St Patrick's Day Wine Charms

We've been invited to a St. Patrick's Day party on Saturday night.  I was trying to come up with a homemade hostess gift and decided to make a set of themed wine charms!  I used Grafix Shrink Film , Cricut cartridge Paper Doll Dress Up, earring hoops and jump rings from the jewelry isle at Michael and some beads.

The images will shrink about half size in the oven, so I took at stab and cut them on my Cricut at about 3 inches.  I punched a hole in each prior to baking them and colored them with Sharpie markers (I didn't think colored pencils were going to be vibrant enough).  Placing the cut shapes between parchment paper before placing them in the oven helped prevent them from curling on themselves.  When the shapes came out of the oven I quickly used a spatula to flatten them.

We will give these wine charms and a box of Oh Ryan's Irish Potatoes (made in Pennsylvania, where else?  Ha)

Thought I'd also share the little display in our foyer to celebrate the day.  The same three jars are there most of the year, I just change out the contents for each holiday.  The left jar has spearmint leaves candies, the center shamrock wire garland and the right a few altered ornament balls I coated the insides with glitter.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!!!

Lost Mojo

It's certainly been a while since I've posted anything.  I'm blaming it on my lost crafting mojo.  I lost it.  It's just not there right now.  sigh   I want it back, but I am just stumped at the moment.  In an attempt to find it, I've been blog strolling and just copying other peoples projects.  Talk about a funk.  I don't like this very much.

This weekend we are going to make a trip to Ikea to see about upgrading my smaller expedit shelving unit to the larger size and also grab an add on unit to go on top of the main unit.  Maybe a little spruce up time in my craft room will get me in the mood.  If nothing more, I'll have a clean craft room when I'm finished.

Stay tuned, I feel a resurgence coming soon!

Organization - Paper Storage

My craft room is a 12x12-foot room on the main level of our home.  Granted, the room is box shaped, but it has interesting quirks features to work around.  The door is on an angle and there is a large 8-foot wide bay window across the front of the room.

Like most of us, I'm starting to run out of space in certain areas of my craft room.  I often think that maybe I am not using my space as efficiently as I could be, or maybe there is a better solution that I just haven't found yet.  I'm constantly on Pinterest and other blogs looking to see how people organize their spaces.

Paper is my challenge right now - at least storing it.  I'm constantly adding to my supply, since the company I purchase most of my paper from (as well as most of my stamps, ink, buttons and ribbon) continue to add new colors to their line.
I pretty much use only three different types of solid cardstock: Papertrey Ink's 110 lb weight (for cards and any paper crafts I make that I give away or need a higher weight paper for), the Michael's brand Reflections 60 lb weight (for anything I make with my Cricut as I am not able to get nice, clean, consistent cuts using PTI paper), and a very limited amount of American Crafts textured cardstock I purchased years ago simply because it was 70% off.  It's all just preference, I guess.

For a few years I've been storing my 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of PTI in this Paper Storage Cube System.  I purchased two of them initially and stacked one more section later.  Ideally I'd like to add the additional three sections which I have, but the unit would not be very sturdy if it went any higher (and I am out of floor space to use them as well).  I have my tower currently holding 34 different PTI colors, a space at the top for miscellaneous items, one space towards the bottom holding a Reflections 12 x12 pack (until I find a few home for it), and two open slots to expand for PTI.  Even though this tower is ideal for me, I am going to run out of room quickly!  My lower weight paper did share some space in this tower, but PTI forced them out.  I found these Cropper Hopper 8 1/2 x 11 Paper Holders last week and purchased a few of them (shown in the first photo).  I've decided that anything non-PTI will be stored in these holders, which are then placed in my Ikea Expedite.  This of course leads to another 'problem':  will all this paper overtake the storage I have in my Expedite?  I fell like I'm in a constant live Tetris game with my craft room!

Merry Christmas

This is our little guy, Piper, in front of one of our Christmas trees (we  have two trees).  I was very tempted to add a third tree this year to our foyer, but just didn't get to purchasing the actual tree.

Throughout the year I purchased Christopher Radko Shiny and Bright ornaments (Cool Yule, which are retired) in all different shapes and sizes.  I was even able to find the matching tree topper.  I purchased all of the ornaments from Kathies Christmas and Collectibles at a huge discount.  Highly recommend this store, their shipping is super quick.  In the past our 9 foot 'main tree' in the family room was dedicated to a Disney theme, but Cool Yule took over this year.

Our second tree is 7 feet tall, located in our living room, and is all Santa ornament themed.  In fact, the living room is decorated with nothing but Santas.  I love that both trees are on timers and when we come home they are already lit up for us.  Sigh.  I love the white lights!  Now that I have all decorations for the third tree, I need to work on getting that purchased.  I'll need to find a new home for our mascot "Nutty" who has guarded our foyer for the past few Christmases!  We found this huge nutcracker at Costco a couple years ago.  Couldn't resist him.  Our Costco trips are hysterical:  case of tissues, case of paper towels, case of water, one 6 foot nutcracker.

