Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Digital Tuesday Challenge 'Go Green!'

Hello and welcome to another Digital Tuesday Challenge. This week's challenge is 'Go Green!'. Simply make a card or project with a bit of green on it and be sure to include at least one digital element. Our sponsor this week is Di's Digi Downloads.

To make my card, I used an older Di's Digital Downloads image called "Memories". My 'bit of green' is simply in the bluish/green color and in the leaves of the flowers. I mounted the main image panel up on dimensionals, and put Stickles on the flowers in the image.

If you'd like to play along with us this week, simply click on the Digital Tuesday Challenge Blinkie in my sidebar and it will take you directly to the Challenge Site with further instructions.


Have a great day! Amy

Monday, November 28, 2011

Wrapped in Love

Hello! First of all, thanks for all your sweet comments on my last post. I've been a little absent in blogland lately because my life is so stressful right now, so it's nice to see my blog friends visiting and leaving sweet comments even if I can't visit all of their blogs at the time. I've been working like crazy getting the store ready for Black Friday weekend, then that weekend of course was crazy, now today is my day off, and I will spend the entire day at church decorating it for Chrismas, then I go back to work tomorrow (having to wake up at 3:30 a.m.), work 3 more days, then I have Thursday off, of which I'll spend the entire day at church again finishing the Xmas decorations, then back to work again Friday, Saturday, Sunday, before I have a day off again. Tis the Season!

Anyway, enough of my whining, onto my post. Today's card features an image from Paper Fashions called "Wrapped in Love". This set comes with a tree and present image, and several sentiments too. I used the snowman image. My sketch is by MFT (MFTWSC43). I popped the main image panel up on dimensionals. The ribbon is from JoAnn's Fabrics and Crafts.

Have a great day! Amy

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Digital Tuesday Challenge: "Sparkle and Shine!"

Hello and welcome to another Digital Tuesday Challenge. This week's challenge is "Sparkle and Shine!". Simply make a card or project that sparkles and shines, and be sure to include at least one digital element. Our sponsor this week is Saturated Canary.

To make my card, I used the Saturated Canary image 'Christmas Nutcracker'. I started with an MFT sketch, but I ended up changing it so much that I don't think it looks much like the sketch anymore. LOL! The paper is Basic Grey 'Eskimo Kisses'. The sentiment is from K & Company. I'm not much of a Glitter person on cards, so my 'Sparkle & Shine' is just a frame of red glitter glue around the image.

If you'd like to play along with us this week, simply click on the Digital Tuesday Challenge Blinkie in my side bar and it will take you directly to the Challenge Site with further instructions.


Have a great day! Amy



Monday, November 21, 2011

Jar of Peppermints

Hello! Today I have a Paper Fashions card to show you that uses a couple of images from the set 'Sweet Warm Ups'. This set is full of sweet edible winter images. In a previous post I used the cup of cocoa image that you can see HERE. Today I'm using the Jar of Peppermint image and the the bow image. The sentiment is from the set 'Sweet Warm Ups Sentiments'. My sketch is by Mojo Monday, and the paper is from My Mind's Eye '12 Days of Christmas'. The candy jar is up on dimensionals. Have a great day! Amy

Friday, November 18, 2011

Two Turtle Doves

Hello! Today I have a Doodle Pantry card to show you that uses an image from the 'Twelve Days' of Christmas set. If you recall I previously made a Christmas Card using the Drum Image from the same set HERE, now I'm using the Turtle Dove image for my card. My sketch is from Verve, and my paper is Cosmo Cricket 'Mitten Weather'. The birds are cut out and popped up on dimensionals.

This set is loaded with all the images from the Twelve Days of Christmas Song, sentiments, and digi paper. You can make so many different cards with this set! I really love it!


Have a great day! Amy

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

2011 Xmas Walk -- Part Two

Hello and welcome to Part Two of my 2011 Christmas Walk. If you missed Part One, you might want to scroll down. It's in that Post that I describe what the Christmas Walk is and give a little history of my home.

This is the outside of my house. It is built on a hill and has a field stone foundation and covered in red brick. If you look to the far left of the picture where a Christmas Tree is lit up, that's the addition that was built about 6 years ago which doubled the square footage of the house. To advertise the Christmas Walk, the local newspaper takes a picture of the home and writes a story about it for the local paper. I was so pleasantly surprised to read that the author described my home as a 'Christmas Village Home'. I never thought of it that way before, but after I looked at the picture in the paper, I could see why she came to that conclusion. She wrote " One cannot go shopping and see Christmas Village Homes on display not get in the Christmas Spirit. The same is true of the Johnson home First of all, as one approaches this house what one is looking at is a life-sized replica of a Christmas Village Home all decorated for the holidays."

