Christmas Traditions

Happy Monday!!!  Yep - my favorite day of the week is here once again :)  I gotta say, though - today I am a TOTAL waste of makeup!  I'm sooooo tired!  I realize I'm a bit of an over achiever AND a bit of a perfectionist but I like doing things for others and I like doing them well soooooo that naturally resulted in me gettingup at 5:15 am Sunday morning!  The cat woke me up around 4:00 am and then my husband ketp me awake with his snoring so after an hour of thinking about all the things I had to do I figure I should just get up and DO them ... so I did!  I got so many little but very time consuming things done!  You know the things I'm talkin' about ... finding the bills ... seeing which ones need paying ... which ones HAVE been paid ... which ones are now overdue ... oops!  Then finding the cheque book, seeing if there is any money TO pay the bills and then paying them.  Cross referencing the credit card bill with the 6,000,000 receipts that have accumulated in the last 30 days of Christmas spending ... paying the bills ... filing the bills ... and then wondering how many air miles I just racked up ... so checking the air miles balance ... and then seeing what I can GET with that air miles balance ... and then figuring I need to spend about another $80,000 MORE on Christmas presents before I can earn enough air miles to even get out of the PROVINCE!  That little project took the better part of 2 hours.  I did another 2 hours of Stampin' Up! paperwork (thanks to the AWESOME Clearance Rack sale that is now going on!!) and then it was a blur of cleaning, sorting, washing, tyding, purging and crafting.  I thought I should take a nap ... but what about dinner?  Soup and sandwiches - seems simple enough but of course I couldn't just open a CAN of soup - oh no ... I decided to cook up the left over chicken and bones and make home-made chicken noodle soup.  Nap time?  Nope - I promised the girls that we would decorate the door so we did that.  (Every year we warp up our basement and bathroom doors to look like presents.  I remember doing this in Elementary School and loved it so it is now an annual tradition around here.)  After dinner I did a bit of crafting and before I knew it 9:00 pm had rolled around.  It took me a usrprisingly long time to fall asleep given how hard I went all day - I guess it just took a little longer to wind down.  I LOVE this time of year.  Yes, it is CRAZY busy but I LOVE that because the craziness is all fun stuff!  Making Christmas cards, shopping for presents for others, wrapping, baking, making teacher gifts and little things to give away ... not because I HAVE to but because I WANT to!  So many of us don't have time to do the "little" things for others that they are so thrilled and appreciative when someone does something nice or gives them a little something that it just makes my heart smile :)  Yes, it means that I wake up at 4:00 am and can't get back to sleep but it's for a good reason and so I don't mind at all.

Right - blah, blah, blah ... wanna see a project or two?  I now only have 6 minutes before I have to go get the girls so I better crack on!
Here is my FAVORITE craft I made this year.  Every year I makes a special ornament for my girls with the year I made it.  My plan is to give them a box of all these special ornaments when they move out and set up their own homes.  They will have a tree filled with special keepsakes made by me or by them WITH me.  I thought the little snowman ornaments would be this years' contribution but then I stumbled across these cuties:

Aren't they fantastic??!!  You may recall my "Glitter Balls" ( check my tutorial back in October, 2011).  They were made using re-inkers.  These ones were made using "Pledge" Finish ... yep, the one for floors!  Trish Miles, fellow demonstrator had shown us how to do these at our group meeting in December.  I had heard of using the Pledge but hadn't tried it yet.  Trish said the Pledge gave better results than the re-inkers so I had to try it.  My first batch gave me terrible results - but I realize now it was because I didn't have enough glitter on hand.  A quick run to my local craft store fixed that problem and then yes, I got great results.  You do the same think with the Pledge that you do with the re-inkers but a) it isn't as messy as the Pledge is clear, not colored like the re-inkers b) it doesn't take as long as the Pledge isn't as thick as the re-inkers and c) it costs a lot less than the reinkers (the bottle which will last me about 56 years and 10,000 glitter balls!) was $6.50'ish.  I used the black satin ribbon for the belt, the 1 1/4" square punch for the silver glimmer buckle and then used an exacto knife to cut slits in the glimmer paper to feed the ribbon through.  I used sticky strip to attach the ribbon to the ball.  I used the "eyes" from the owl punch for the buttons and stuck them on with mini glue dots.  Soooo quick and easy ... and beautiful!  I can't decide which balls I like better - the flat front ones or the all-round ones.  Either way I love them, the girls love them and they will be a great addition to their boxes.

Right - school is out in 7 minutes - I was hoping to post another project but .... now you'll just have to come back ..

Have a fun day :)

Tam