Happy New Year

My family and I hope that all of you are having a memorable time celebrating tonight. As we reflect on this past year there is much for us to thank the Lord for. One thing that we are thankful for is for the Lord himself for being our Heavenly Father and providing for our needs according to what He thinks is best. We also thank Him for how He has used the different situations/cicumstances and the wondeful people in our lives to build our character. As we live another year for Him, we pray that God will continue to help us to be a blessing and a light to others as individuals as well as a family. We also pray that He will continue to watch over each of you and bless you in all areas of your life.

We thank the Lord for each of you and look forward to many more happy and memorable times with each of you in 2010. God bless and take care!

Friends, Tags, and Some RAKS

I hope that everyone is doing well and that you are ready for the new year to begin. This week was my second week off from work for Winter Break. I am so grateful for this time off to relax, hang out with my kids, and get together with some friends. Usually during my second week off from work we try to get together with friends to hang out and catch up on things. My family and I had the opportunity to get together with some good friends on Monday and enjoyed some Hawaiian food together. We have plans to get together with some more good friends tonight and enjoyed some delicious dessert from a Cuban bakery.

I have not done much stamping this week besides making this snowman "thank you" card for some friends and a few of my students. It was lots of fun using my scallop square die from Sizzix for the card and using my punches from Stampin Up to make the snowman. The head of the snowman is punched out with one of my big Marvy punches. The background of the card I stamped a snowflake using a versa mark pad. The "thank you" is from a word set fron Stamping Up.

I also made this calendar for a few friends using some of my flower punches. I made a calendar similar to this one a few years ago. I had some CD containers left so decided to make a few more.

I put the calendars in a CD holder so that it could be displayed. You never know you, you may be one of the fortunate people to receive this card and a calendar. :)

Besides my snowmen "thank you" cards I also put together some cards from Zachy and Kylie for them to give to relatives and friends. I purchased a card with some beautiful glittered snowflakes on them and coordinated it with one of the pictures that we took at Disneyland. Zachy wrote this letter that I xeroxed and put into each card. He did very well with sounding out each of the words.

Before ending this post, I wanted to share a few creative items and some RAK. These are the cute handmade tags that were attached to my gifts.

This is a RAK from my friend Pat S. She knows what a big fan I am of Hello Kitty. She surprised me with this cute package of candy that I received in the mail yesterday with a nice note that she decorated with a sticker of a monkey. (She remembers how much I like monkeys too.) Thanks Pat for your friendship and thoughtfulness.


These are the last 3 items that my Christmas Swap Sister sent to me. She gave me a package of decorative border, lace adhesive, and a pink and brown toiletry bag. I love colors. I like the inside of the bag more than the outside. Thanks Jeanne for remembering from my wish list what my favorite color combinations are and how much I like polka dots. I had a great time opening the presents that she gave to me for 12 days in a row and can't wait to get to use all the goodies. Let me know if you are interested in joining some fun swaps like I have.


I hope that you had lots of fun looking at my post for today. Take care!

A Special Christmas Message

Merry Christmas from our hearts to yours. We praise God for each of you and appreciate how He has used each of you to enrich our lives this year. We will forever treasure the times that we have spent with each of you and look forward to many more fun and happy times together with you in 2010 and for years to come. We most importantly praise God for sending Jesus to be born millon years ago so that we can have hope and life through Him. Have a blessed time celebrating Jesus' birthday. Be sure to log on to look at our blog in the next few days to see how we celebrated His birthday today.

The Celebration, Cards, and Goodies Continue

Tomorrow is Christmas. I cannot believe it's here already. My family and I started our celebrating early this year. We first visited a Live Navity on Saturday as I wrote about in an earlier post. Then yesterday we went to Disneyland. Disneyland is always lots of fun, but it was even more magical yesterday with all the Chrismtas lights and decorations. The most spectacular lights were on the castle and on Small World. We went on many rides, but Small World was the best. They added Christmas decorations to the entire ride and Christmas songs too.


The kids also had lots of fun watching the Christmas parade and the fireworks. We defintiely had a magical time celebrating Jesus birthday yesterday. Tomorrow of course is the main celebration that we will be having to celebrate Jesus birthday. We can't wait!
Before I head off to finish my last round of tags and putting gifts into gift bags, I wanted to share some more beautiful hand stamped cards that I received since my last post on Tuesday. The first card is from my once card swap partner Janice. She added a little package of goodies to apologize for the card being so late in being mailed. Thanks for beautiful card and the butterflies.

Here are some more beautiful cards. Aren't they great?

Last but not least is a Christmas RAK that my good friend Kris from Hawaii mailed to me and for the kids. We being good and saving it until tomorrow to open it. We can't wait!


She also sent me a very cute hula monkey ornament and a slider box full of goodies.

