It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.... NOT

Today I'm supposed to be all stressed out with last minute packing as we load the truck and drive to the coast for our annual Christmas gathering with my family. However... Mother Nature has foiled our plans and instead wreaked havoc with a tropical storm.... in DECEMBER. I should have snow! It should be cold! Yesterday, while very blustery and rainy, it was 60 degrees. The snow level is 8000 feet. Just not typical for the Pacific Northwest. So yesterday afternoon there were several phone calls going back and forth on our land line, Steve's cell phone, with family and rental companies, trying to come up with a back up plan. Our house in Lincoln City has NO power, most highways are closed due to flooding and downed trees... it's just not going to happen this year. Part of the problem with finding something else is that we have such a large group. Mom, Dad and his new wife, myself, my three siblings, and 4 little kids running around, and a 12 year old half sister. A lot of people... In the end... everyone is headed my way and we are going to Steve's parent's house because it's big enough to contain us all... and they aren't home. They are busy burning a couple of timeshares in Vegas and now in Sodona...

So my vacation is only 45 minutes away, and it's going to totally confuse my girls, especially sweet Payton, who's going to be running around looking for Grandma and Grandpa, but who's going to be playing with Grammabon, Papa and Cynthia instead. lol Merry. Christmas.

I got the Basic Grey November newsletter and saw that they were having a card challenge, so I decided to dive in. Basic Grey is what turned me on to scrapbooking.. I can't tell you how many collection packs I've bought of the Lollipop Shoppe, Vagabond, Sublime, Motifica, Sweet Pea Alyssa and Jack... I have it all. And I have Dasher, Blitzen, and Fruitcake. Tons of it. So I decided to make a few cards and enter the challenge. It was fun to play with some stash, and make some holiday cards.





The dasher line has this poinsetta paper, but there isn't a single flower that you can totally cut out and use like this card, so I used other paper from the line and made my own flower. I did trim leaves from that original piece of paper, though. I think it was called Centerpiece. And then, of course, I took to it with my sewing machine. Of course!

I thought the pattern of these shapes was very snowflake, so I trimmed them out in a snowflake shape and used a traditional winter card sentiment... I used a few sticker alphas from the new font that's in the Periphery line... and turned a scrap of paper over and trimmed out my interpretation of a snowdrift... and yes.... took the sewing machine to it too... lol

For this one, I used a tag and the chipboard tag that matches it's shape, and wrapped it up with DMC floss to represent a deocrated Christmas tree, added a rubon for an aura around my star, which is covered with glitter from my December kit from Studio Calico, and used a rubon photo corner for a tree stand. I also used some more Periphery sticker alphas for my sentiment. Pretty clean and simple.

And then I decided to make a man card. lol Last year I used this sentiment on a card I made for Steve from me and the girls for Father's Day. I've always loved the sentiment so I decided to make another card using it. This card was made on Worldwin craft cardstock from the Treasures line. You MuST try it. I'm not just saying that either. It is a very, very subtle texture to it.... almost linen but more subtle than that. I just love it. It's by far my favorite thing from the entire WORLDWIN line.... Treasures cardstock, Crafty Brown. I also added some Berry red that I trimmed with fun deco scissors, because deco is BACK... added some BG, some Offray ribbon, Autumn Leaves buttons, a Jenni Bowlin journaling sticker, and some Mustard Moon sticker alphas. Yummilicous!

Have a great week! I might be gone down South for vacay.... but they have a computer there so I probably won't be far... but then again, it's DIAL UP. EEK.