Last Two Tags!!!

 Tag # 11

and Tag #12

And here are the boys posing under the Katie's Tree......Zeus looks kind of old and yet they're less than a year apart.  They really do play great together whenever they get together.

And here's my take on Koen telling Santa what he wants.  In every picture, Koen is hanging on to his thumb for dear life.  He was told that Santa would be checking to see if he's still sucking his thumb.

Have a Very Merry Christmas,

12 Tags of Christmas update!

12 Tags are almost done! Here are the 8th, 9th and 10th tags that I posted for the Scrapbooker's Paradise Blog.  Next Sunday will be the last tag post with the 11th and 12th tags........Yay!!!  As much fun as this has been, it's also nice to see a mission that is accomplished and completed as planned.  I think that now is time to come up with a new project for the New Year and I'll welcome any suggestions.

The 10th tag is double sided and you can pull on the strings to raise and lower the blinds so here are the three different views.  I also had to think of this one as the view of the window from inside on the one side and a view from the outside on the other side.

This is the same tag with the blind up showing the the scenery that was made for the 6th tag when you look out the window.

Hope you drop in next week,

Loads of Fun and Great Eats & Treats!!!

This is really such a busy time of year and I always have such ambition to get things done but it doesn't always work out quite the way I plan.  The 12 tags that I've been doing for work have been quite time consuming but I decided to work outside of my comfort zone so that I could learn even more tips to pass on.

These are the 6th and 7th tags and all of the instructions are on the Scrapbooker's Paradise Blog.

I recently got the We R Memory Keepers Gift Box Punch board and I knew what I would do with it as soon as I tried my first box.  I don't bake but my daughter has inherited that hidden baking gene from me and her cakes are amazing.  She loves decorating cakes and thinks that cupcakes are boring but I thought that these little boxes would be perfect for to hold a cupcake so I had her make me a batch of my favorites - banana cake with a cream cheese icing as gifts for our staff party.  The gifts all had to be homemade and the cost had to be under $3.00.  The gifts were all amazing!

I decorated my box and then I designed a little holder for the inside to hold my cupcake.

Here are a few more from Katrina Karina Cakes.  She even made a gluten free batch that was to die for :) I think those would make a fabulous Christmas Present.

And,.....here is the most amazing haul of hand made gifts that I've ever seen.  This was a truly great great idea for a bunch of crafty people and the pot luck lunch was equally impressive.

I've been dog sitting for the last week and a half and I now know that I will miss Lexi around all the time when she goes home.  Mack had taken up laying down in my desk chair every time I got up but it sure didn't take long for Lexi to join in.  I do have the most comfortable chair ever and I guess the pups figured it out.

Have a Great week everyone!

I Learn Something New Everyday!!!

I was so excited when Cindy from Monday Night Class told me about this little tip. When I was in Montreal in early October, I brought back some Maple Leaves with me because the colors were gorgeous and it's just not something we see a lot of in Calgary.  I knew that there were several ways to preserve the leaves but I wasn't sure which method would be the best and how much time or effort it would take.  

My leaves were starting to crumble and I'd only brought two back with me and didn't want to lose either of them so I was afraid to touch them at all but then Cindy told me that she'd done many so I thought I'd give her method a try...........Mod Podge.

Just cover the leaves with a generous layer of Mod Podge, let dry and do the other side.  Now the leaves are actually pliable and these were crumbling before.  My leaves were so dry that I had to be careful when i applied that 1st coat but the other side was really easy.  This would be easy and fun to do with kids.

Have you seen the New punch boards from We R Memory Keepers?  Here is something that I made with just scraps using the Candy Treat Box Punch Board.  I just made a few minor alterations to make this a Christmas Cracker that really works and now I can't wait to make the REAL ones!  Next week, I'll show you how I used my Gift Box punch board to make something really exciting!!!

I hope you were as excited as I was to find out about this great tip! Here are the two tags that I did for this week's 'Sunday with Sandy' at Scrapbooker's Paradise Blog.

 Have a Great Week,

3 down and 9 more Christmas Tags to go!

Hmmmm, Only 5 more weeks until Christmas and still 9 more tags to go so I will be doubling up for 4 of the next 5 weeks.  This means that next Sunday there will be two tags....and Yikes!...twice the work.

Here is the 3rd tag:

This week I will also add a couple pictures of my new project.  I finally found some crackers to make my own Christmas Crackers and I have an idea on how to make this work with my new Candy Box punch Board.  I can't wait to see if it works!

Christmas Tag # 2

Here's my 2nd of 12 tags that I've made for Scrapbooker's Paradise Blog. I love the colors and I absolutely want to make more of this Poinsettia.  I have to make more of them and use them for scrapbooking.

...........And here's another cake that Katie made this week.  I love the fun colors!!!!!

