many mini - well quite large actually - shops for groceries. And I really did think I was going over the top, but looking back with hindsight I might have saved myself a few trips if I'd remembered how much more six people eat than two, not to mention the extra four people, making ten, on some days.

This photo was taking just moments before I attempted to get in the front of the car and my husband screamed at me to hold onto the door as the wind was so strong. A little indignant sulking took place on the journey home!

Day 19 - A wondering if they would make it day. Bit of a replay of this time last year, but unlike then at least we knew they had made contingency plans this year. Their freezer was stocked with food and Santa had been notified and was well prepared.

No photo about today's theme for obvious reasons, so I went with a Christmas believe in the magic collage.

Day 20 - We knew by this stage that they had made the sea crossing and after an overnight hotel stay were on the road for the last part of their journey. So I was able to settle with a calm head to make these little boxes using the Stampin Up box maker score board.

Seems my head wasn't as calm as I thought as I deleted all the photos of the boxes from both the computer and camera and had to retrieve the boxes from under the tree and repeat the whole process!

Well that's the first installment of my catch up December Daily. I'll be back tomorrow with the next few pages and hopefully on New Year's Day with the final set. As always I'll be linking up with Let's December Daily.

Thanks so much for looking.

AAA Cards Game 31

Hello and welcome to my first post Christmas card for AAA Cards. This challenge has the theme of gold and I used it to make a card for my new grandson way back at the beginning of December.

A simple quick little card using die cuts, a punch and neutral colours.

In fact the hardest thing about this card was taking the photo without getting myself reflected in the mirri card - those little specks of pink are my camera.

Supplies:
Stamp: Uniko Studio, Sweet Baby
Ink: Memento, rich cocoa
Punch: Martha Stewart, heart
Dies: Do Craft, postage stamp; Cuttlebug, hearts; Clearly Besotted, Congrats

Thanks for your visit today, hope you had a wonderful Christmas and I'm sending you wishes for a peaceful New Year.

Saturday Slot

Well I'm definitely thinking this will be my last post until after Christmas, so can I just say a big big thank you to everyone who has visited my blog this last year and another thank you to those of you who were kind enough to leave comments.

My card for today is for CAS Colours and Sketches and is a free choice of any of their previous double challenges as long as it's given a Christmas twist. Great news to announce - just heard I've been accepted onto their DT for 2015, great excitement!!!!

Now this was not as easy as it I thought it was going to be. I was immediately drawn to this sketch and colours, but then realised Christmas colours they weren't.

But I stuck with my instincts and made this card which I actually rather like.

I had a small piece of rich razzleberry card left in my box - love this colour so much it soon got used - and some spotty pieces of card that looked a good match for the other two colours. So a circle and three snowflakes were die cut and adhered.

All three snowflakes were treated to a liberal application of Wink of Stella, which really makes them sparkle and wink at you in real life.

Supplies:
Stamps:Uniko Studio, Simply Said Christmas
Ink: SU, rich razzleberry
Dies: Spellbinders, standard circle small; Die'sire, snowflakes
Punch: Carla Craft, snowflake
Embellishment: Wink of Stella, clear

Two more pages complete in my December Daily album, linking at Let's December Daily as usual. Here's the journal card for the 15th. It's all about wrapping presents - so not what I love doing.

And a glimpse of some of them under my tree.

On 16th I went mad and used two quotes and missed off the embellishment - purely accidental. I scattered a handful of sequins down the left hand side and just stuck them down wherever they landed.

And the photo shows a few of the decorations in the Waterside Centre in Lincoln and that mellowing glass of wine. Could have had something to do with why I forgot to take more photos and spent twice as much as I intended!

More excitement!!! Check this out - The Memory Nest - so I get to be on a scrapbook DT in 2015 too!! Really feeling blessed!!!

All that's left for me now is to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and I'll hopefully see you back here on 28th December for the next AAA Cards challenge.

Sending you Christmas sparkle too!

Thursday Thoughts

Don't know about you, but I'm getting to that stage when everything is starting to look a bit overwhelming and I'm crossing things off my to do list as a maybe next year if I get organised earlier. Determined to just 'let it go', stay calm and enjoy the season!

So a card to share today which may just be the last for this year before I finally give in and stop blogging for a while.

I made this card with two challenges in mind - Less is More and CASology - both have the same theme of snow and it's also one layer week at Less is More.


                                            

I've not used this snowman stamp for several years and is a very old member of my stamp collection, but he is very jolly and I love his sketchy look.

I updated him a bit by using the very current newly released snow stamps from Uniko Studio on the top half of the card and the big sentiment on the bottom half. All of the larger snowflakes and the snowman have been glittered up with Wink of Stella - looks very frosty in real life.

Supplies:
Stamps: Uniko Studio, Big & Bold Snow; Funstamps, Scribble Snowman
Inks: SU, soft sky; Memento, London fog
Flexmarker: pebble blue
Promarker: cool grey 3
Die: Paper Smooches, stitched
Embellishment: Wink of Stella, clear

A couple more of my December Daily pages to share today - to save time I'm only including the journal and photo and missing out the album photo - it's so difficult to catch the window of good light at the moment.

Here's my journal card for the 13th:

And the photo. These little sacks were inspired by the AAA Cards challenge card here.

Then the next day I just had to address the sending cards issue - no pun intended. At the top of my journal card I used a trimmed off stamp and postmark from a card I received - that's what really reminded me I was gettting close to the deadline for posting being a bit of a cheapskate and wanting to use 2nd class postage.

And the photo shows some of this year's cards I've handmade.

As usual I'll be linking up with Let's December Daily.            

So that's me done for today. I'm hoping to be back on Saturday with one final card and post before my Isle of Man family arrive and my days become even more stuffed with activities - not to mention it's hard to get into my craft room anyway as it becomes the dumping ground for everything we usually spread among the other bedrooms and have to move to make room for them all.

Thanks for visiting at this busy time and I'm sending you all some Christmas sparkle.

Monday Moments

A couple of scrapbook pages to share today, featuring my new grandson of course. The first page uses the current challenge over at The Memory Nest.

 

A perfect sketch for showcasing my favourite hospital photo. I did my usual bit of tweaking with the sizes and proportions of the various elements and came up with this:

Substituting hearts for the circles seemed wholely appropriate for this very tender moment. And the journalling just hints at how exceptionally proud I am of my son for how he's calmly stepped up to the mark and taken such care of both Victoria and Edward.

Supplies:

Paper: Craft Creations, grey tartan; Bazzill Basics, plain cardstock

Stamps: SU, Gorgeous Grunge; Uniko Studio, Always & Forever; Clearly Besotted, Design A Tree

Inks: SU, crushed curry; Memento, London fog

Alphas: lilybeedesign, pinwheel; jillybean soup, neopolitan bean bisque

Punch: Martha Stewart, heart

My next page also uses a sketch from The Memory Nest, but this one is not current so I can no longer link it up. I'd saved this sketch from November as I knew I wanted it for an hello to the world page and we were all expecting him to be born well before the end of November.

 

 

And here's my page:

I'm really loving this little cluster on the left.

Supplies:

Paper: Chatterbox Scrapbook Walls, light denim; Karen Neuburger, hip hip hooray mini dots; Craft Creations, grey weave

Alphas: ep, Winter Park; Simple Stories, I {Heart} Summer

Die: Clearly Besotted, hello

Just got time to share my December Daily for the 12th when I went all soft and dreamy about candle light.

Here's the page overview:

And the journal card:

 And the photo:

Thanks for your time today, hope you liked what you saw. Sending you Christmas sparkle.