Christmas cards

I spent much of my day today signing cards, addressing envelopes, adhering stamps and address labels, and licking glue (yuk.)  Most of them will be in the mail tomorrow.  It is always nice to check Christmas cards off of my to-do list!

I made quite a few handmade cards this year, which I normally don't do.  I made about 25 or so.  I saw a similar card on pinterest and thought that it would be a fun project for me to work on over Thanksgiving weekend when we were relaxing at our condo in Vermont.  They took a bit longer than I thought they would, but they are pretty adorable and used up lots of patterned paper scraps (Christmas and non-Christmas!)

Today I (we, actually) also got our annual Ledvina family recipe ready to send.  Several years ago, my husband's aunts decided that we needed to start a family cookbook.  We (grandma, each set of aunts and uncles, and each cousin) were each given a binder the first year, with the instructions that everyone was to send a favorite recipe of the year to each other family member to include in their binder.  I think this began in 2002, so we now have ten years of favorite family recipes.  This year, Craig and I included this recipe for "Best-Ever Barbecued Ribs."  We've made it several times this past summer and it was a hit every time.

Does your family have any fun family traditions involving food?

I'll be heading to Wisconsin this Thursday to spend Christmas with my family, so have a wonderful holiday season everyone!

November 2012 Studio Calico - Sock Hop (with LOTS of stuff from other kits thrown in!)

I really felt the need for the subtitle "with lots of stuff from other kits thrown in!" for this month's post about what I did with this month's Studio Calico kit before the next kit was delivered to my door.  This month, most of my layouts started with the Sock Hop kit, but then veered quite a bit away from the kit from there.

For example, for this layout, I wanted to use the pretty pink patterned paper to create a layout with this picture from when I was a baby.

There just wasn't enough in the kit to work with that was pink, so I went back to February's kit and used some of the leftovers from that kit.

I totally scraplifted this next layout from here.  I almost never scraplift, but Rebnmnmy's layout was perfect for these waterfall pictures that I wanted to scrap about.  

I started with the July Studio Calico kit and then just added some embellishments from Sock Hop.

This layout is the only one this month that mostly used the kit.

I can't believe that I actually used that feather vellum paper!  I'm not a big fan of the feather craze at all, but I think it really worked on this page!

This layout was totally inspired by the brad from October Afternoon of the guy with the mustache.  I remembered that I had these photos of Craig taking some pictures of himself while we were standing in line at Cal Pep in Barcelona.  He hadn't shaved in a few days and when he finally did, he left a little mustache.  The photos are blurry, but so fun

I knew I wanted to use greens, aquas, orange and black on the layout (if you could see more of our clothes in the picture, those are the colors.)  I looked through some old kits and Joyland from March of 2010 had some perfect colors.  I also ended up using letter stickers from my first kit ever (January 2010), and some patterned paper from February 2010.

I love using up old supplies.  Maybe one of these days I will actually kill a kit?

Have a great week everyone!

Doors

I seem to take a lot of photos of my husband in front of cool looking doors when we are traveling.  I don't know  when I started, but when I look back through vacation photos, there are always photos of him in front of doors.

 Craig in front of an old barn door at his grandparent's farm when we were on vacation in Wisconsin.

Craig in front of a door in Florence, Italy.  He doesn't always cooperate when I'm taking photos.

In front of a door in Barcelona, Spain (yes, that's a cigar in his mouth - yuck!)

I decided to create a layout with this door vacation photo after looking through my November Studio Calico kit and seeing the woodgrain paper.  There were enough dark colors in the kit to make a masculine layout.  I added the sticker letters from a different kit because they were the perfect color.

The stars were cut out with my Silhouette Cameo with a design from the "Cut it Out" class from Studio Calico.  I used a few wood veneer stars now that I safely have a package on its way to me from Two Peas.  I didn't know how much I would love them!

Have a good week everyone!