My birthday party invites

A few years ago I started the tradition of throwing myself a scrapbook party for my birthday. I figure this way I'm ensured one birthday party that I enjoy : ). All three of the invites feature embossed flowers made with a cuttlebug embossing folder, a border stamp that alternates a flower and the word party (this stamp is an acrylic stamp by Fiskars) and sparkly flower paper that I picked up at Micheal's a few months ago. I tore the flower paper and matted it on the cardstock back. I then punched holes and set eyelets (using my new crop-a-dile punch, still need to use it more to get the hang of setting eyelets with it) and threaded ribbon through the eyelets. I mounted the embossed flowers on the ribbon using foam squares. Inside it lists the date, time, etc. I also stamped "forget the gift, just bring the you" from the same set as the party stamp by Fiskars.

Snow pictures

Someone on the Scrapbookaddict message board asked if someone could post pictures of snow. So here are a few pictures of my boys playing in the snow on December 1st. We must have gotten like 6 inches in one day. It snowed on the 7th and 8th too. Most of our bad snow storms so far this season have been on weekends.

My Christmas tree

Kathy M at Scrapbookaddict.com challenged us to post something Christmas related on our blogs today, preferably something we did today. I didn't do anything Christmas related today, so I figured I'd post pictures of my Christmas trees. We set up two, one for our living room that's pretty and color coordinated and another one for the ornaments we buy each year for our boys.

This is our living room tree. It has white and silver bulb ornaments, snowflakes, and icicles. I love how it looks this year with the white lights.

This is our tree with the kids' ornaments and other unique ornaments. It's set up in our master bedroom this year, only because it's the room that had a clear spot.

Hope you enjoyed my trees!

Wine charms

My husband has been wanting some wine charms for when we host parties. I knew that a few months ago Micheal's had them for a dollar for 4 charms, so I went there yesterday. Of course they no longer had the charms, but I did find some cool beads I liked and a wine charm making little kit in the bead aisle. This morning I sat down and made up all the rings that the kit came with. The kit came with wine themed charms and then I made the rest with cool wire wrapped beads I found for the charms. I made more than we'll probably need so that I can give some to the hostess and host of a Christmas party we are going to tomorrow night. These are so easy, my three year old nephew helped me make a few of them.

The first few we did, along with my hands working on another one.

These are all of the charms we made. It took under a half an hour to make them. I got the kit for $4.79 after using a 40% off coupon and the extra beads were $3. Not a bad group of charms for under $8 : ).

Just another picture of all the charms.

The cards for the organizer

I have a bunch of cards left over from the craft fair I did at the end of June, so I'm using those for my husband's uncle's card organizer. The only theme I didn't have enough of was birthday cards. I needed 8 more, so I sat down and made them on Wednesday. I went through my patterned paper and found two that I liked. Since I only needed male birthday cards, I chose blue and green card stock for the background. I cut the patterned paper 3/4 inches smaller than the card body. I also chose ribbon and fibers to adhere the tags with stamped images on the card. I used shaped paper clips on most of the cards to attach the fiber or ribbon.

These first three are pretty much the same, except the background paper. I stamped the "Make a Wish" stamp from a $1 studio g acrylic stamp set from Micheals, and then stamped a 3 candle stamp set I got in a birthday stamp pack from Micheals. I separated each graphic and put eyelets on them and then threaded the graphics on ribbon. I attached them to the cards with shaped paper clips.

Same as last one, just different ribbon and background paper.

This one has a different card body color, but the same background paper as the first card. It also has a different color of ribbon.

These next two are kind of hard to see the graphics. It has a party hat, then the words "Happy birthday" over a noise maker, and then another party hat. All of the images come from Studio G $1 acrylic stamp sets.

Same as the last, but with a different background paper.

This one is the only one I made that didn't have at least fiber. The birthday present came from the birthday stamp set from Micheals, and the text stamp is from a hostess gift I got the last time I hosted a Stampin' Up workshop.

The balloons I got in a birthday stamp pack from Micheals. The "happy birthday" is from $1 Studio G stamp sets. I like the look of the balloons pop doted over the ribbon.

This one is the same as the last one, just a different placement for the images, and I didn't use shaped clips to attach the ribbon.

I really hope that my husband's uncle likes this gift. I hope you've enjoyed looking at them : ).

Card Organizer

For my husband's uncle's Christmas present, I decided to give him a card organizer full of homemade cards. He gives cards on birthdays, so I figured this would save him some money through the year. I had made most of the pages last year, so I just had to sew them to the pages listing the month and days and then thread the ribbon through the eyelets. I stamped the month names and the dates earlier today. Now I just have to make cards to fill it.

This is the front cover. I stamped the word Cards with foam stamps by Plaid that I bought at Micheal's.

Each month has a white page like this with the month name at the top and the days of the month listed. I will draw lines next to the day so he can write the birthday person next to their birthday.

January's pocket page. I stamped snowflakes on it with my versamark pad.

February's pocket page. This is a clear stamp from Provo Craft.

I traced shamrocks from a template I had to make March's pocket page.

April's pocket page. I tore green paper and layered the strips to look kind of like grass. I tucked Easter eggs in the grass and then mog podged the whole thing so that the eggs wouldn't catch on stuff.

May's pocket page has flowers on it to celebrate Mother's Day.

June's pocket page. I tore tan paper and layered it to look like sand and then tucked shells cut with my sizzlets dies into the sand. Again I mog podge it so the shells wouldn't fall out.

July's pocket page is made with more sizzlets dies. I mod podged this one also so the firework parts wouldn't catch on stuff being taken out of the pocket.

In August I stamped books and pencils to try to convey a back to school theme.

In September I stamped a Provo Craft clear leaf stamp with versamark.

I stamped a trick or treat bag with ghosts coming out of it for the October pocket page and then colored the bags and ghosts.

You can't really see it in the picture, but there is Thank You stamped all over the November pocket page with versamark ink.

For the December page I stamped a Christmas ornament and then colored it.

A few pictures from our Disneyland trip

Sorry it's taken me so long to update again. I have been working on a Christmas present for my husband (who checks my blog, so I can't post it : ) and haven't done much of anything else. Disneyland was fun at the end of last month, but I ended up with a horrible cold and spent the week after getting home really sick. November has just seemed to fly by. Since I don't have any pictures loaded on my computer of craft projects I've done, here are a few pictures from Disneyland.

This is our younger son with Goofy. First thing when we entered the gate we saw Goofy dressed up in this skeleton costume. We stopped and got in line to get autographs and take pictures.

Our older son with Goofy. He absolutely loves Goofy, Goofy is his favorite Disney character, so I was really glad we saw him right away. We were supposed to be meeting my sister to go on rides, but it was worth making them a little frustrated for my son to get his favorite character's autograph.

One of the reasons we wanted to go to Disneyland in October is because they transform the Haunted Mansion ride into an attraction centered around the Tim Burton film "The Nightmare Before Christmas." This film is in my husband's top 5 favorite movies list, so we planned the trip so he could enjoy this ride. This is a stuffed Jack the Pumpkin King that hangs in the queue line.

The pen my younger son brought to go with his autograph book was a miniature gel pen that was just too tiny for the characters to hold. So he spent part of his allowance and bought this extra large pen with a Mickey head on the part you click. His favorite character is Mickey Mouse, so he was quite happy with this pen.

This is the flower bed near the front gate. I love how they planted the flowers to be Mickey Mouse wearing a mask.

Just a few pictures from our trip. I'm going to be making my husband's uncle a bunch of cards for his Christmas present, so I will post pictures of those as I work on them. Hopefully in the next week : )