Heavy Heart & A New Road

Hey everyone! I am here today with a heavy heart and I will tell you why. We have resigned at our church after 5 yrs., we are not leaving because of any problem, we just feel the Lord is moving us, to bring someone else there to reach the community and grow the church. We have been there 5 yrs and the Lord grew it spirit and numbers. When we first started, there was 7 people there and it grew to over 100 every Sunday! That is alot for a little country church and a town that is not big at all! We have seen so many AMAZING things there in 5 yrs. and we will NEVER forget it! But about 1 1/2 yr, we have noticed a drop in numbers, we have tried to reach the community, but most don't want to hear. We are not from there, so they don't know us and I don't think they want to! So we feel God, is going to bring someone there, that can reach them.
This was a very hard decision to make, but after LOTS of prayer, we know that it is the right one! We are not going to pastor another church right now, we will just visit around and try to find a church to attend for now. You never know what God has for you, all we can do is believe in Him and let Him lead us, and that's what we plan to do! I'm not going to lie, it will be hard for awhile, but He will see us through it!
Our church family was very upset to hear we were leaving, but they trust that our decision was from the Lord. They had us a going away dinner last night, it was great! Bitter sweet...but great!
So please pray for our family and the new road we are about to go down. And please pray for our church family, that they don't lose heart and pray that the Lord will send the right person to pastor there. Thank You all for listening and for any prayers you can give.


I don't have a card to share today, but please come back tomorrow. I have a project that I have been working really hard on, the last couple of month's! I can't wait! :)

Have a very Blessed day & be safe tonight!

Everything But The Kitchen Sink Challenge #6

Good morning! It's time again for another around the house challenge. This week's idea is from Ann, her idea is to use wrapping paper. You can use any type of wrapping paper goods, paper, tissue paper, bows, etc. . I know you all have some of that laying around after Christmas! :)I chose to use wrapping paper. I was cleaning off my craft table, and I found a die cut flower. As I started looking at it, I could see the petals made hearts! So I cut some wrapping paper flowers using my flower die. I cut some small and large flowers. Then I trimmed them to make hearts.

Here is my card, with the wrapping paper hearts! :) I hope you can join us in the challenge. Ann is giving away a $25.00 gift certificate to Verve Stamps to the winner! You have from today until Jan. 8 at midnight CST to make a card, scrapbook page, or altered item and link it to Mr. Linky at the EBTKS blog!

Please check out the other ladies cards too!

Ann

Courtney

Kelley

Kelly Marie

Lynnette

{I Love You So Much card}

Cardstock- (PTI) raspberry fizz, (Recollections) Aqua

Stamps- (PTI) polka dot basics II, Signature Greetings

Ink-(Versamark) watermark

Ribbon- (Offray) white satin ribbon

Other- (Ranger) black embossing powder, Sizzix flower die, wrapping paper

Have a Blessed day!

EBTKS Sketch 2 Challenge Winner

Good morning! Thank You all for participating in the sketch challenge. I know that it was very busy with the Christmas season, so thank you for playing! And the Winner is......

Teresa Kline! And the 2 Domestic Divas are TravelingMama & Paloma Gomez! Congrats ladies! :)

We will have another EBTKS Household Item Challenge coming up on Wednesday! :)

Have a Blessed day!

Last Minute Christmas Gifts

Hey everyone! I hope you all had a very Blessed Christmas! I wanted to share some last minute gifts that I made over the past couple of weeks. Sorry that some of the pictures are bad, we have had weird weather and I had to take some of the pics at weird hours to even get pictures of them!
Here are the rest of the teacher's gifts I made. I ended up making 6 sets, but four of them, didn't have calendars. I ran out of time! Autumn received a card in the mail from one of her teachers, telling her thank you for the set and she already made a grocery list using her notepad. She also said, she loved her clips and was going to add magnets to them to put on the fridge! I love when people like their gifts! :) Here are the gifts for the kids in Chace's class and Autumn's friends, I made 30 of them. It has a package of hot chocolate, a bag of marshmallows, a candy cane, and a chocolate covered spoon for stirring. They really loved the spoons! (Thanks to Chance, he made them while I worked on the other gifts.) They were eating them when I got there for the party. :) I made these little Holiday planner books, to go along with the cards I made for my family.

I found a great idea from Nicole Heady's blog, it was a Birthday Reminder Book. I made one for my Mom and my MIL along with some clips and B-day cards. They both have a couple of grandsons, so I made a couple boy cards too.

