Happy New Year!

It's the end of 2011 and it has been a year full of changes, surprises and blessings. Through it all, God proved Himself good and faithful and I have much to be thankful to Him for.

I want to highlight my favorite posts of the year.

15 Years of Bliss	On Turning 40	CHA Winter 2011	Amy Carmichael Introduction
Remembering Also the Good Things	What TAC's Closing Taught Me	Don't Waste Your Life

And here are my favorite projects from 2011:

2012 Calendar Wall Hanging	Hello, Gorgeous	The Earth Is Full	Popup Wedding Card
I Love You	Classic Urns Thank You	Let Your Dreams Soar	Photo Wall Hanging
Happy Birthday Girl	Welcome Home Butterfly	SRM Thanksgiving Ensemble	Happy Birthday Butterfly
Happy Birthday Chair	Beautiful Friend	Happy Summer	I followed my heart
Season's Greetings	Hope	Beloved	So Sweet of You
Thanks Be Unto God	Christmas Angel

I will be back next week with new projects! I wish you all the best in 2012!

Mini Calendar Wall Hanging

I have another non-card project for you today. This time it's a wall hanging using SRM Stickers Mini Calendar Standard (#48005) and Year of Memories 2012 (#48004). I also used various Spellbinders dies. And, of course, my daughter has to model it for me :).

Each panel has 4 months. The months are attached with twine threaded through the die cuts. They can be either cut or untied to go to the next month. The papers are from my old stash. The lace is from a local store.

You can see more detailed photos on the SRM blog. Speaking of SRM, the deadline for their DT call is tomorrow. I highly recommend that you apply. They are a great company to design for. They are very generous and kind. The owners have become true friends of mine and I love working with them. Not to mention, you get to work with some fabulous products!

Altered Notebooks

Hi, friends! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas celebration. We certainly did. We fried turkey in our makeshift fryer and they turned out great. I prepared all the all-American fixin's like sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, cornbread dressing and cheesecake for dessert! We invited some of our Croatian friends who tasted many of these for the first time and they loved it! It was a great day to spend with our church family and friends.

I'm slowly getting back to normal schedule, but it's hard when my girls are home and we just want to watch videos and/or play games all day in our jammies! For today's project, I have some altered Ikea notebooks that I gave away as gifts this Christmas. Excuse the not-so-good photos, but I was in a hurry to take these before the recipients arrived :).

Here are close up shots of these covers. I just glued some old October Afternoon papers, put some fancy big ribbons, stamped some Spellbinders-coordinating stamps (LOC's Elegant Labels and TCM's Season's Greetings) and added Want2Scrap Nestabling.

These verse and quote are some of my favorites, from LOC's Encouragement set. For this one below, I tucked in a Fancy Tag die that is cut in half.

 

Merry Christmas!

Hi, friends! I just want to wish you all a very

Merry Christmas!

This is a special holiday for me as a Christian because it celebrates the coming of the Eternal Savior Jesus Christ, my Savior, the One who would finally bring Hope, show Grace and Mercy, exemplify perfect Love and give lasting Peace to a lost and fallen people. May this holiday be a great time for us to really taste and see the goodness of the Lord. My prayer is that, while you enjoy the festivities and blessings the holidays bring, you will all grow to know and love God and understand the reason why we celebrate Christmas in the first place.

Here's a video that explains what the Christmas story is all about:

I want to leave you with this amazing cello rendition of Carol of the Bells.

I will be back next week with new projects to show you.

Lilies as Poinsettias

I hope you all had a great weekend. Mine was busy, but fun. The best surprise was to see a Kentucky Fried Chicken's first franchise in Croatia in our favorite mall! I know that is not a big deal to you all in the US, but for us who only have had McDonald's for the last 10+ years, this is a welcome change. We rarely ate at KFC when we lived in the US, but it's nice to have something new that's familiar. We haven't been, just because there were literally 100 or so people in line. I hope this is the first of many US restaurants coming to Croatia. I'm still wishing for a Panda Express or PF Chang's... :)

Today's card is one I made a year or so ago, but never shared here. It uses some Gina K Designs stamps and October Afternoon papers. These flowers were actually lilies and I colored them to look more like poinsettias.

If you missed it last week, I shared a download for printable tags. I embellished them with ribbons, lace and whatever was on my desk at the time. Here are two I made, one using a Santa image form The Graphics Fairy. I'm entering this to their Brag Monday challenge.

Click on the tag graphics below to download.

Peace Rejoice

I have a Christmas card for you today using SRM Sticker Sentiments Faith. I'm in a bit of a rush as I have a slew of projects to finish for Christmas and CHA and my daughter has a Christmas program tonight. I haven't even started my holiday baking yet.

All supplies are listed below. Have a great weekend!

InLinkz.com