Half over?!  How can it be that half of January is gone already?  The year just started and I already feel behind, yuck!  The time flew by as my daughter and granddaughter were visiting from Virginia.  Sooooooo adorable!  I was sick when they got here, recovered temporarily, and sick as they left.  In between I worked, but only touched the scrap room once.  Couldn't believe it.  Kate is a scapbooker w/Cricut, so I got her several cartridges for Christmas and birthday, hope she likes them and will get use out of them.  I'm still in love with my Silhouette SD, hoping to upgrade to Cameo this year, but will have to schedule some OT for that one.  A few lingering decorations still, guess I should resolve that today  :o(  Thinking ahead to Valentine's day, and son's birthday, so I'm motivated again to get going.

Challenge to self: I was working on my daughter's birthday card away from home, and challenged myself to see if I could use up ALL of  the scraps.  I started with 3 12x12 pieces of patterned paper, and laid them out, pieced them together, and got the following cards.   All I was left with in the end was a single 1.5"x2" piece of scrap.  I made all the fronts, and added them to bases and embelllished @home.  Pretty cool! (my cutting mat in background is hot pink, sorry for any confusion)

Happy Twenty-Twelve!  Hope everyone is off to a great start.  I've been away from the computer. was down and out with a nasty cold, then my daughter/granddaughter came in from Virginia, YEAH!  My son also came from  Dallas, so we celebrated some birthdays together as a family.   All 4 of my kids in town @same time is a super-duper blessing, so I had to enjoy the moment.  Also a hectic work week, but I've a few days off and mentally trying to plan my year.  Goodness, so many challenges out there, so many tips for scrapbooking, a whole year of pictures to look forward to.  Are you as overwhelmed as I?  I followed a few blogs to enter to win a Silhouette Cameo, the newest machine coming out.  Won't buy one yet, but I'm sure I'll end up with one eventually, maybe work a little overtime for that one.  Then I promised to will my SD to my daughter, LOL.  Have a wonderfully creative day!

Happy holidays as we count down 2011, what a fun year!  Here are some special Christmas cards I created for my kids.  I could not post them until after Christmas so it wouldn't ruin the surprise, and there is one more to be posted.  We had a nice Christmas brunch and time together, I hope yours was warm and friendly as well.

Sweet little seal

Card to Mom & Pops

My version of Chilly Willy

May Your Lights be Untangled (hard to see, lights in his antlers)

An embellished gift card envelope

TAG, you're it!   Finished a few, and I do mean a few, tags.  Sure seems I should've gotten more done with the time I invested!  Fun to do, got to play with my Big Bite and grommets, the super-huge punch, and lots of different techniques.  Once laid out though it's painfully obvious I'll need many more.  At some point I'll have to quit creating the accessories and start buying the gifts!  Merry Me   :o)

Christmas cards, yay!  Got my first batch of cards done.  I tried a new method, and they went very quickly.  I pretty much stuck to 1 pattern, same size A2.  Couple of different cardstock bases, and actually all my papers were in the clearance section @Hobby Lobby (6pp/$1).  Lg snowflakes are MS punch, small flakes are The Paper Studio, and I think all ribbons are Paper Studio as well.   Unlike my fall cards, I did these assembly line style, cut/punched all my elements first.  Then I ran most things through the Xyron.  Tada, stick, embellish, finished!  See the My Cards section for up close and personals.  These are part of my mass mailings, my immediate family personal cards will be more greatly embellished, as they will not be mailed.  Merry Christmas!

     Several months ago I saw some home decorations I thought I could adapt to my own color scheme at home, here is my first tree.  Blue cardstock background with silver inking around edges, a selection of coordinated printed papers, embellished with a little glitter and silver inking.  I cut them on my Silhouette SD, added some punched snowflakes on tiny foam dots, and glued a small brass piece up the back I had found in the "Clearance" aisle 4/$0.39.  I believe next I may try mounting on some chipboard and trying to shape them a little.  I'll have to make some sort of base, maybe styrofoam, covered with some faux snow or fabric?  I like how it turned out  :o)

Mine, trial run

Theirs