Smash book pgs 11 - 14

 I don't even know how long I've had the page on the right.  Those two little girls having their tea party is so like my little girls playing with their friends when they were little.  I tore that page out of a magazine and kept it for years.  I also had saved various tea bag pouches hoping to use them some day in an art project.

 I decided to glue them across the pages and make tags with "tea" quotes on them.  Each tag has a ribbon tied in the end to make it easy to pull out of the pouch and read the quote.  I cut the blue coffee cup from one of our coffee bags.

Here I pulled out two tags to show how I put the quotes on the tags.  I also saved numerous Stevia and Truvia pouches to glue to the pages.  I also have several tea-themed rubber stamps that I used on these pages.


I am not through with this book yet.  (**)  I have a page with a horse on it and I'm looking through photos to find some of our daughters with their horses when they were young.  Also, I have another page that says "You have bright ideas"........trying to come up with an idea for that page!  LOL

Smash book pgs 9 & 10

 I dedicated two pages to my honey.  The page on the right is full of hearts and Valentine sentiments.  On the left side is my story of our meeting, school years, wedding date, children and gkids.  "Opposites Attract" is the most appropriate tag for us!  I added some hearts that I cut out of magazines.

      I love these pages!!!  When I saw the title "Man, You're Cool" it brought to mind my little grandson's (Jacob's) favorite thing to say.  He's the one in the upper right corner.  The photo on the bottom of that page is his sister. (Emma).   At the top on the left is Emma and her best friend Addy.  At the bottom of that page is my co-teacher for Sunday School (Deidra) and I.  We were wearing our "shades" at our yearly block party.  We did face painting for all the little children that came.

Smash pgs 7 & 8

 This guy is really trying to look French.....maybe he is.....but I thought he was funny!  LOL   I had cut out the word EXPLORE and thought this was the perfect page for it.  At the bottom is a photo of Pat, myself, Judi and Susan on our way to the flea market at Clignancourt.  The flea markets were our favorite thing to do while there.  ")  We were actually able to go to a street one for the neighborhood where we stayed.  It was such fun.

I used these two pages to collage photos of people, places and things on our trip there.  On the right side I put 10 of my Favorite Things in Paris and surrounded it with a few photos.

Pages in Smash book.....

 The line across the middle of these pages just begged for somersaulting clowns.  ")  I love this little stamp.  I got it in an art trade at one of our stamp club meetings a few years ago.  I cut out the ferris wheel, the ticket and the "Circus" word from the front of a toy magazine.  The little clown holding the lollipop is another Mary Engelbreit figure.  The unicycle just seemed to go along with the clowns.

 This page had a picture of a man on the left and the word adore on the page.  I ended up putting photos of the grandchildren, magazine images and stamped images and layered over them with Tim Holtz tiny film strip.

I placed a "to do" list on this page and wrote out several things that I'm always saying I'd like to do.  Like the trip to Paris with the art group.  Had to add the Eiffel Tower.  Judi and I thought we would not even go there.  Then we ended up going to the top floor!  It was a great adventure.  ")

     I loved our neighborhood.....the 5th Arrondisement or the Latin Quarter as it is known.  And Notre Dame is there.  WAY across town is Sacre Couer at Montmarre.  We would just jump on the Metro and go any place we wanted.  Fabulous way to travel.  Being from a small town and never having lived in a large city where the subway is the way to go was quite a treat for us.

Smash book (?)

 I've had this Smash book for 2 years....  yes, I know it's supposed to be a fast paced little book to slap things down with a little glue and move on along.  BUT every time I turned a page, my head was filled with all kinds of ideas of wonderful ways to decorate it.  Soooo, it has taken me two years to get this far.  Yeah....I'm not though yet.

Mary Engelbriet is one of my favorite artists.  I love all the dear children she draws and all the wonderful quotes she puts with her art work.  I used "Running Away From Home" (upper left) because I feel like I've run away from everything when I'm involved with my art.  I also used this perky little girl next to the chair to invite everyone in for look.

Our Christmas Baby.......

 Christmas presents crowded around Sharla's tree.  Chris and Sharla were our hosts for our family Christmas Eve Eve get together.  And there were still more to come!

 

 But this is the best present!  This little guy (and he WAS little) was born the day after Christmas in 2006.......three months early.  He weighed 2.7lbs and was 15" long.  His mother had been told not to expect him to live.  Many, many prayers went up across this land.  God really gave us a miracle!  He is sooooo healthy, vibrant and active!  We always celebrate his birthday at our Christmas gatherings and thank God for giving him to us.  We stop each day to look at him and think what a miracle he is.  But we also look around at our other grandchildren and thank God for such a beautiful healthy bunch of kids.

     Birthday donuts were Jacob's choice to celebrate his birthday this year.  Thank you, Livi Lee's for a job well done!  Yum!

Ooops!!!!

Yeeah........started to post this on Dec. 4 and then was interrupted.  Just noticed I had a draft and clicked on it to see what it was.  My December 365 calendar!  Only 20 days late getting it posted!  LOL  Oh, well.  It's done.
Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas time! Christmas time!

 Nana has been a busy little elf!  LOL  Oh, my!  You've heard the phrase: "don't bite off more than you can chew"?  Well, here proof that I did just that!  The envelopes were filled with money for the gkids.  And, of course, I JUST HAD to decorate them.  ")  The decorated tags are for the "stocking buckets" shown below.  And they are the ones for the gkids.  The plain manila shipping tags with names and one sticker are for all the adults because this little elf ran out of time!  LOL

     The buckets shown here are in place of all the stockings everyone has hung at home.  We go a little crazy with stocking stuffers!  LOL  So, our youngest daughter saw these cute buckets while running through Dollar Tree on one of here shopping sprees and grabbed enough for our whole immediate family (plus one girl friend of our oldest grandson).  We usually stuff and stuff items into stockings until you just can't get one more thing into them.  Then we start little piles of gifts under the appropriate stocking, and, needless to say, things get a little mixed up and wild and crazy.  So Ru thought this bucket idea would be a great remedy to all that craziness.  And she was right!  But I decided I would make cute tags to go one each bucket.  ")  Well, at least the gkids got their's done.  Everyone was crazy about this idea except our leader (who hates change) ......known as Papaw to all his family.  ")  We had our family gathering last night (Christmas Eve Eve) so gkids could go to the other grandparents for tonight.  Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas Gift Card holders

 Christmas time!  Busy days!  I give lots of gift cards at Christmas.  Our grandchildren are always excited to have money to spend after Christmas and we give them lots of gift cards..... large and small.  From the six year old to the 17 year old, they love it!  Well, even the adults love it!  LOL  I measured a gift card and decided how much paper to cut for total length and where to make the folds.  I had seen a die to cut these out but decided I could make my own pattern.  It turned out really well.

       I gathered as many "Christmasy" papers as I could find and started cutting and folding.  I decided to put a contrasting color on the flap.  I also had these wonderful little labels from Jenni Bowlin that I used for the front.  That allows me a place to write the name of the recipient.  After the gift cards go in,  I have little gold-seal stickers to hold the envelope closed.  Needless to say, I'm very excited and pleased with this project!  (Now, on to tags for our "over-flow" buckets.  We all have stockings but we usually end up with little piles of goodies that wouldn't fit into the stockings.  So this year we have little red, green and blue buckets to put the over-flow into.  I'm making tags for the buckets.  Happy times!)