Merry Christmas!

Here is my Christmas card to all of you in cyberland!

I wish you all a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS and a Happy New Year!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Today I thought I would share one more picture of our decorations. This picture was taken right before my husband work party. I just love how the focus is on the candles but you can see the fireplace and the tree in the background.

Remember when you are taking pictures these next couple days...take them at different angles instead of straight on. Also, take them in different places. We seem to take them at the same locations every year. Same tree, same decorations, same angle. Branch out this year and take your pictures differently. You will be happy with the result.

I hope you are almost done with all the shopping, preparing, wrapping and cleaning. Take a deep breathe and enjoy the next couple days with family! I pray you will have a safe and fun weekend.

And remember to celebrate the birth of our Savior! That IS really what it is all about. Enjoy and I will see you here next week!

So from my blog, I wish you a VERY Merry Christmas!

Noel Banner

I made this NOEL banner a couple years ago, but I just love it. I just took 4 Cranberry circle pieces of cardstock, matted with patterned paper, stamped evergreen branches on Colonial White and then used our Dimensional Elements alphabets to spell NOEL. You can use whatever word you want. Then I added some ribbon and sparkles.

The last thing I did was put them together with our hinges and a complete project. Give it a try. It adds a little personalized touch to your decorations.

Christmas Decorations

It's that time...time to stop scrapbooking (EEK) and start decorating for Christmas. Normally we don't start to decorate until the first weekend in December, but my husband volunteered to have his work party at our house. BREATHE! lol It's ok...we like to host parties...but with that came a little stress. We have to start decorating early. So we started the day after Thanksgiving.

Now we volunteered to host the party not only because we like to host, but it will keep us busy in a very hard part of the year for us. 11 years ago, our 16 year old son Grant died in a car accident 3 days before Christmas. It really makes the holidays hard, but we are getting better and have figure out that staying busy works well for us during this time. I tell you this to remind you that it doesn't just happen on tv, it can happen to any of us...so hug your kids and enjoy the moments...oh and take pictures! LOL

So...out came the trees and decorations and here are some pictures of our house. I will share more with you later...I am waiting for a picture to arrive and it was too light this morning and the sun hit the tree funny so I couldn't take a picture...but here are some pictures to put a smile on our faces. I even decorated our cats "entrance" to their area and Corley was nice enough to come out for the picture...ok it took 3 takes, but it finally worked! LOL

This picture is our last picture of Grant. We were at Disney and we found Tigger so I MADE them pose with Tigger (he's my favorite character). Cody is on the left and Grant on the right. We just love this picture...they are both laughing as Tigger hugs them. I am very thankful for this picture...it makes me smile.