Home for the Holidays

Page 4: the doggies.

Rick's large Rottweiler named Zowie was having fun wearing little hats along with Lana and Prints. Rick wasnt impressed at her silly behavior. Too bad! Everyone else thought it was sweet.

For this page I switched into horizontal lines, again keeping it simple and matching the star paper to the precious page. There are a few twinkle brads on the left corner and I used circles and scallops to soften the flow. I left a white border to tie it all together. I am VERY pleased with these four pages!

Home for the Holidays

Page 3: Rick and I.

Getting Rick to smile and relax wasnt easy until he put on his RedSox Tshirt. It was a breeze after that!

He really like his new pajama bottoms too.

I splurged just a bit on him this year. He is a good guy!!

I used Game On paper (with the stars) to tie in with the checklist stars and added some tiny white chipboard stars (CTMH) . The old ctmh black stripe background and texture paper

makes it look Classic! There is a tiny bit of garden green mat on the 2 right hand photos to break up the red on black and tie into the tree colour in the photos.

Home for the Holidays

page 2: features my children and me on Christmas morning. Poor Chloe had no makeup on! but she is a sweet pea. I love my Olympic mittens from Colton. They make a heart when you cross your arms. Chloe loved her pink powder puff from La Senza.

Journalling will be completed tomorrow!

For this layout I used one of Julia's tags with a nice bracket edge to spunk things up. The rest of the lines are straight up vertical so I added a circular rhinestone embellie to soften things up . Getting the 3 photos the same size was key to making this page work. i left a little white, the same width as the edge on the bracket die cut.

Home for the Holidays

I was elated to be catching up at Alexandra's last night with a great group of Brights Grove croppers, with all proceeds going to RayJon in Haiti and now I get to share the results with you!

First issue was the choice of background papers.

I had such dark photos, with a lot of red but very dim otherwise. (Time for a New Camera Soon)

Not very joyful looking when I laid the photos in front of me.

Julia had sent some black/red/white Christmas paper and punchout diecuts to go with it, with a very modern twist that inspired me to pare down the colour scheme. It worked wonders to bolden up the photos, since on brighter more Christmassy papers the photos were dying and looking yellowed.

Once I decided on using white daisy as my background paper, I had limitless possibilities with several crimson papers, and the cute accents from Julia.

This page features Colton after opening his iphone and his new winter coat, and his immediate reactions! I used 3 of the cute tags from Julia, splitting the green semi circle in half to "punctuate" the photo, and underlaying the small Joy tag on the lower right edge of the photo.There is also some black glitter paper to add sparkle! (thanks Jen!!)

THIS WAS FUN!

Give and Get Back : Hearts for Haiti

Buy one textured cardstock pack, get one free, and Close to my Heart will donate $2 to Operation Smile, who are working in their hospital tents in Haiti with over 50 patients.

Enough said.

Stamp! WOW!

I was looking at Tresa Black's new YouTube video on stamping for Close to my Hearts video contest.
Pretty much sums up how I feel about using our Clear stamps! plus she shows how versatile they are in a few cute techniques.
check it out here:
http://www.fabulouslyartsy.com/2010/01/stamp-wow.html
thanks Tresa for allowing us all to share this.

Fulfillment and Felicity !

So...

How do we reach fulfillment?

you can read Buddha,

Ekhart Tolle, the Bible,

and they all say fulfillment is reached

through prayer or meditation,

giving of yourself, and controlling your ego. But you also have to look after yourself very well!

In my case, fulfillment is through family, love, work and art.

Not that I consider myself a VanGogh by any means. But I get to revel in the richness of colour, the interplay of textures, and the visual delights of design through my hobby.

Do you know people who have no hobbies? And they dont look forward to retiring? I do. I cant even imagine a life of no interests... just work , eating, and watching television.

I have so many hobbies and things I still want to learn, I will probably be even busier when I do retire.

Today, I read on the CTMH Felicity blog for January:

Psychology Today offers this advice: get a hobby. “Hobbyists are amateurs - that is to say, the most intrinsically motivated of lovers. They court their pastime, not for conquest or for gain, but for pure pleasure. Hobbies are, quintessentially, forms of play.” In other words, passing time with your hobby is the same as doing what you love, and doing what you love is what makes for happiness.

That sounds like making love to paper to me!!

I do know one thing... fulfillment is reached by not taking but by giving of ourselves, and in my case this works in all the areas I mentioned : family, love, and work.

The older I get the more this is true!

The trick is to find a balance where you are not overworking yourself, yet feel satisfaction in what you have done. I prioritize my family over my work... (sorry Ms. Mann) My boss already knows that !

smiles to you all!