Here is an up close picture of the super cute money ornament. She knows how much I love monkeys. Thank you so much Kris for always being such a great friend and for being so generous and thoughtful. Zachy and Kylie says "Thanks" too.

My apologies that this post is not very long. I need to get to work on my tags so I don't have to stay up too late. I am still a bit tired from all the fun we had a Disneyland. Have a great evening preparing for tomorrow. :)

Round Two of Blogging for Today

I'm back again! Wow! Two posts in one day. Are you as surprised as I am? Well, I wanted post a few pictures of what I did today. I took a little break from prepping for Christmas and hung out with my good friend Susanna from church. She received a Big Shot recently from her brother as a birthday present and wanted me to show how to use the dies from different companies. It was lots of fun chatting with her and of course using the Big Shot. Zachy and Kylie were in and out of the room that we were in taking turns helping us die cut different items. They had just as much fun as we did. We die cutted these tags and textured them. Then we added an eyelet and tassel to each one.

We also added texture to this blue piece of cardstock using one of my new textured plates. We dry embossed a flower using the Big Shot and thought it be a good combination to put it the piece of CS that we added texture to.

Last but not least we die cutted and put a Hello Kitty together. She is definitely one complicated cat with so many different parts to cut using different colors. It took some time for us to complete her, but it was lots of fun. The whiskers I think was the most complicated. We thought it would be fun to attach her with dimensionsals onto a tag. We were very pleased with how our tag turned out. What do you think?

Susanna and I surprised each other with a RAK. I gave her the Hello Kitty die that we used as well as some ice coffee. She surprised me with some delcious muffins from Panera.

It's always so much fun surprising each other with different RAK. It is espcially fun getting to take a break from all the business and just relax and craft together. Susanna, I hope that you had just as good of time as I did this afternoon.
After she left I decided to finish up 2 cards that I did not finish at an Iris Folding card class that I attended 2 weeks ago. At the class we did the technique using a Christmas tree template, an angel, and a candle. Since I was on a roll and in the mood to craft today I decided to finish the other two cards- one with a star template and one that is an ornament template. The cards look very complicated to make, but they are a lot easier than you think. (All you need is a template of a shape, lots of tape, and lots of strips of paper.) The technique of Iris Folding makes cards look very elegant as you can see. They are even more elegant and beautiful in person.

I hope that you have enjoyed my two posts for today. Thanks for stopping by to see what I have been up to today.

The Reason for the Season

Greetings everyone! I hope that all of you are doing well as Christmas is quickly approaching. Even though you have been busy wrapping presents, making tags, baking, etc. I hope that you have had time to do some crafting and most importantly reflect on the true reason why Christmas is such a special season. I have not had much time to craft, but have been having lots of fun relfelcting on the true meaning of this season. God gave my family and I the opportunity to attend a "Live Navity" with 35 friends from church at a local church. We felt like we got to witness Jesus birth millons of years ago first hand which definitely helped us to reflect on the true meaning of why we celebrate Christmas. It was great to get to wish Jesus a "Happy Birthday" early. After touring all the scenes for the Navity story we hung out with some our friends and had a snack together. It was lots of fun fellowshipping with them over some yummy food. Besides the hotdogs and chips, one of our friends made chocolate dipped marshmellows rolled in pieces of candy cane or coconut. While the kids were eating the adults took turns shopping at the church craft store. We purchased some wooden snowmen and an wooden angel. When came out and showed our friends what we got several of them went inside to purchase some too.
I have not done much crafting/stamping besides making tags to attach the giftbags. Here are some more beautiful hand stamped Christmas cards that I have received. Of course I have enjoyed all the other cards that I have received even though they are not handstamped.

In a previous post, I wrote that I joined a 12 days of Christmas swap. I got to open gifts 3 to 9 from my swap sisters, Jeanne, so far. (We are asked to open one gift a day. It has been very hard for me to not open all of them.) I have 2 more to go. Here are all the awesome goodies that I have been showered with so far. I can't wait to get to open gift 11 and my final gift on Christmas day. Thanks Jeanne for everything that you have given to me so far.

Before I end for today I wanted to share some exciting news with you. My hubby and my two little ones got me a Cricut for Christmas. It just arrived on Saturday so I have not had time to use it yet. Hopefully before I go back to work after new years I will get a chance to play with it. Stay tune for some cool projects that I created using my Cricut. :)
My friend from church is coming over to learn how to use the Big Shot today. I will share with you the things that we create together. Have a great day!

It's Been Fun, But a Bit Crazy Too

It's been extra crazy with Chrismas being a little more than a week away. My Chirstmas "to do" list seems to be getting longer and longer each year. I have so much to do still that I am not sure where to continue.
I stamped labels for my 46 students at school to put on the packages of Sour Patch Straws that I got for them. They love them so I thought it would be nice to surprise each one of them with a package for Christmas. Along with these packages I also purchase a few other treats for them for our party tomorrow.

