Invitations and Cards

Today I also wanted to share with you just a couple of cards I've made recently for friends and family. Both of these were made with the Creative Memories sbcStudio software.

We had a surprise birthday party for my mother-in-law last month, and I was asked to create the invitation. Here's what I came up with:

Then a friend asked me to create a Christmas card for her and her husband with a photo of them. Here is the Christmas card. They had their own photo in the spot and their names in the place of 'Me and Mine'.

What do you think? Do you enjoy making cards for other?

Decorating for Christmas

I finally found a little time to do some decorating around the house for Christmas!! I picked up some garland and pine cone sticks from Wal-Mart to put together and put above our cabinets in the kitchen.

Then I set out a little bit of my north pole village! I still have a few more of it to put out tonight.

And finally our Christmas tree! Like last year, we went looking for our tree near our house instead of buying one from a farm or getting a fake one from a store. I really like the one we got this year!!

I do have one fake tree, and I put it outside with lights on it! I think it looks so cute!!

Well, that's all the decorations I have for right now. What does your Christmas decor look like?

December Desktop Calendar

I finally have the desktop calendar for you! Yay! Download it here!
Enjoy your December!!

The Goings On of Life

Sorry I haven't been around lately! November means the beginning of many birthday celebrations, holidays are soon arriving, and a lot of church events are getting ready to happen! So here's what's been going on at our place! : )

I'm helping out with a Chrysalis Flight this coming weekend. If you've never heard of Chrysalis, you should definitely check it out! I've been to a few trainings over the past couple of weekends, and now we are ready for the flight!

The husband's birthday is this Wednesday so this past weekend we went to Academy and bought him a meat grinder. He's been wanting one for a while, so we finally got one. And wow. Who knew grinding up deer meat could be so not fun! I had a pretty good idea I wasn't going to enjoy it, and after last night, I am now certain I do not like it.... But at least we now have a lot of deer meat to eat!

I've also been working on a few photos that I took - well, photos that I, my mom, my younger sister, and the husband took! We like our photo sessions to be a family event! : )

And, yes, that is me...

in my wedding dress...

a year after the wedding....

I can't help it if I like to play dress up in my wedding dress....

Enjoy the rest of your day!!

My New Dishwasher!!

So here is the story of my new dishwasher:

It's Wednesday evening, and I have a pile of dirty dishes from making homemade ice cream and trying to make a pumpkin pie. The reason I have so many dirty dishes is because our dishwasher isn't the best there is out there. I think most, if not all, dishwashers now days have two rotating sprayers (is that what they are called?). One on the bottom and the other below the top rack. Well, ours didn't have both. Ours had the one on the bottom, and that one didn't even turn. So I had to practically wash the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. Even after I had rinsed all food off the plates and rinsed all the cups before putting them in the dishwasher, they would still come out with food on them or spots on them as if the soap didn't get rinsed off very well. So I would have to wash them a second time. Plus, a few of the wheels were missing.

On top of all that, if you didn't know already, I'm not too fond of my job and have been looking for other work, and today was just one of those days where I didn't like my job more than other days. So I decide to give myself a pity party. I'm standing there in the kitchen full of dirty dishes, crying because in a round about way 'my life is so terrible because I don't like my job and my dishwasher stinks' (using my best sarcastic very over-dramatic voice). Sometimes you just need a good cry over silly things.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am very thankful for having a job at all. I know during this time a lot of people are worse off than me. And I am thankful for a dishwasher. I really don't like to have to stand there and wash dishes. I have and I will, but I am thankful that I don't have to. So my wonderful husband tells me to stop what I'm doing and get in the truck. We are going for a drive. I'm thinking we are just going to drive around, get me out of the house so I can calm down. We drive into town and stop at Lowe's. I think he must have to pick up something at work. I follow him to the back of the store and we stop at the dishwashers.

He asks me which one would I like. I tell him that we don't need a new one; I can deal with the one we have. He persists, so I begin to tell him what I would like to have. I would like to have one that has two rotating sprayers - one on the top and one on the bottom. Other than that it doesn't really matter. He keeps on, "Which one of these do you want? We are taking a dishwasher home tonight."

Then I begin to freak out. What?! Really?! A new dishwasher?!
So here it is!

And, yes, that is the pumpkin pie that I finally got done sitting on the counter above the dishwasher!!

I need to work on making the pie crust, but Mr. McCann says it was good! : )

November Desktop Calendar

It took a few days, but here is the downloadable calendar for your desktop! Click here to download it to your computer. Enjoy!

Christmas Tags

Well, just a short update here: we didn't get the pumpkin pie done last night. A new dishwasher got in the way (which is a story for another day) so hopefully the pie will get made tonight!

Now for the Christmas word art I told you I was going to work on yesterday. Here are a few things I made yesterday.

And then I thought, "Christmas tags!" The Christmas season will be here before you know it, and we all need Christmas tags for our presents! So here are a few:

Creative Memories has a tag maker that punches out tags. I created these to print out to be the size of the tag maker. So now all I have to do is print them out on cardstock paper so they'll be nice and sturdy. Then I'll take my CM Tag Maker to punch them out, and I'll have some cute Christmas tags for my presents!

Enjoy!!

Ice Cream and Buttons

Ragan has been bothering asking me to make some homemade ice cream for quite a while now. So we finally did last night.

We had a bit of trouble figuring out some parts of the recipe. I'm sure my mom got tired of hearing her phone say, "Call from Jamie McCann. Call from Jamie McCann." every 10 minutes! But we finally got the recipe figured out and found all the pieces of the ice cream maker... : )

The ice cream got done a lot quicker than we expected! But it's done and in the freezer and tastes very good!! Ragan and I were both pretty proud of ourselves for making our first batch of homemade ice cream! I just wish we had taken a video of the whole process and the mess that it left behind.... : )

Tonight will be pumpkin pie!


Now for the buttons I made yesterday! I think these turned out very cute. They are also part of this word art stuff I've been doing lately. Whatcha think? These would look great on the sidebar of a blog! Let me know if you would like one!

I think today I'll work on some Christmas word art....

Enjoy!!

Word Art

Can you believe it's November already?! 2012 will be here before we know it!

So I've been looking at Pinterest lately (ok, a lot), and I've been seeing a lot of word art. I guess you could call it that. Things like this:

Source: ny-image2.etsy.com via Sarah on Pinterest

Or this:

Source: growinginjesusthroughhisword.blogspot.com via Lacey on Pinterest

So I decided to try my own! I'm using the Creative Memories content to make these. 

These phrases are taken from a book I got at a Hallmark store. It's called Faith Notes: 100 Heavenly Ways to Say "I Care". It's actually a book of sticky notes, like post it notes. You can tear the page out and stick it wherever you want! Very neat book!

Enjoy!

Made it Myself Mondays: Week 21

This weekend I finished a project I had sitting in our back room for quite a while. 

I painted a ceiling tile to use as a bulletin board to pin notes and cards and things. I used my Cricut Expression to cut out a stencil for the words and flowers. I can't decide if I like the flowers in front of the words, or if I need to go back and paint over the flowers so you can read what it says... hmm... What do you think?
Now all that I have left to do is find something to glue to the back so I can hang it up!

Ragan's Creation

Ragan came home last night so excited! He had created something!

He started with a block similar to this one.

And ended with this:

A duck call!!

Well, almost a duck call. He's not quite finished with it yet. The part that goes in the center isn't there yet. But isn't it beautiful?! I love it!!

So anyone looking for some new duck calls for this coming up hunting season?? : )