Merry Christmas to all...

I hope you all enjoy this time with loved ones!



Have a very Merry Christmas!

'tis the season...

...to be jolly! Fa la la la la, la la la la! Ha!

I LOVE Christmas!!! And, now that we have gone and chopped down our lovely tree at the tree farm, enjoyed some hot cocoa and spiced cider by the fire, trimmed the tree and did a bit of shopping, I feel that the spirit of Christmas has finally hit me! I love this time of year! Just the joy of being with family and giving to others is wonderful to me. And, I can not wait to see the sparkle in our children's eyes on Christmas morning. It really is the best thing in the world!

Here are a couple of pics of our trip to the tree farm:


Haleigh & Brian with our "perfect" little tree...


Dakota loading it up


Heading up to the barn for them to prepare the tree (and so that we can pay for it!)


A surprise visit from Santa at the tree farm!!! Dakota sat here for the pic, pretty much just to make me happy, and to help keep the "secret" from his little sister, although she said she didn't want to talk to him because he's not the "real" santa... :)


Our candy-themed Christmas tree~!!!

I'm actually thinking about doing one of the "December Daily" albums but, making it just the last two weeks before Christmas. We'll see if I actually go through with it! ;)

17 days until Christmas...

can you believe it?????? I can't! Am I the only one that is NOWHERE NEAR done shopping??? And, the sad thing is, we CAN'T finish our shopping until the weekend right before Christmas! Crazy, I know! And, I still have cards to make, pictures to print....so on and so on...but, the decorations are up, we're getting our tree this coming weekend and the kids are SUPER excited!

I don't particularly see scrapping in the next two weeks so, I will fall short of my 150 layouts for the year goal for sure. Unless I find time to come up with 20 or so between now and the end of the year! Ha!

So, if I don't come back to my blog for the next 2.5 weeks...I hope you and your families have a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

(lots of caps in this post! :) )

Nothing like last minute...

I always *plan* on participating in the American Crafts weekly blog challenge but, I rarely seem to get it done! This week, despite all the craziness that has gone, I decided to take a few minutes to come up with a layout for this past week's challenge. It's a picture that I wanted to use for a "thankful" layout before this challenge so, it worked out really well!!! So, here it is, finished at 9:30 PM EST on Thursday night! :)




Products used:
American Crafts "Marge Hemmingway" Craft Fair pattern paper
American Crafts "Made with Love" Craft Fair flair
American Crafts "Patchwork" thickers
American Crafts "Nutmeg" thickers