This is the front door. It leads into the dining room. I don't decorate much outside because I hate the cold. My husband put white lights on the small cherry tree outside the front door and he hung Icicle Lights from the top of the porch. I put garland around all the doorways, the porch railings, and more lights.



I did this winter flower arrangement with fake flowers. Normally this is the spot where I put my annuals in the spring. It's located on a wall next to the front door.




This is the side porch. The door opens to the entry way of the sun room addition balcony. The church gave us a free live tree to use for the event, and since I have a wood stove, I decided to put it outside. I flocked it, then added pine cones and some cheap snowflake and icicle ornaments from Walmart. The presents underneath the tree are 'fake'. They are just empty boxes wrapped in pretty paper and tied with white bows. I have a winter snowman pillow on the rocking chair with a pair of ice skates slung over the chair back.















In my last post I described that I took 20 yards of red satin and swagged it across my sun room window, but I don't have a picture of that. I will have to take one and post it later. By the time I get home from work it is dark, so it will have to wait till I have a day off. It was one of those ideas that came to me as I lay in bed one night brainstorming about other ways I could decorate the house with a big 'wow' factor. I've always struggled decorating my Sun room for the holidays, because in most rooms I just add 'greenery'. Well, this room doesn't need more greenery with all the plants already in it. So then I thought, what about fabric? But then I was worried about the expense, and I found this red sparkly costume satin on sale at JoAnn's Fabrics and Crafts for only $1.99 a yard! 10 yards comes on one bolt, so all I had to do was sew the two ends together and wa-la I had my 'wow' factor I was looking for! I added a big green bow made with the same type of fabric on each garden hanger, and then finished it off with gigantic bells that you can also find at JoAnn's. Here's a close up for you:










There are 10 windows in the sun room, and in each window on a suction cup hangs a little wreath. Here is a close up of one of them. They are all decorated the same. I love birds, so I have a 'bird theme' going on with my Christmas Decorations, and in my Craft Room.













This is a view of the sun room as you descend the staircase.













Now for some detail shots of my kitchen. My kitchen is very small, but for most visitors, one of their favorite rooms in the house for it's very 'cute'. It's decorated in blue and white, and I have loads and loads of blue and white china given to me by loving friends all on display in the room.


One of my all time favorite ways to decorate is with books. I love attractive book covers and love to display books on easels or lay them down to prop up pictures and nic nacs. The next two pictures show how I used 'Christmas Cookie' Books as decorations, simply by propping them up on an easel:









































This is my cooking area, my husband built the hutch surrounding the stove. On top I put a Christmas Village, and inside each nook is something 'xmasy': Christmas plates, Christmas wood words, berries, candles, etc.














This is an area above my sink. I put garland right above the sink, and filled my nooks with blue and silver Christmas berries. The yellow pitcher vase is filled with glittered white hydrangeas. And if your wondering about the teapot on the left and the silverware on the right, those are wind chimes. In the spring/summer when the window is open and the wind comes through, it moves the chimes ever so gently creating such a lovely sound.































My downstairs bathroom is impossible to photograph because it is so small. There's just room for the tiniest of sinks and a toilet. In fact, I don't think a very large could even fit in this bathroom. Anyhow, this is a bookshelf above the toilet. The room is decorated with angels year round, so all I have to do for Christmas is add some glittered flowers. The angels already make it Christmasy.
























This is the small sink. I simply added a scented candle and some Christmas towels for the season.



























This is what the dining room looks like from the kitchen. The living room is in the right background, and the office is in the left background.





















A view of the living room from my dining room. I've redecorated this room three times since purchasing the house. This is my favorite design so far. I love the color combo of blue and brown.


















Well I hope you enjoyed hearing about my Christmas Walk. I will post pics yet of those sun room windows so you can see the window treatment, and I still plan on posting more detailed pictures and descriptions of my new Craft Room next week sometime. I know all you crafters out there are really interested in that! I just got my THIRD thank you card today for allowing my home to be showed on the Christmas Walk, and the lady who wrote it said 'All the women were envious of your craft room'. That seemed to be the highlight of the day! Every woman seems to want her own space to create. I know I did, and I couldn't be happier with the way mine turned out. Thanks to my husband.


