This was taken a few days ago before Santa really got busy with the wrapping.  We're enjoying a nice visit with my father in law.  All of the cookies are baked and we all enjoyed the taste testing yesterday.  We're off to my parents today to begin the festivities with a big ham dinner.  I hope you're enjoying some time with loved ones and all the yummy goodies that go along with it.  Merry Christmas

Thanks for all the well wishes. I'm all recovered and ready for the holidays. All of the packages are wrapped up under the tree and flowing out into the living room. I still need to bake those cookies, but they can wait until tomorrow.

My sister and I saw Riverdance this afternoon. It was one of the best live performances I've ever seen. The energy was palpable. At times I wanted to jump out of my seat and then there were moments that gave me the chills and brought tears to my eyes. It was everything an experience at the theater should be and more. This is the farewell tour of this show. Be sure to grab some tickets if it comes anywhere near to you. I'm still giddy.

I made this card for a dear friend who recently finished treatment. Lots of hope that her future is full of good health and happy days. The butterfly is by Lost Coast Designs.

So, I went to the doctor. She was wonderful and she gave me good care and healing medicine. I hope I'll be able to bake those cookies soon. I hate being so isolated from the world. I'm no good just laying around at home. I need to shop and visit my parents and play with their new puppy. I guess I'll just have to wrap presents for now. and stamp, there's always something to stamp. Thanks for stopping by.

I made this tag with a Lost Coast Designs stamp for SNR Magazine recently. I have to say that company has some amazing stamps. This one is heat embossed on a distress ink background. I used a metal piece by Stampin Up for the body. I'll get back to Tim's tags soon. I'm just halfway through them.

We finally decorated the tree today and I wrote out a few holiday cards last night. We even have a couple of presents wrapped under the tree. I think I'm slowly getting in the swing of the season here. I'm going to the doc tomorrow because 10 days is just too long to be sick. I'm hoping they can give me something to kick this thing out of me because I'd rather be baking cookies than coughing. Seriously. I hope you're having a beautiful start to the holiday season.

Here's my take on Tim's Day 5. This one was a challenge for me because it didn't translate so easily into an ATC. I just went with one larger fragment instead of multiple small ones. The branch is Hero Arts and the image in the fragment is a large Stampin Up background. I'm not thrilled with the way the colors contrast from the fragment to the ATC, but it's probably more realistic to how my actual tree looks. I have a plethora of ornaments in every color and design from a lifetime of collecting them. I really need to get them up on the tree that's set up with lights and no ornaments. Working on getting some holiday cards in the mail today. Thanks for stopping by.

Back to ATCs for day 6. I only had this tiny little car in a collage type stamp by Club Scrap. I love how Tim made his with the old fashioned car, you can see it here. Used some Christmas sheet music for the background and most of the rest is like what he did. I didn't have the sparkly fluff he used on his tree, so I used some old SU fun flock. It's not as pretty, but it works ok. I really liked the tape trick to rough up the vintage paper. I didn't have any masking tape handy so I used scotch tape, but stuck it to my robe first to take some of the sticky off of it. I've been sick, so I'm hanging out in my pjs this week. Stamping is good medicine. Thanks for stopping by.

Here's Day 7 and it's an actual tag this time. I know I skipped days 4, 5, and 6 and I didn't make an ATC this time. That's just where my creativity went today. In case you haven't been around this week, I'm working on Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of Christmas tutorials. I loved making this one. I don't have a white paint dauber, so I used silver for this and I like the silver and gold together. It was like magic when I got to the part where I wiped away the ink from the paint. Seriously, even the black ink wiped off. So cool. I suppose you could get the same look by stamping with paint at the end, but the magic part was worth it. This santa image is by Paper Inspirations. I love how vintage he feels. I have no idea about the purple, I just had to do it. I fell in love with purple on the first day's ATC and had to go there again. Who knew purple worked for Christmas. It just does.

We have another snow day today. There was absolutely no shoveling done yesterday. I forgot about Kyle's cast. Guess I haven't mentioned it here, but he broke his hand in the midst of the whole surgery thing with my mom. Anyways he has a cast on the last two fingers of his right hand up to the elbow. The only good part about the whole deal for him is he can't shovel snow, can't get it wet and can't manuever a shovel and follow the docs orders at the same time. I'm fighting off a bug of some kind, so I really don't feel up to shoveling either. We're snowed in for now. Not such a bad thing. I may hire Kyle's friends to shovel for me later after they get their own place dug out. I guess we'll just have to make more hot chocolate and watch another movie. Enjoy the view below. That's what we see off our back deck. Not too shabby.

Day 3 was so much fun to make. I've done the plaid thing before, but adding in some of the new colors made it more intresting. I forgot to put in the black stripe, but there's so much black stamping that I think it looks good without it. I added in a vintage black snap up in the corner. I pick them up in my treasure hunting excursions for a song and they make a great embellishment. Not enough twine here to wrap up the little set of these that I made, so I subbed in a bit of gold. I think it looks festive, so it works for me.

We had a grand time at Knott's and the snow is coming in like crazy now. We made it home just in time last night. It's a snow day, no school. Kyle's happy about it and I'm just going to let him enjoy his morning before I remind him about the snow shovel and the work that comes along with a snow day. For now, I'm off to make us some hot chocolate. Thanks for stopping by today.

This is day 2 of the 12 tags of Christmas. I'm having so much inky fun with these little ATCs. I didn't have any of those cool metal flowers, so I used a Making Memories flower and sprayed it with walnut gold Glimmer Mist. It's my favorite color. This one came together more quickly than the first tag and I love the colors. I definitely wouldn't have used black for the swirls and sentiment if left to my own choice, but I'm trying to follow along as closely as possible. I love the touch of black here and I'm so glad I used it instead of the brown that made more sense to me. I remember my mom telling me in decorating any room you should always include a touch of black because it grounds everything. Of course Mom is right and it works in creating art, too. Thanks Mom.

We're running away to Knott's Merry Farm today. It's become one of our favorite holiday traditions. We ride roller coasters, listen to carolers and other live holiday music, watch Snoopy on Ice, and eat at Mrs. Knotts for her famous fried chicken dinner. I can hardly wait. It was supposed to start snowing here tomorrow, but I see a bit of white on the ground now. That makes it truly a run away escape day. I'm not a fan of the snow even after living here for 18 years.

Here's my take on Tim's first day of the 12 tags of Christmas. I love that he shares these classes each year. I started out making them as ATCs last year, so I decided to roll with it again this year. Working on a smaller canvas of an ATC means I have to scale it all down. I don't use everything he does, but I do try to follow the background technique. This one was so much fun. I really love the rock candy crackle paint. I improvised on my bird which was a snowman on his design. I painted some grungepaper with gesso, then stamped the design over it with black soot distress ink. When I tried to smear on some rock candy stickles it smeared the distress ink. So, just a little tip for you, the embossing is a necessary step. I ended up clear embossing over the whole image and skipped the stickles.

I've been slammed with life stuff, so not much art time. Trying to play catch up today. Hope you're finding some creative time amongst the hustle and bustle of the season.