She used the opportunity to practice making different types of flowers.  The most amazing part is that only the flowers and the ribbon are made with fondant. The rest is all made with butter cream icing.  I really have to get her working on some gluten free cakes so that I can taste them too.

Have a great week,

The first of the 12 Tags of Christmas..........

I'm doing the 12 Tags of Christmas for Scrapbooker's Paradise and here is the first of many more to come. I will post the pictures on this Blog but all of the instructions will be on the Scrapbooker's Paradise Bllog.

I can't wait to share more tags.  They are a lot of work but also lots of fun!  I hope you enjoy them and give some of these techniques a try.

Turkey to go!

I guess it's better late than never.

I meant to put this one up earlier but life got in the way.  I flew back from Montreal on Thanksgiving Monday and my darling husband was taking care of the entire meal.  When my daughter walked in with a 2nd turkey, I figured there had been a communication breakdown somewhere.

But,........It's a CAKE!!!

Ever since she started her little cake business she has been practicing some of her designs on us.  We've never been the biggest fans of fondant and this had to have fondant to achieve this look.  To our surprise and delight, she has been working on a much thinner and not so sweet fondant and this one was really good. This was a pumpkin spice cake with a Maple icing and although this is not a gluten free cake, the wings and the legs were gluten free.

This was so good that I thought I'd share.

Time to get caught up......

I was away for the last couple of weeks and as it turns out, it was a great weather choice.  The first week was spent in San Antonio, Texas and we were so lucky to arrive after the rains and just as the beautiful sunshine arrived.  In Montreal, I had incredible days of  20 - 25 degrees Celsius everyday. The best part is that I missed the cold and snow in Calgary and I got to spend time with the grand-daughters and my mother.

Here are just some of the Halloween bags that I made with Molly while in San Antonio.  These were actually lots of fun to make and it was really interesting to see how focused Molly could be when she's in a creative mode.

The instructions for this project were featured on the Scrapbooker's Paradise Blog last week.

Have a Great Week,

More Copic Fun!

This week on the Scrapbooker's Paradise Blog, I completed my project using a plastic lid from an ice cream pail.

I also had a lot of fun teaching myself how to make beads. Using Copic markers for this project made my imagination go wild.  I'd seen a lot of posts and tutorials on how to do this but nobody is using Copics.  The Copics gave me such a nice color variation within the same color family. I didn't want the individual beads to have a rainbow effect. I wanted them to have instead a more monochromatic effect.  

These are all of the beads that I've  made in the last couple of hours.  my next step will be to use these for a project.

And here they are all dry.....

And here is the plastic lid project that I mentioned;.

Have a great week,

Copics for more than just coloring!!!

This week I did a post about Copic Markers and using them in different ways for the Scrapbooker's Paradise Blog.  As a Scrapbooker, I tend to use my Copics for much more than coloring.  I love that I can use them on almost anything and that the ink is permanent and the colors are amazing.  Here's my main project for Scrapbooker's Paradise Blog this week.

And now here's a couple of old pages where I used my Copics to make my title work color co-ordinate with the rest of my page.

I used my Cricut to cut my titles and I just used a Cherry Blossom Stamp and just stamped hap-hazzardly over my whole title and used my Copics to bring some color into my page.

I had used such a great colorful background paper for this page and some great colorful flowers so I really wanted to create the same effect with my title.  I cut my title with my Cricut and White Copic Paper and then I used my Copics to bring those colors to my title.  I just did horizontal stripes to match and stamped flourishes over the top.  The word "Little" at the top is originally White Thickers and for this I colored the letters with Copics and used the same flourish stamp to add texture.

Today Mack got bored with me and decided to wait for his 'dad' to get back home.  I can't believe that he finds this comfortable but this is his new favorite place.

Every time I leave the house, he gets up there and stays there pretty much the entire waiting.  My neighbors all talk about the 'Doggie in the Window'.........but nobody's asked "how much......?".

Have a great Week,

Halloween with Flair!

I'm not a Halloween person at all and I've never really been a fan.  This week a co-worker absolutely inspired me and made me think about possibly decorating.  She made a Halloween countdown box instead of a Christmas Advent calendar and it's absolutely amazing.

Nicole is so talented!  Here is her Blog link for this calendar
box. http://canadiannickelscrapn.blogspot.ca/2013/09/altered-halloween-advent-calendar-w.html?showComment=1378736536951

The only thing that I've managed to do consistently every year  was dress the dog up and eat all the candy. We only get about 12 to 25 kids every year but I buy for 100....just in case.

Our first Schnauzer was a black female named 'Cara'.  We would dress her up every year and she was so embarrassed that she would never bark at the 'Trick or Treaters'.  For three years we didn't have a dog to dress up so now I can't wait to dress Mack up!!!

Cara at Halloween.

Until next week,