Happy New Year!

Can it be? 2012? Time really does fly!

May this coming year be your best ever

Full of blessings and cheer

Family and friends

Strength and wisdom

and abundant love.

Stay safe out there tonight - 

so we can spend 2012 together!

Thanks for stopping by my blog - 

see you in the New Year with more creativity!!

~Maureen

Christmas Eve

Each Christmas Eve we get together as a family and have appetizers and desserts; read the Christmas Story; open stocking stuffers and get the little ones into their brand new pajamas.  This year our friends Elmo and Septembra and daughter Naomi joined us.  Here are a few pictures of our wonderful night!  Enjoy!

Lovely mantel with candles glowing - makes me feel all warm inside.

Makai and Heidi cuddling - note Heidi's cute penguin tattoo :)

Kamili striking her model pose for the camera.

I love this picture of my three oldest grand-daughters Makai, Paisley and Kamili showing off their new PJs and having a good time together.

Aaron and Elmo checking their lottery scratchers to see if they won anything.  Needless to say no one left very rich.

Some of the goodies being put out just before everyone got here.

Septembra and Jenee

Jenee getting some loving from Naomi.

Zamarah posing - looks like Heidi's hat was making the rounds.

Zavian and Prince - the  boys just hanging out.

Zavian and Zamara showing off their new jammies and their new cookie monsters!

Gifts for my neighbors and card display!

So we have some of the greatest neighbors.  They've really had our backs through some difficult times recently and I wanted to take them over a little Christmas thank you!  So I made homemade peppermint brownies.  Here is a close up of them - they were gooey, and chocolatey and pepperminty :)  Hope they liked them.

Here they are getting dolled up for delivery!  The whole kitchen smells like peppermint!

I also wanted to share with you how I displayed my Christmas cards this year.  I got the idea off of Pinterest.  You just tie a ribbon around a cabinet door and use clothespins to hang you cards.  I usually get a lot of cards - so i used my pantry door, and instead of going all around the door, I just hung three lengths of ribbon.  This picture was over a week ago - now all three ribbons are full and cards are also hung elsewhere.

Here is a close-up of the cards.

Here's a close-up of the clothespins.  I decorated them with strips of designer series papers from SU, and kept them in this little cup on my counter, so they were handy as cards came in.  I think this worked out great and will do it again next year!! 

Thank you to everyone who sent us cards - it is so wonderful hearing from you all.  I will be sharing some of they hand-made ones with you soon.  Thanks for stopping by.  ~Maureen

Downline Level 1 Thank you!

Each year I try and give a little gift to those in my first downline for the holidays.   I wasn't able to complete anything by the time of my Holiday Party - so I had to send them after.  So these cute little easel card calendars went out to them last week.  You know how projects sometimes seem like they're going to be easy, but then........well that was this project.  I did 15 of them in three different color schemes - and tried to match the colors to the ladies likes - so I hope I did well.

Where it got a little crazy was downloading, sizing, printing and cutting the calendars - it took soooo long.  Plus there was a little coffee spill mishap that ruined the first set I made, so I had to start over.   Then cutting out 45 of those flowers was no small task either - but I think they turned out cute.

Front View

Side view.

All 15 ready to go!  They fit perfectly in our SU square envelopes and only took two stamps to mail.

Here is one folded flat and ready to slip into the envelope.

Hope my gals enjoyed getting them - I appreciate them so much - and truly value their friendship.  Next year these might be co-worker gifts.  ~Maureen

Co-worker gifts

Today I just wanted to share a couple of the little gifts I gave to co-workers this year.  I can't even take much credit for these - as they were made for craft fair my daughter Heidi was doing and it got cancelled so I took advantage of that and purchased these adorable items -  the first is nugget tins.  I just love these.  There is something about the color coordinated wrapped nuggets that just shout eat me!!  Love them.

Tins of nuggets just waiting to be eaten!

Our office also has many student workers - so I gave them each a little gift card and these adorable candy filled test tubes.  Hope they liked them.  Now we're all off till Jan. 3 - woo hoo!!

Test tubes filled with Holiday Candy - yum!

Test tube close up.

Stop back soon.  ~Maureen

Jesus is the Reason!

I love Christmas - the glitz, the glitter, the songs, the sounds, the presents and the time with family.  But most of all I love the true meaning of Christmas -

Jesus is the Reason - I hope you will all remember that today as you celebrate this wondrous holiday with family and friends. For without Him in your Heart - all is for naught.  May you have a wondrous and blessed Christmas with those you love the most!!