I found a home for some of the extra mini candy canes I did not use while making my Christmas place card holders.  I filled the apothecary jar on the left with store-bought mini balls in red, white and silver.  The jar on the right is filled with clear balls which I purchased and coated them inside with glitter.  I've made a few dozen of them in all different colors and change them depending on the season.
I wish you a happy holiday season and all the best for 2012!

Hostess Gifts and Christmas Prep

Those who celebrate Christmas are well into their holiday preparations.  Trees are up by now, gifts are bought (I'm almost done) and cookies are being baked.  What a great time of year.  We have been busy since Thanksgiving.  Every weekend we've been invited to a cocktail party.

I try very hard not to bring a typical hostess gift such as a bottle of wine.  First off, I know nothing about wine - so unless I know the hosts favorite bottle, I just give up.  Second, it seems everyone brings wine as a gift.  Some times I just buy multiples of the same gift, but this year they were all different.  Last year, I purchased a few square shaped baskets from Longaberger and filled them with personalized cocktail napkins from The Stationery Studio.   I found people really like personalized things.  I think it shows you put a lot of thought into the gift.

Two examples I gave this year were: Rachael Ray's Olive Oil Bottle (the hostess' kitchen is orange, I was sure to get her a matching bottle) and a good bottle of olive oil from Williams-Somona wrapped nicely in cello.  She just LOVED the gift.  Last night I gave another hostess a "Box of Wine" soap set from Rinse Bath and Body Co.  Cute little take on the standard bottle of wine, I thought.  I purchased the soaps on our last trip to Disney World in October; they have had a booth in EPCOT the last few years at the Food and Wine Festival.  Their soaps smell yummy good!  I look forward to visiting their booth again in May (again at Disney World in EPCOT).

I've started to plan our dinner and think about the menu, place settings, table cloths and place cards.  I attempted something different today with the place cards.  I used 3 mini candy canes to form an easel of sorts to hold the cards.  I made the cards using Papertrey Ink's Places, Please stamp set and their matching die.  I tied mini bows and attached them to the top of the place card holders.  Something different and it was quick and easy.  I have a ton of mini candy canes left over, so I think I'll fill some apothecary jars as decoration.

Thanksgiving Dinner Prep

We are hosting Thanksgiving dinner for a few family members this year.  I love decorating and cooking for Thanksgiving.  The colors we decorate all year round in our house are very similar to fall colors.  I actually find the food we serve for Thanksgiving to be the easiest to cook of all the holidays.  Year after year I go back to Martha Stewart's cheese cloth and wine technique for the turkey.  The side dishes get a little tricky towards the end with the timing, but it all seems to work out just fine!  It's a small group this year, just 7 of us.  I find it doesn't seem to matter if it's 5, 7 or 12 - it's the same about of work....maybe just one or two additional side dishes.


Here is a picture of the dinner place cards I have made.  I use this basic design often and just change up the colors based on the holiday.  This year I decided to make menu cards as well.  I'll place them in the dining room where we eat, on the server and also in the kitchen on our large island for the guests to get a glimpse of what will be served.

The company I work for is closed Thursday and Friday.  I have decided to add to my time off and took Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving!  I'm spending the three days cleaning our house and prepping for Thursday.  Just finished ironing the table cloth!!!!  I scheduled a few annual doctor appointments in there (eye doctor, cats vet appointment) as well.  I figure it's a good time since I'm off work anyway.  I also can not clean for a solid three days, I'll simply lose steam.  For good measure I scheduled a massage appointment for tomorrow morning.  A little treat for myself prior to the feast!

If you live in the US, I wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving.

Christmas Gift Tags & Tin

Today I bring to you, yet again, another altered Tazo Tea tin...surprise!!!  Obsessed?  Maybe... well ok, yes!

This time I'm using them to hold a collection of Christmas gift tags I have created.  I used my Cricut  Very Merry Tags cartridge for the base tag and the reindeer shapes as well as Papertrey Inks 2008 Holiday Tags Collection for the stamping.  On the back of each tag I have stamped 'to' and 'from'.

I covered the tin as usual using holiday patterned paper.  On the top of the tin I used stamps from PTI; Fresh Alphabet to spell out 'tags' and an image from their 2009 anniversary set which coordinates with the Mat Stack 1 die.

I've given this little gift to family members for the upcoming holiday so they will be sure to have enough tags while they are wrapping their gifts.  This tin is actually my own stash.  I like that I can just pull out my tin filled with tags and they are read to go!