Over in the blink of an eye...

I can't believe with all the preperations and hustle and bustle of everything Christmas is over so quickly. I was at the store yesterday and can you believe they have Valentines stuff out already and before you know it Easter stuff will be out! I don't know about you, but I am going to savor the season of Christmas for a little while longer....
I had to work on Christmas eve this year, kinda sucked. The poor kids had to wait until after nine to open presents. I literally got bombarded when I walked in the door and not because they were happy to see me, but because they could finally open presents! Oh well, at least I got to spend about an hour and a half with everyone.
Alyson was busy tracking Santa's progress on the internet(gee, how did we ever manage when we were kids...LOL) and finally went to bed when she saw that he was getting near Illinois. What a wonderful photo of my hubby don't you think? Heaven forbid I get a photo of his face, and well as far as Andrew goes...no pictures for him either! What a bunch of fuddy-duddies!

Tis the season...

to be jolly! I know some of us are having a hard time doing that this year, but if we take the time to remember what Christmas is really all about and be thankful for what we do have, you should have no problem being jolly. Christmas to me is a time to celebrate my faith in God and to spend it with my family and friends, not to see who gets the biggest or best present, but to be thankful we have family and friends to give these presents to. So when I look at my family and know I get to spend this holiday season with them, I know I am blessed and have every reason to be jolly!

My half finished tree. I still need to put on the garland and tweek it up a bit, the kids decorated it all by themselves and for some reason they felt the need to put all the ornaments is one spot and in some spots more than one ornament. All in all, it is still pretty to me!
This is one of my favorite things on my tree, besides all the special ornaments, you know the ones, the construction paper ones with all the glitter and the kids pics on them, the ones they make in school. The tree topper has no special meaning but she is beautiful isn't she....

What better way to spend a cold windy Saturday than at the Harley shop visiting Santa and eating pizza? We met grandma and Kyle at the Crete Harley shop where Santa just so happened to be bike shopping. Alyson was glad that he took some time out to listen to her christmas list....

Forget me not....

With the combination of the denial of my 40th. birthday and being sick I forgot to add a few layouts that I did. These are just a few random layouts I managed to get done...maybe I should be cleaning the house or getting some Christmas shopping done....?
This first one was for the CSI Crop that ACOT just had. It was to make a Christmas Thank You card....with bling. I found this cute little guy hidden in my stash, added some Ting a Ling glitter glue from Carolee's Creations and tada...a Christmas Thank you card with bling! This was a monthly challenge at ACOT. It was to let the music move you. The song was "You are my sunshine". We had to use any part of the song somewhere on our layout. I used the ever so popular title.....

This challenge that ACOT had should have been an easy challenge. Use the colors of summer...yellow and orange. They killed me at the CSI crop having to use yellow once...now I had to use it TWICE! Bring on the Bling! This is the monthly contest at ACOT. You still have to time to enter the contest doesn't end until the 14th. of this month. The winner recieves a $25.00 GC to ACOT and the runner up recieves a $10.00 GC. Go check it out.....hthttp://www.acherryontop.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=201404 4 You can also check out all of the monthly challenges ACOT has by clicking this link...

http://www.acherryontop.com/article?a=5324

Monkey see, monkey do...

Lately the only thing I have had on my mind is turning 40. Inside I am not dealing with it very well so my creative mind has not been really working so I had to use a little help to get the creative juices flowing. This first one is a layout using the wonderful sketch help from Pencil Lines. It kind of took a whole new look but the concept is there. Thanks Pencil Lines for the wonderful sketch.

This second one is a scraplift of a very talented lady over at A Cherry on Top. Thank you Tracy for the beautiful layout to copy! Your work is OUTSTANDING!!! Mine is the first layout titled "My Sweetie"

This is the wonderful layout from Tracy that I scraplifted... Thanks again for the wonderful inspiration for both of these!