A Year in Review - 2008

I thought it would be fun to go through the past year and remember the moments that defined 2008 for my family. We'll be going to a New Year's Eve party tonight which will be fun since we're usually home bodies on New Year's. Let's begin!

2008 was a year of sad goodbyes:

Darren - the most fearless snowboarder I knew and a darn good botanist

Noel - the sweetest little dog I've ever had the pleasure of knowing

Zoe - A rambunctious ball of fur that I miss terribly

But it was also a time for having fun with friends, reconnecting with old friends, and welcoming a new little one into the world:

Amy, me, and Tiffany (I MISS you guys - Love You both!)

Sedona and I with Kerry

Halloween at Kerry's house - Ana, Kerry with Kassidy, me, and Jackie

Welcome, Sunshine (aka, Kassidy)

It was a time to celebrate:

My 30th Birthday with wonderful friends

Travis' 40th Birthday (looking better than ever, hun!)

Our 5th Wedding Anniversary

It was a time to meet new friends:

Patti and I - We need to go out shopping again, Patti!

Q, Tim Holtz, and me - I miss you, Q! What a blast we had!

Ana - the cutest SU demonstrator I know!

It was a time for adventure:

I became a SU demonstrator!

I enjoyed the wonderful outdoors with my biggest girl

I shopped till I dropped during the Great Northwest Paper Chase! 18 scrap stores in 3 days - now THAT'S an adventure!

It was a time to create:

But best of all, 2008 was a year to spend together. Love you, hun!

May 2009 be the best year yet!

Christmas Review

I hope everyone enjoyed a very holly-jolly Christmas last week! I know I certainly did. When I walked into the living room Christmas morning, this is what I was greeted with:

That bike with the big red bow is mine! My parents gave me a mountain bike for Christmas, and I just had the opportunity to take her out for a spin yesterday. She's a smooth ride! The other bike you see is my dads gift to my mom. Now we can go riding together! That cute little pink tricycle in the foreground went to this cute little girl, my cousin:

Here are a few shots of some of my favorite ornaments on the tree. Every year, we get a Hallmark ornament with that year on it. This is my pick for the season:

Our tree is decorated with a lot of handmade ornaments from my grandma who passed away last year. They're very special to us.

Finally, here's our nativity scene:

We had a great time opening all of our presents. I scored a ScorPal and a bunch of stamps and other crafting parapernalia. All the critters made out nicely, too. I think the cats had more fun with the ribbon and the wrapping paper than they did with anything else (although they really love their new mice)!

The biggest girl got tons of stuff this year! She made out better than all of us. She nearly flipped when she saw her Christmas bone. I had to hide it in the car until morning time otherwise we probably would have found her chewing on it when we got up!

Saturday was a busy day since I was the Maid of Honor at my friend's surprise re-wedding! Yup, you read that right. Her very sweet husband planned a surprise wedding for her since they were unable to do the whole traditional ceremony originally. He went all out. He picked out her wedding dress which was just beautiful. He rented tuxedos for all the guys. He had his sister-in-law make the flower arrangements. He even booked a trip out to New York for her to see Phantom of the Opera on Broadway! Now that's love, I tell ya. She had no idea what was going on until he pulled in the parking lot, got down on one knee, and proposed to her again. It was so sweet! The fact that he pulled this off and kept it a secret for the past FIVE months is incredible! The fact I was able to keep it from her for that long was amazing! Here we are outside the church waiting for the happy couple to arrive (and dang was it cold out there):

The ceremony was so lovely! Her sister-in-law did a great job decorating the archway, and the church was still decked out from Christmas.

After the wedding, we all went back to their house for a big reception. We had so much fun! Happy Anniversary, you two :)

Well, it looks like I have some creating to do now that I have new stuff to play with! I just finished a major organization project that I'm going to share with you sometime this week. Tomorrow, I'm heading over to (drum roll, please) THE CONTAINER STORE! WOO-HOO! Heaven, here I come...

(PS - Leah from Life as Lou is having a great Cosmot Cricket give-a-way! Click HERE to go straight to her post.)

Merry Christmas!

I think I'm finally getting over that nasty little bug. I was down for the count for the past several days; hence, my lack of blogging. I want to wish you all a wonderful Christmas and share with you the last of the Christmas cards that I made. Now, if you're a relative or a friend reading this post, you must know that I did not send out any of my Christmas cards this year. I made them, I just didn't quite get them in the mail. Sorry! So if you're not feeling the love from us right now, don't be offended. I was just way too sick this year.

This first card was inspired by one that I saw on the Hero Arts blog. I {heart} their design team and their stamps!! Have you seen their new 2009 collection? LOVE IT!!

Speaking of Hero Arts, I got a little surprise from them last week. Check it by clicking HERE!

My next card was also inspired by a card I saw on the Hero Arts blog. It's nice and simple and way too cute!

Lastly, I made these next cards using PaperTrey Ink's "Boards and Beams" and "Home for the Holidays" sets. I must say that I didn't really think I'd like these two stamps sets, but after using them, I have no more doubt. They're great!

Despite feeling like pooh, we still went out on Saturday and got ourselves a really beautiful Noble Fir (at a great price, no less). This was the first time that I used the FuzzMobile to haul anything on the roof! I had to take pictures.