Club Gifts

I wanted to send my club members something for Christmas - so I came up with these cute little calendars.  They were already great colors and so all I did was add a couple accents.

Here is a close up of how I embellished them.  Hope they like them!!  I even kept one for myself :)

Extended Downline Cards

My downline has really grown this year and I currently have 37 in my downline levels 2 - 5.  I wanted to send them all a Christmas card with some updates, so here is what I came up with.  Earlier this year we had made Christmas cards at a stamp camp using punched out snowflakes.  I LOVE the negative images they left when we punched them out - so I saved the strips thinking I'd do something with them.

So I did - I cut them apart into squares and layered them over several different DSPs added a sentiment and voila!  Don't they look beautiful?!

Here is a close up of a couple of them.  I just love this clean and simple layout - which is what I needed because I was doing so many.  Hope you like them too!

Holiday Traditions!

I love the Christmas tree.  Each year I decorate it with beautiful ornaments that have wonderful and special meanings.  Some that remind me of the true meaning of Christmas; some that family has given to me; some that are just simply lovely - but all of them together give me a wonderful, warm feeling. 

One of my absolutely favorite things to do is to grab a cup of coffee, turn out all the lights except those on the tree and snuggle under a fleece blanket on the couch - just enjoying the tree's beauty.  Here it is with the lights out.

One other tradition we have is a family picture each year - so I thought I'd share ours from this year -

Back row: Aaron, Paul, Jenee  Middle row: Heidi, Me holding Zamarah, Prince, Paisley   Front row: Kamili, Zavian and Makai.  Aren't they all wonderful!

Play-doh fun with my kiddos!

Some fun family time!  About a week ago we had the grandkids over - the Kings on Saturday and the Jones on Sunday and I wanted to do something fun with them.  So I decided we make home made playdoh.  It is so easy to make and I love the feel of it when it is just off the stove and starting to cool but still warm.  So much nicer than the store bought stuff.  Here's recipe -

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup salt
• 2 tsp. cream of tartar
• 2 tbsp. vegetable oil
• 1 cup water
• 1 pkg of Koolaid

Instructions -  In a medium saucepan mix together dry ingredients. Next mix in the water, oil, and orange extract and stir until a thick batter is formed. Cook the mixture over low/medium heat until a thick dough forms stirring constantly with a wooden spoon.  It only takes a couple minutes and dough will pull away from sides of pan, then remove from heat. Turn out onto table (be aware it will be pretty warm - but cools down pretty quickly) and knead until smooth. Makes about 2 cups of dough.

Makai and Kamili watching me cook it with anticipation.

Kamili creating!

Makai all smiles!

And Zavian having a ball!

The next day we made another batch.

Here's Paisley getting really intricate.

Prince loving the rolling pin.

After a bit Prince opted for playing Mario Brothers on the Wii with Papa.

And finally Zamarah.  Actually I just took this picture a day or two ago.  When we made play-doh she feel asleep and I forgot to get her picture, but I couldn't leave her out :)

Secret Sister - Part 8

Hi All - Gonna share another Secret Sister gift today.  This one came in a little late from Maria as she was ill the day of our party - but it was worth the WAIT!  Her gift was for Lisa - and Lisa opened it this week so I can share it now.  First is the adorable card she made her -

Next is this amazing advent centerpiece - how cute is that!!!  What fun to fill each little drawer with a treat!

Here's a close-up of Santa's face - that is all CARDSTOCK - seriously - isn't it adorable.

And here's a close-up of the drawers - what a cute gift!

Bye for now!  -Maureen

Secret Sister Gifts - Part 7

So today I want to share what I gave my Secret Sister - first here is the package all wrapped up and ready to go. 

 A close up of the tag -

But the real trick was that my Secret Sister was my daughter Heidi.  All year long I had to try and keep it a secret and it was tough. She says she knew from the style - but I'm not really sure she did :)

Here Heidi is with her gift from Santa Mom!

A close up of the magnet board.

A close up a tool Lazy Susan for her scissors, stylus', bone folders and more!  I use one of these and LOVE it!            Hope she likes it too!

All of the gifts I gave Heidi this year coordinated - you can see the other items here -
http://crazystampinglady.blogspot.com/2011/06/secret-sister-june-2011-part-ii.html
and here -
http://crazystampinglady.blogspot.com/2011/09/september-secret-sister-gifts-part-ii.html

Thanks for stopping by - I have another great gift item to show you tomorrow - so stop back  ~Maureen