Twas the night before the night before....

and my house is manic and a mouse wouldn't last a second with the two cats!!  I seem to spend a lot of time putting ornaments back on the tree... I find them in the oddest places... in Pandora's new chair for one!!

I had it made by the compound joiner who made the cat houses for the porch... isn't it cute?  Oh and for those who are wondering... yes, it is in the main bathroom and she hasn't been banished or anything... just that when there were five little kittens it was the safest place to put them if I had to keep them inside and Pandy obviously remembers this because come 8.30 pm in the evening she takes herself off to the bathroom for her last food and quiet nights sleep! At least now she can do it in style!! ;)

One of the most under-used portions of my stash is my clear stamps and I think it is because they were always in a big tupperware tub in the bottom of the cupboard and therefore not that easy to get to or sort through.  So I have made myself a couple of stamp albums!!

I found some sturdy plastic pockets in the bookstore and have now sorted all my clear stamps into pockets and bound them into two albums which hopefully means that all I have to do is get a book out and flip through it to find the stamp I want to use.

OK, so that's what I have been up to, so I guess I had better now get on with wrapping some pressies and giving the house a good clean through or Santa will be popping his head round the door and leaving in horror!!

Just a quick catch up...

My Mum mentioned she had been on my blog and it was still talking about Thanksgiving... so I thought I had better take a break from scrapping and shopping and doing 'stuff' and announce that I am still here... just a bit snowed under - if a person in the desert can be snowed under!!

So this is my Journal Your Christmas book for this year... I have completed half a dozen pages so I am lagging behind the prompts... will promise to buckle down and complete some more in the next couple of days!!

This is a canvas I have done for my friend Ping for Christmas (think I am pretty safe putting it on here as her internet speeds are as awesomely slow as my own so blog hopping is not part of her agenda)!!

Here are some close-ups of the bits... I may not have finished tweaking it yet... depends on my available time before Christmas!!

This is another Christmas pressie, for my friend Trudie, its one of the picture frame versions so stand up as a display album.

Here's a close up of the flowers and pearls and bits!! ;)

Oh and look what I had the compound joiner knock up for me!!  Two little cat houses for TomTom and Pandora... of course, neither of them is willing to step in and look around.... what did I expect? LOL

Her's TomTom looking so cute and obviously preferring the old cardboard box!

This is Pandora who prefers the back of my sofa for any napping....

Thanksgiving

So here are the place names for Thanksgiving Dinner this evening... and I think they turned out ok-ish!! I saw the idea in an email from Scrapbook Trends by Kim Hughes but that old leaky elbow syndrome kicked in so if you have seen hers... you may wonder why mine aren't quite as pretty!! ;)  Probably just as well that my part is crafty rather than cooking... I have just delivered them to my neighbour and the smells of cooking coming from her house.... oh my, tonight is going to be some meal!! Pecan pie, pumkin pie, turkey and all the bits...

Do you see what I did with this one?  Did ya?  Doesn't it look like an Indian headress with feathers to you? LOL  Let's hope that Chief appreciates my sense of humour....

WOYWW

What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday... created by Julia Dunnit (whos name always sounds like the answer to a question)... where people actually photograph their desks on a Wednesday and show what a state they are in...erm... or what they happen to be creating at that moment in time... but mostly involves a lot of messy desks that make me break out in hives!!  I have never joined in because my desk is usually pretty tidy as I am one of these folk that needs to tidy everything away between projects.  The rest of the room can look a mess (and usually does) but the desk needs to clean and tidy before I can start something new...but today it is a mess as I am trying to do three things at once... a book for a friend, another book for another friend and make some name places for Thanksgiving dinner... 12 of them...and Thanksgiving is tomorrow!!

Of course... if you see other peoples' messy desks... this one is pretty tame in comparison!!

Exploding Memory Boxes

The ladies in the compound decided they wanted to have a go at these... so its on the agenda for tomorrow.  Now, sitting at home in Scotland on a shelf in the scraproom are numerous versions of these that would have made life easy for me to take along as examples.... but its a long way to go for a memory box or two so I had to sit and make up a couple so they could get an idea what to do with them.

I kept the top of this quite simple and just added some bling and Glossy Accents with a little splash of Stickles to fancy it up.

Trimmed the edge with some daisy edging and blinged the centres... I was kind of hoping they might look like snowflakes... but they actually look like daisies with bling... some you win and some you don't! ;)

Here it is opened up with a few embellies and some heat embossing.

This is the second example... in my favourite colours and papers and I added tiny rosebuds, lace, vlevet ribbon and bling and little wired pearl beads.

 

Here is the whole box with the lace around the rim of the lid.

and this is it opened up with a large rose and pearls string with velevet ribbons.