We set the tree in the stand and I took some more pictures. I really like that there's still some snow on the ground.

We got quite a bit of snow here last week, more than I've ever seen the desert get. It was truly a winter wonderland around here for a few days. Sedona l-o-v-e-d it! Crazy girl tried to catch snow in her mouth when it was falling, and when she realized she couldn't get as much as she wanted, she went straight for the stuff on the ground!

It's time for me to go nite-nite and wait for Santa to come (*wink*). I hope you all have a blessed Christmas day with your families!

Just Plum Sick

It's official - I've caught myself a lovely little cold, and it looks like it will be staying a while. I thought it was just a quick 24-hour bug that got hold of my throat, but as the day progressed, I started feeling worse and worse. I guess it's a good thing I'm getting the whole cold thing out of the way before Christmas. I'd hate to have a drippy nose while opening up presents!

Before I show you the rest of my goodies from my Stampin' Up demo party, I want to share with you the CUTEST blog that my friend shared with me today. It's called Zooborns and they have up-to-date information on all the zoo babies born around the world! How cool is that? Best of all, today's entry featured a new addition to the Berlin zoo - a baby HIPPO! If you have a chance, you must click on the link to see the new two-week old calf. She's such a doll! Oh, and don't forget to watch the video of her and her mom just relaxing under the water. It just melts my heart!

Now onto the goodies! Here's a beautiful ornament that our hostesses made for all us downlines. I can't wait to hang it on our tree (once we get one this weekend...hopefully).

As if the ornament wasn't enough, they also made us these adorable marshmellow snowmen in a cup with yet another lovely ornament!

This was the winner of the cookie bag decorating contest. Cute, right?!

Everyone got this lovely card from Cynthia (thanks!). I can't believe I don't have this stamp set yet!

Finally, this is what I got from my secret santa. She knitted me a really pretty pink scarf and included some handmade gift card holders.


Hey, here's a story for ya - As sick as I was today, I absolutely had to go to the post office to mail out my Christmas gifts. The line was long, but not horrible. I think I waited a total of 25 minutes which was what I was expecting. Anyway, the wait wouldn't have been so bad had the couple behind me NOT BEEN MAKING OUT IN LINE. Is no place sacred anymore? Seriously. These were two young adults who should have known better. All you could hear throughout the office was their lip-smacking, and to make things even more gross, the guy was as sick as I was! ICK! You know, when I went to Disneyland last month with my friend, we saw kids making out all over the place. This one guy even LICKED (oh yeah, we're talking full-on tongue action) his girlfriend/wife/whatever in the Indiana Jones line. So, I say unto thee, readers of my blog, please refrain from making out and licking your partner in public. It's just wrong. Pecks, hand-holding, and hugging are all acceptable forms of public affection in my oh-so prudish opinion.

Alrighty then, after telling that story, I need to go shower! The hot water should help my sinuses at least. I hope (operative word here being *hope*) to be back tomorrow to share the Christmas cards I made two weeks ago. We'll see if I feel like getting out of bed. Later!

Winter Wonderland

Happy winter, everyone! Okay, I know winter doesn't officially start until this Sunday, but you could have fooled me! It has been snowing here for the past 8 hours and it hasn't let up one bit. I can say with certainty that this is the most snowfall we've received here in the last ten years. It was so nice to be greeted with such a beautiful scene. Here's what it looked like in the backyard around 10 am:

And here's what it looks like now (around 4:00 pm):

The front of the house looks spectacular!

I braved the cold just to get this shot (and to grab the mail real quick). I probably should have stayed inside since I'm sick. Yup. I caught myself some type of bug. I just hope it goes away soon.

Since I haven't blogged in a few days, I have quite a bit to share with all of you! I know I always say this, but life has just been seriously busy. We were out of town this weekend, and then I went to my Stampin' Up demo Christmas party Monday night. I was prepping for the party all day Monday, but it was well worth the time and effort because the party was a blast! I spent most of Monday morning making these tags for our cookie exhchange bags. I used my Cricut to cut out the tags. The stamp is from Papertrey Ink, and all the ribbon is from the dollar bin at Michaels. Gotta love those dollar deals!

I spent the rest of my day making this necklace and earring set for my secret santa who just happened to be my good friend, Ana. Boy was it hard keeping that secret from her! She wanted to know right away who my secret santa was, so I had to fib just a little. It was for a good cause!

I used freshwater pearls, Toho seed beads, and Swarovski crystals for this project. All the silver components are sterling. The pictures just don't do the color or the sparkle justice.

These next pictures are from the party itself. Maria, one of our hostesses, had her house all decked out in beautiful holiday decor. Every room was very festive and inviting. The projects that everyone brought to share were amazing! The cookie exchange packages really blew my mind, and the secret santa gifts were all so beautifully handcrafted. Oh, and the food! Talk about some yummy stuff. I think I ate more than I should have :)

Here are some goodies that our hostesses made for us (close-up coming tomorrow!).

The rest of the pictures are of the cookie exchange packages.

Well, I'm totally pooped out, so I'll share more with you tomorrow. Have a great night!