This week my family and I received some very nice Chirstmas cards and newsletters. Here are 3 of the beutiful handstamped ones that I have received. It's funny that I received 2 of the same design from two different friends. I appreicate the 3 of you for taking time to make a card for me as well as all our other dear family members and friends that have sent us a card.

Just yesterday I received a package from my 12 Days of Christmas Swap Sister, Jeanne from Ohio. I was supposed to start opening a package each day starting from the 14th of this month and open one each day until Christmas.


Since I received my package 2 days late I got to open 3 of them today. (No worries Jeanne about my package arriving a little late. You have no control of the postal system.) I was a bit too tired to open 2 of them yesterday. Here are the 3 things that I have received. What cool things. I can't wait to open more. Stay tune for the other goodies that Jeanne has surprised me with.

Here are the tags that I traded with my friend Susanna. Along with the tags I also gave her a stamp that says "Hand Stamped With Aloha" with a hibiscus flower next to it. Just like me she loves Hawaiian things.

These are the tags that she made for me along with a some extra goodies. I love the Hawaiian post-its and the cute gingerbread man. He is much too cute to eat. :) Thanks Susanna for the cute cards and the goodies.

Last, but not least I would like to share a keychain that I made for my friend Kandy using one of my two of my dies from Sizzix. I also gave her a giant paperclip with a flower that I made using the scallop punch.


One side of the keychain has a verse on it and the other side has her initial. By the way that designer paper that I used is from SU. I think the paper is retired.
I am going to end this post for now to get starting on some tags and wrapping some kids for my co-workers. I need to get started on Kylie's b-day invitations too. Thanks for making time to look at my blog. I hope that all of you are having a good time preparing for Christmas and will be able to take some time to remember the true meaning of why we celebrate this season. Until next time.

Finally I Have Some Time

Thankfully I did not have much paperwork to do this week so that I could start dig into all the things that I need to do for Christmas. I stayed up on Monday wrapping presents and making tags for them so that they can be mailed first thing in the morning.
Here are the tags that I decided to make for this year. (Those of you who know me... I don't usually wrap my presents. I usually put our gifts into gift bags. Instead I put my personal touch on it by making tags.)

I made this using the ornament punch and 2 of the stamps from the set called Delightful Decorations- both from Stampin Up. I stamped the ornaments, punched them out, and glued 5 of them together to make it 3D.

With this tag I embossed one of the stamps from the retired Stampin Up set Deer Friends and die cutted one of my Sizzix tags. I used one of the circle punches from SU to punch out the embossed image and punched the SU scallop punch using red paper.
I also made a few gift card holders using an embossing folder from Stampin Up and one of the level 2 hostess sets that coordinates really well with the folder.

This is a card that I made for the Sunday School meeting that we will be having. We are having a gift exchange. We are asked to give some thing that is no more than
$1. I decided to to make a card with a little pocket in it an put a $1 in it. Am I creative or what? :) The background of the card is a die from SU that is a textured die. It is like the texture of wood. I chose the texture to match with the stamp of Baby Jesus.


Before ending this post I would like to share a few RAKS that I have recieved so far for Christmas.
Here are some goodies that I received from one of the presschoolers, Ryan, in the Sunday School class that I serve in as well as a bag of goodies from my good frined from chruch, Susanna. Thanks Ryan and Susanna for surprising me with the homemade goodies.

This is from my friend Michelle. She knows how much I like Hello Kitty and Hawaiian things. The Hello Kitty towel is very cute and in my favorite colors too. The plumeria candles are much too pretty to use. Thank you so much Michelle for my Christmas RAK. I love it all.


My friend Cookie made this slider card for me. Thank you so much Cookie for taking time to make me such a beautiful card. Cookie, I feel very blessed to have you as a friend too. :)


Receiving these goodies truly warms my heart.

Our Chrismas Tree

Yes, our Christmas tree is finally decorated. We usually put up the day after Thanksgiving, but just did not have the time or energy to do it. My hubby put the lights up outside and put our wreaths up, but our tree was not put up until this week on Tuesday. Our kids helped Benson hang the lights. Kylie is using her magic wand to help her daddy out while Zach is holding onto to the chair for her to make sure it does not tip over.

The ornaments were not put on unitl today. Majoirity of the ornaments are Hawaiian ones. Each of us have one ornament for each year. The ones that the kids pick are usually of things that they are interested in for that year. Kylie's ornament is her favorite princess. She also got a Tinker Bell one for her too. Zachy picked out a "Buzz Light Year One. We are still trying to find him a "Transformer" ornament since he likes them so much.