It can even hold the card's in the envelope's on the back of the month cards. Go check out her post about it, they are really neat. I think I'll make myself one! :)I made some fire starters for my Mom and a good friend of mine. It makes it easier for them to start fires in their fireplaces. I made them out of candle wax and saw dust and wrapped them in tissue paper. They smell really good! I made some gift card holders, to hold gift cards to our favorite restaurant, for a couple of people. I found the idea for the gift card holders from Jennifer McGuire on the Hero Arts Blog. I will have to use this idea again! My friend loves the movie 'Elf', I knew when I saw this rub-on, I had to use it for her card. And lastly, I made these cute little headbands for my nieces. I found the pattern over at Heather Bailey's Blog. I made Autumn one, but I will have to make some more for both of us. Well, I guess that's it. I wanted to try and get all the Christmas gifts I made posted, because I have lots of stuff coming up on my blog. So stay tuned! :)
If you have any questions about supplies, just let me know. Too lazy to post them all! :)

Have a very Blessed day!

Happy Birthday Jesus

Merry Christmas! I wanted to start off with a pic of our family tradition. Baking Jesus a birthday cake and singing Him Happy Birthday! We started this tradition about 9 or 10 yrs. ago and we have done it every year since. (Warning: never use sparklers on a cake! We couldn't find any candles and so we used this sparkler, needless to say, we had to scrap all the cool whip off and add more. It left little pieces of ash or something on it!) :)
Some other traditions that we do, is go to Church for our candle lite service, but this year we had it on Wednesday night instead. That is my favorite service of the year! Then for Christmas Eve we read 'The Night Before Christmas' & 'The Christmas Story of Jesus' at my MIL, before we open presents. Here they are taking turns reading 'The Night Before Christmas', and then Chace read all of 'The Christmas Story'. Then we go home and get cookies ready for Santa, (but last night we left him Apple pie, that's Chace's favorite!) :)
We had Christmas at our house this year, Chance's Mom, step dad, and brother came over for dinner. We had a 'real Texas Dinner'! We had fried fish, shrimp, and gator, and some side dishes. It was really good, and I'm so glad Chance likes to cook!
Here are some pictures of the table and my last minute place cards. Chance's favorite Christmas movie is 'The Christmas Story' with Ralphy, I bought these name tags last year on clearance at WalMart. I found them last night in my stash and decided to make some place cards. Very simple, but I like them. I also made the napkins and napkin ties for Thanksgiving, I figured why not use them again.
He even has a shirt with this picture on it, but for some reason, we couldn't find it anywhere in the closet! ?

The kids got lots of gifts, they have been playing all day! I love staying home on Christmas, that way they can play with their new toys, or get in PJ's if they want to! :)
Chance and I usually don't get each other alot of presents. But this year I got him a couple and he got me quite a few. He got me a houndstooth snuggie :), a new machine that you run your pictures through it and it reads it onto a SD card (it's great for all the old photos before there was digital), a new cord for my laptop (the old one is all messed up), and more memory for my laptop too (because my computer is pretty slow)! He was wanting to get me the Photo Shop CS4 but he was unsure if that was the right program. But, I think he got me plenty already, he is too good to me! :) We got Autumn her first 'real' make up kit. I'm not to fond of her wearing makeup, but I know she is growing up, so I figured it's better to start teaching her how to wear it before she goes out of the house with it on! Here is Chace with his new DVD player, he was really excited getting this, he always wants to watch something different than us.

Merry Christmas from 'The Sims Family'!

EDITED: Only a couple of hours left to play in the EBTKS Sketch Challenge!

Happy Birthday Jesus!
Have a very Blessed Christmas!

More Christmas Cards

Hey everybody! How was your weekend? Mine has been pretty busy. We had a Christmas get together with family on Saturday and I have been working on last minute Christmas gifts. I will show those later. I have a few more Christmas cards to share. I made these for the recent PC Card Creation calls, these weren't chosen, so I ended up giving them away as Christmas cards. I did have 3 cards excepted for PC's Card Creations and 2 for CARDS! :) Thank you for all the encouragement and compliments, each and everyone of you gives me! It means alot to me! I also wanted to remind everyone of the Sketch Challenge going on over at Everything But The Kitchen Sink Blog. I know everyone is really busy with Christmas preparations, but this would be a great sketch for a last minute Christmas card, Thank You card, or For A Gracious Hostess card! :) I hope you all can play along!

Oh, and my card for the 10 min. card challenge, had a shout out from Jessica Witty today on her blog! Thanks Jessica! :)

I wanted to leave you with a picture today, that my sister sent me her Christmas card! I'm starting to wonder if my family is 'Twisted'! Staging these scenes of our kids! :) But I really LOVE the picture, I can't help but laugh everytime I see it! :) If you only knew how those two twins were, I would have thought they would have their older sister wrapped up in lights! :)

I hope all of you Christmas preparations are going well!