Have a great day! Amy
























Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Digital Tuesday Challenge 'Christmas Time!'

Hello and welcome to another Digital Tuesday Challenge. This week's challenge is 'Christmas Time!' Simply make a card or project that has something to do with Christmas and be sure to use at least one digital element. Our sponsor this week is MyGrafico.

To make my card, I used a Paper Fashions image from the set "Sweet Warm Ups" and the sentiment is from 'Sweet Warm Ups Sentiments'. My sketch is by the Deconstructed Sketch (Sketch 21-8521). The paper is the new DCWV 'The Christmas Matstack'. Lots of cute papers in this stack! I popped the main image up on dimensionals as usual. Christmas ribbon from JoAnn's and a button and linen thread were added for embellishment.

If you'd like to play along with us this week, simply click on the Digital Tuesday Challenge Blinkie in my sidebar and it will take you directly to the Challenge Site with further instructions.


Have a great day! Amy

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

2011 Christmas Walk--Part One

Hello! As promised, here are some pictures of the 2011 Christmas Walk. In the community where I live, every year 3 homes are chosen to be featured on the Christmas Walk. The owner of the home basically decorates their entire house for Christmas from top to bottom, inside and out, and then opens the doors to the public to come and see. It was a ton of work. I started preparing for it in early October. I took one room of the house at a time, scrubbed and cleaned it from top to bottom, and then decorated it for Christmas. I don't want to get into too much detail about my house, because I did a long series about my home and talked about every single room and how it was constructed HERE if your interested. Today, and later in the week, I'll just show a few pictures of each room in the house and talk about my eventful day.

This is me outside our home. Each home was marked with this special sign so the guests could easily find it. The Methodist Church, which sponsored the walk, gave me this beautiful corsage to wear for the day so people would know that I was the owner of the home. O.k. all crafter's can start drooling now. This is my newly constructed CRAFT ROOM which was just finished about 2 weeks ago....just in time for the walk. I've been working in the space for over a year now, but the upper cabinetry was just installed and painted 2 weeks ago. Since I know most of my readers are crafter's, I will have a separate post next week sometime with more photographs just to talk about this room and all it's special features. I have to say, this room was one of the hits of the day. Every woman that saw it said they were jealous and wanted this room. And my husband is now considered the most wanted man in Modena by all the women, because they want to be married to someone who could build them a room like this. His head has really swelled over all the female attention he received on Saturday. LOL! One lady said to him 'Now where do I go where I can find a man to build me something like this?'. His response was 'Well, if you go to bars, you will meet a guy who likes to hang out in bars, if you go to church, you'll meet a good guy that wants to please his wife.'. Wise words.


This is our sun room. It's the room our daughter was married in, you can see pictures and read all about that HERE. On a regular basis it's where I hang out with my two birds and all my plants, and where we have large dinner parties. There are 10 windows, and I hung a wreath in each window. Then I have one big wreath on the wall, a beautiful table setting, and some garland on top of the shelves and furniture. I also swagged 20 yards of red silky fabric across the windows and added big green fabric bows and bells to each upper plant holder. You'll see more of that view later this week.





Here is my Table Setting. The center floral arrangement was provided as a gift from the church, I surrounded it with candles and covered a gold tablecloth with sparkly green tulle. I had gold chargers, white dishes with a gold edge (leftover from my daughter's wedding), sparkly satin green napkins from Pier One Imports, and floral picks as napkin rings.




This is our office, where I write my posts. It's cut off in the picture, but on top of the left bookcase are two Christmas Houses. One is a replica of a JoAnn's Fabrics and Crafts store where I work, and the other is a replica of a Menard's Store for where my husband works.


This is the doorway leading out of the office, existing the original part of the house and walking into the new addition (sun room).


This is my dining room with a view of the kitchen. My tree doesn't fit in the small living room of the old house, so I put it in the dining room.


Another view of the dining room.

This is my small living room. We have a large family room in the new addition and use that space when the kids are all home for a visit. I'll post pictures of that room another day.


This is the 3rd floor upstairs staircase looking down into the Living Room.

This is the upstairs bathroom.


Upstairs Hallway.



My son's room. Both my children have their own 'little trees' which are decorated with all the ornaments they collected growing up.

The view looking into my son's room.


The master bedroom.


My daughter's room.


