{Happy New Year!}

I don't know how the [crazy] people who venture into NYC for New Year's do it! I heard that it is going to be, with the wind chill, -6 degrees there tonight, no thank you! We are going to enjoy a quiet evening, we plan on going to see the movie Bedtime Stories, I am not a fan of Adam Sandler, however, this movie looks funny.

One of my New Years resolutions includes getting organized, I think that is a resolution that is on-going, I have that one every year. About this time of year, I start to wonder into the bin/stacked drawer aisle of Walmart. I just wish that the actual organizing came with the product! I am also down-sizing. We have way too much stuff, I have a bunch of stuff on ebay right now, trying to get some stuff sold and out of here!

I'm wishing everyone a very Happy and Safe New Year! Goodbye 2008, hello 2009! (Uggg, I turn 30 this year!!!)

Rockin' The Glitter

Jason got me a nice little gift card to The ScrapYard. I have been eyeing up some Tim Holtz items and I decided to go for the 'grungeboard'. I LOVE,LOVE,LOVE this stuff! You can do anything to it, the more techniques you use on it, the better it gets. I also got the Martha Stewart glitter pack. So as I am typing this, I am also sparkling! I glittered the angel wings, a crown, and a prima flower. Nothing is safe when there is glitter involved, anything is fair game. I know the scrapbook world is full of pricey glues that all promise different things, but nothing works as well as good old Elmer's glue for this project. I just thinned it out a little bit with some water and it was great for the glitter. Now I must get back to all that glitter....hummm, didn't I just see a cat walk by that could use some sparkle...

This Is Quite Possibly The Funniest Thing {EVER}...

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Diggin' My New Purse!

I was in search of Christmas gifts at TJ Maxx yesterday and I couldn't be in the store without browsing the purse section. Well, just as I was about done and ready to head over to the home section, this purse was screaming my name!! I had to have it, I had been carrying around a ragged old purse for awhile now and I just loved this one!! Merry Christmas to me. So here it is:


Here we are having a debate on whether the animal on the purse is a hedgehog or a sheep, let me know what you think!

On another note, apparently buying a Christmas tree the Saturday before Christmas is NOT such a good idea. We went in search of a real tree last night, only to discover that tree farms shut their doors at dusk, WHAT??? I would think that they would be open later than that, however, after 3 hours of driving through back roads, windy hills, and small towns that don't know what street signs are, we still didn't get our tree! I am assuming that they will be open today, so we will try that (in the afternoon), but it's so bitter cold and snowy today that the last thing I want to do is pick out a tree!! That 75% off fake tree at Rite Aid is looking pretty good right about now!

*Dear Roodof*

Here is Mason's letter to Santa that he will leave next to a nice batch of Chocolate Chip Cookies, an ice cold glass of milk and some carrots for the reindeer:
*click picture to see a better view*

Very funny!

Ohhhhh, raspberry deliciousness:


Here is the batch of oatmeal-raspberry bars that I mentioned in my last post. They smell fantastic, and with 3 sticks of butter, 3 cups of brown sugar, 3 eggs and tons of flour HOW could they not taste as good as they smell!!! I put them in the little take out boxes and now they are ready to go.



At the moment, Jason is down in the basement 'discreetly' wrapping my presents. I don't make this an easy thing for him to do, oh no! I will pull out any and all bribery tactics on Mason to try to get him to cave in and tell me what my presents are. It almost happened tonight, but I stopped him, I don't REALLY want to know what I got until Christmas, I just like the torture that I put Jason and Mason through!!! For the record, Jason has REALLY bad 'hiding Christmas presents' abilities, I have been known to snoop around, however, I didn't even need to snoop last week when I saw a big 'Bath and Body Works' bag just sitting in plain view in the basement. Do you think that I peeked?? Nooooo, not me!!

Things are moving along....

I have the Christmas cards mailed {by 'mailed' I mean ready for the post office tomorrow morning}, so be expecting yours shortly! Here are the ornaments that I made, very simple and very cute. All I did was buy the clear ball ornaments at Michael's and put rolled Christmas patterned paper inside with a little bit of buffalo snow to give it some sparkle.



As I was doing this I got an idea, since there are 12 ornaments in a pack {2 missing from the photo} I think I am going to buy some more on clearance and make them for gifts next year. The paper that I will put in each will be significant to each of the 12 months. For example, January's ornament will have snow flake paper, June's will have sunny or beach paper. I think that would be a nice gift for teacher's or anyone!

Right now I am baking raspberry oatmeal bars for gifts for the volunteers for Dogs Deserve Better. Tomorrow is our annual lunch at the Olive Garden! I bought little 'Chinese take out' looking boxes to stuff the raspberry bars in--they are going to be sooooo good!!

Remember ALF!!