Supplies:
{Just a Little Christmas Note Card}
Cardstock- (PTI) pure poppy
Patterned paper- (PTI) try before you buy papers
Stamp- (PTI) Signature Christmas
Ink- (Versamark) watermark
Other- (Filligree) white embossing powder, (Hobby Lobby) white wooden snowflake, (Studio 18) red rhinestone

{Joy To The World Card}
Cardstock- (Georgia Pacific) white
Patterned paper- (PTI) try before you buy papers
Stamp- (PTI) Signature Christmas
Ink- (PTI) ocean tides
Other- (Hobby Lobby) white wooden snowflake, (Studio 18) silver rhinestone


Have a Blessed day!

10-Minute-Scrap-Pile-Challenge

Hey everybody! Well I finally finished the school gifts last night! I'll post those pics tomorrow. But today I wanted to share a little challenge that I found over at Jessica Witty's blog. I made the card a little over a week ago and it was ready to post and everything, but I really had NO time last week or this week to post it! Like me, Jessica doesn't throw away scraps, so she came up with a little challenge to make a card in 10 minutes using scraps. That was right up my alley! :) You all know, that I LOVE PTI try before you buy papers. And I had these laying around already stamped with this new couch stamp set. I won it in September over at my very first PTI blog hop! :) I LOVE the new set. So here is what I came up with this in 10 minutes.
Don't forget to play along with us in the Everything But The Kitchen Sink Challenge. A GREAT prize is up for grabs! :)

Supplies:
Cardstock- (Georgia Pacific) white, (Paper reflections) black
Patterned paper- (PTI) try before you buy papers- holiday vintage prints
Stamps- (PTI) On my couch
Ink- (StazOn) jet black

Have a Blessed night!

Embellish Color Challenge With Snowflakes

Hey everybody! I'm still busy with teacher's Christmas gifts, but I had to play along in the Embellish Challenge! I LOVE these colors! I think it is now one of my favorite color combos! Did I tell ya'll how much I LOVED these colors?! :) We are supposed to use yellow, brown, light blue and craft colors and snowflakes. So I created a tag and then decided, that I would do a whole set using these colors. I made another set like the one from yesterday, and I plan on making three more sets tonight, if I don't run out of time. I still have to put together the kids' classroom and friends gifts, but they are going to help me with those, so we might get done! :) Well I better get back to making gifts!


The tag.

The clip-its, I found at Mish's blog.
The grocery list notepad.The 2010 desk calendar. I found the instructions here.The whole set all wrapped up.Supplies:
Cardstock- (Recollections) light aqua, yellow, kraft (Georgia Pacific) white
Stamp- (PTI) polka dot basics II, signature Christmas, take note, (WalMart) holiday snowflake stamp
Ink- (Versamark) watermark, (SU!) close to cocoa, (PTI) spring rain
Other- (Offray) white & brown ribbon, (Hobby Lobby) white wooden snowflake, (Studio 18) rhinestone, (Sizzix) flower die, (WalMart) twine & clothes pins, (Filligree) white embossing powder, (WalMart) note pads, buttons- (PTI) & from stash, (Fiskars) threading water punch

Have a Blessed day!

Raspberry Suite Color Challenge #20

Hey everybody! It's time for another Raspberry Suite Color Challenge. I have never missed one of these challenges, and I didn't want to start now. I have been really busy with teacher's gifts, so for in order for me to play in the challenge, I had to make something to use as a gift. Teachers usually get something related to being a teacher, so I decide this year, I would make something 'non teacher-y'. I wanted them to be able to use something at home. I made the tag, "Christmas-y', but the other gifts are for any day. I found the idea for the clip-its from the very talented Mish! She is so creative, and I love clothes pins anyway! I think I will make myself some of these too! :) I didn't have any rust colored paper, but I found a similar color from the American Crafts Merry Mint line, so that's what a used for the tag. The tag.
The clips.
The notepad. A 2010 desk calendar that is front and back and you flip it inside out and it is the other months. I made one of these last year, and I knew it was the perfect gift. I found the instructions here. For the Winter month's it has a snowflake, Spring has a flower, Summer has Flip flops, and Fall has a leaf.
Here are all of the gifts together.
Here they are all wrapped up! I love these colors together
I have to make a total of 5 of these sets, and I only have 2 done. I need to get busier, (if that's even possible)! Don't forget about the Everything But The Kitchen Sink Challenge! :)

Supplies:
Cardstock- (PTI) dark chocolate, (Recollections) aqua, (Paper reflections) cream
Patterned paper- (American Crafts) Merry mint collection
Stamps- (PTI) signature Christmas,Polka dot basics II, take note, (Studio G) seasons, (Wal Mart) Holiday stamps- snowflake
Ink- (PTI) spring rain , (SU!) close to cocoa
Other- (PTI) buttons, buttons from stash, (Fiskars) threading water punch, (Wal Mart) clothes pins, (WalMart) twine, (Offray) satin brown ribbon

Have a Blessed day!