All in all, it was an exhausting, but wonderful day. We had somewhere between 500 to 700 visitors. Everyone seemed so happy to see all the Christmas Decorations and they had so many questions about the construction of the house, and decorating questions, that my hubby and I stayed very busy. It was a joy to read the guest book after everyone had left. I was just expecting to read names, but to my delight a lot of people wrote comments like 'Wow!', 'Beautiful Home', 'Thanks, I needed this!', etc. Our biggest joy was meeting several elderly woman who grew up in the home as children and hearing their stories. In the 1940's our home was used as the Town's Telephone Office and so many of the visitors that day had stories to share about coming to our house to make a phone call. So many people seemed so happy to just be able to come into the house and recall their special memories. It made all the hard work so worthwhile, and I felt so blessed by God to be able to use the home He gave me to bless others. I'm still hearing comments every time I go to town, and I just received a thank you card in the mail today from someone who visited the house thanking us for opening our house and being a blessing to so many people. Our house has been a 12 year labour of love, and after watching our daughter get married in it a year ago, and the beautiful day we had on Saturday, and all the memories we have, it was well worth every single second of hard work.


Have a great day! Amy




























Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Digital Tuesday Challenge 'Anything Goes!'

Hello and welcome to another Digital Tuesday Challenge. This week's challenge is 'Anything Goes'. Simply make anything you want, just be sure to use at least one digital element. Our sponsor this week is Bugaboo and they are very generously giving away 7 digital images to one lucky randomly chosen winner.

To make my card, I used a Paper Fashions image and sentiment. The image is from the set "Wrapped Up in Cheer" and the sentiment is from the set 'Christmas Blessings'. My layout is this week's Splitcoaststampers Sketch (SC357) and the paper is My Mind's Eye ''12 days of Christmas' If you'd like to play along with us this week, just click on the Digital Tuesday Challenge Blinkie in my sidebar and it will take you directly to the Challenge Site with further instructions.

Have a great day! Amy

Saturday, November 5, 2011

12 Days of Xmas Blog Hop

Hello! Today I'm showing you a Christmas Card that uses the drum image from the New Doodle Pantry set '12 Days of Christmas'. This set has all the images from the 'Twelve Days of Christmas" song and the lyrics to each image and several different sentiments. I picked the drum image because my son is a drummer. Doodle Pantry is having a Blog Hop for the next few days so be sure to visit all the design team members blogs to get lots and lots of ideas of all the different things you can create with just one set!

With the drum image I made the card below. I picked the circular sentiment because I thought the image fit perfectly inside a round sentiment. The set comes pre-colored and with designer digital papers. I used the out-line image, colored it myself, cut it out, and popped it up on dimensionals. The holly berry digital paper is on the first panel in the background. My sketch is from MFT. The sentiment on the bottom, is also included in the set.If you haven't already visited the Doodle Pantry Blog, be sure to go there and leave a comment so you can be entered to win a $10.00 prize. There may also be more winners hidden on other design team blogs, so be sure to visit all the other design team members blogs to increase your chances of winning and to see their fabulous creations.


Here's the Blog Hop List:


1. Startout Blog: Doodle Pantry Blog


2. Dawn


















11. Jan


12. Donna




14. Amy




16. Glenda


17. Sharon




Enjoy the Hop, and Have a Great Day! Amy

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Hee Haw!

Hello! Today I have a new Doodle Pantry release to show you called 'Quirky Donkey'. This is a very versatile image that comes in outline, pre-colored, with digi papers, and sentiments. You can also purchase a wreath image separately to use for Xmas Cards and layouts or I can see this image even used at Easter time. I decided to use this image for a masculine birthday card. It says 'It's Your Birthday!' inside the card. My layout is from SCS (SCS355), and I used one designer paper from the set. I doodled around the edges of the card with a brown marker. I added hemp ric rac and a wooden button for embellishment.

Have a great day! Amy

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Digital Tuesday Challenge 'Cute & Cuddly'

Hello and welcome to another Digital Tuesday Challenge. This week's challenge is 'Cute & Cuddly'. Simply make a card or project that is 'Cute & Cuddly' and be sure to include at least one digital element. Our sponsor this week is Spesch Stamps.

For my card I decided to use this adorable image from Angel's Landing. I thought, nothing looks more cute and cuddly than these little critters. The image is cut out and popped up on dimensionals. The paper is from Prima 'So Cute!'. The sentiment is computer generated, and I used the 'Branches' Cuttlebug Embossing Folder for the background behind the animals. If you'd like to play along with us this week, simply click on the Digital Tuesday Challenge Blinkie in my sidebar and it will take you directly to the Challenge Site with further instructions.

Have a great day! Amy