I used to LOVE this show!! I remember the cat named Lucky that ALF always tried to eat! Funny stuff. While looking through my myspace yesterday I found a link to all these great '80's shows that you can actually watch episodes of. There was an ALF Christmas movie on there!! I couldn't get over it, Mason even enjoyed the first 20 minutes (that's all I got through). I used to have an ALF doll that when you pushed his stomach, he recited the phrases, "I'm a people alien" and "let's go check out the fridge!". I can't wait to have some free time to catch up some of the episodes! I couldn't, even at a young age, stand the dad, Willy! He was so obnoxious and I assume that he is the reason the show was not on air for very long.

I made some ornaments and I keep forgetting to get pictures of them, so if I remember later this evening, I will get them up, they are super simple to make. that's all for now.

(Funny)

Only a person with multiple cats can appreciate this one!!



more animals

{A Few Christmas Cards}

Here are some of the Christmas cards that I have gotten done so far. I made them in a fairly short amount of time thanks to the {insert voice of Carson Kressley from Queer Eye For The Straight Guy here} *Fabulous* sparkly snowflakes with the *Gorgeous* brads, I just can't get enough of them!! The first card is actually a card that I am going to send to the Inflammatory Breast Cancer Research Foundation along with a donation in memory of Mason's friend's mother that passed away. It, at times, makes me so sad to think about a 2nd grader (or anyone for the matter) losing his mom to a horrible disease and his mom is no longer there to simply hug him. I just can't fathom it.



So, on a lighter note, here are the Christmas cards:






Now, when I was at Michael's I wanted to buy the plain cards, apparently rocket science is involved in order figure out what kind of card you need to go with what envelope. You would think that they would sell them together, but hey, that would make sense! So, I ended up (accidentally) getting the flat cards, they don't have a fold, so the cards that I made are just the fronts, they will be adhered to cards in the near future. Not real sure how these cards are going to be mailed, but hey, if it isn't a challenge, it isn't fun! The red cards don't have 'Merry Christmas' on them yet, I didn't have any coordinating colored letters. Hope you enjoyed!

Here Are The Sweater Wreaths

I thought that they turned out cute! It goes with the theme of my Christmas tree, organic and recycled. These couldn't get any cheaper. I made about 8 of them, the total for the entire project was $4.88!! I used floral wire to give them some support. Now I want to try to make a purse out of a sweater, next time I visit the Goodwill (I really prefer the Salvation Army) I will look for a fun, colorful sweater to experiment with.

Now that I am up from a little snooze, I think I am going to try to get some Christmas cards made.

*Christmas Is Right Around The Corner*

And could there be a better gift out there for Jason? This shirt is PERFECT.


Click here to see.

I may go with the yellow, though, since that seems to be his color.
;^)

[Poor O.J]

I find his tearful apology in court today sickening and unbelievably fake. I am glad that the Goldman family was there in the courtroom, they will never let him forget what he did to their son. I highly doubt that he will serve anywhere close to the 33 years he could face in prison, but at least he is serving time. What a waste of a human being.

Giving Makes My Heart Happy.

This is what my dining room table looked like about 15 minutes ago:


I organized a donation drive for our troops for the Christmas care packages. Most of the 2nd grade classes participated. I am so grateful for all the stuff that was donated. Some of the items included, candy, toilet paper, magazines, gum, 25 tooth brushes, 15 boxes of tooth paste, countless ramen noodles, and a local Mary Kay rep donated 5 boxes of lotion that smell really good!! This is my {little} way of giving back to the Americans who sacrifice a lot to keep our country safe. So to all of them: Thank you.

Yes, I am still working on the sweater project, it is coming along nicely, however I worked a VERY long work week this week so it left very little time for anything else, I was falling asleep at like 8 o'clock every night!! So, I should get them done this weekend and will post some pics!

'Nuff Said

I need to get myself one of these t-shirts!

/Recycled Projects On The Brain/

So, my favorite consignment store's owner, Patty, called me to tell me that everything in the store on black Friday will be 50% off. Since Mason is growing out of every pair of pants he has and her prices are practically steals anyway, I thought I would go chat with her and see what she has in. I found this sweater:



Now, 'I' thought it was nice, apparently none of the males in the house had the same feeling. So, I didn't want my now 8 year old to be embarrassed by the nice $3 Gap sweater, so I have come up with a project that I think is going to be pretty cool. With all the colors in the sweater, I am sure to get a variety. A variety of what, you ask?? I am going to work on this tonight and hopefully will have some to show you tomorrow (let's hope they turn out!!). Also, I am finding projects online and in magazines using felt and old wool sweaters that are 'felted' (is that how you say it??), I would like to try my hand at some of those, I am sure that I have boxes of old wool sweaters somewhere. So, stay tuned, I should have some projects completed for tomorrow!