Cut 'n Paste

We have a Winner and Birthday wishes

I just did the Drawing for the Winter Cheer Giveaway #4 courtesy of Melissa Frances and I'm pleased to announce that the winner is: CATHERINE who posted on Dec 18th at 1:46. I'll be emailing you shortly Catherine. I also chose two other winners who will each receive $20 worth of product. So Leesha (Dec 18th, 1:37 AM) and Patricia (Dec 20, 1:15PM) check your emails for a message from me.

Today I'm battling a cold and feel really yucky. So I'm going to make today's entry short and sweet.

Birthday wishes go out tothis sweet girl & this sweet girl. Love you Kim & Pam!

(wonderful cameo stamp courtesy of Heather from Poppy Ink - they've got some fun rubber over there!)

A little eye candy

If you're like me, home decor is just another facet of creativity that you love to explore. I thought that today I'd share some links with you of three creative women who generously share their home decor with their blog readers. So grab a cuppa tea, coffee or hot cocoa and enjoy their sites:

First, I'd like to introduce you to Sara of Sadie Olive fame. Her blog combines stellar photography with a super store and personal stories. She also builds blogs/websites as a business. Here is a little taste of what you can see on her blog (photo by Sara):

 

Next, I'd like you to meet Paige Knudsen and her blog Simple Thoughts. Paige has been a regular reader of my blog for some time and I was blown away when she posted photos of her holiday decor. This gal does shabby chic in a simple country way. Love her photos and her home is so inviting. Here is a peek at Paige's home. Head on over to her blog to see more!

My final introduction for you is Corey from Tongue in Cheek. Corey documents her life in France through pictures and stories. She shares the passion (obsession?) for flea markets and antiquing that many of us have and posts the most beautiful photos of her finds. Not only that, but she recently announced her home is being featured in the January issue of Victoria magazine. So don't worry about bringing your passport, just click on over and see how one woman lives a life of creativity in France. (Photo of santon which is over a hundred years old, courtesy of Corey)

Be sure to say 'hi' if you visit them and let them know how you found their blogs...and, if any of you have favorite home decor blogs that you visit regularly, I'd love to hear about them.

(And remember to enter the Winter Cheer Giveaway #4 if you haven't already!)

What a weekend & Winter Cheer Giveaway #4

Rick and I got home yesterday night after a really fun 2 days in Seattle. It was so incredibly enjoyable....everything from the concert, to the shopping to the eating and spending time with my parents was just what we'd hoped. The weekend started with Rick and I heading out Sat mid-morning and driving down from home to Seattle with a brief stop at an outlet mall to hit the Sony outlet (for him) and the Restoration Hardware outlet (for me!). From there we drove right through to a mall that houses a few of our favorite restaurants where we were going to meet my parents for an early dinner before the concert. I've got to say, I hardly ever willingly choose to go to malls around the Christmas season. I'm one of those who tends to Christmas shop all year long, so come December there is no rush to find that perfect gift. As such, I was completely amazed at the crazy amount of people at the mall. We were lucky to even find a parking stall in the lot! After parking we headed through the mall only to discover that our chosen restaurant (P.F. Chang's) had a 2.5 hour wait for a table. Not exactly what we'd been anticipating! A quick change of plans had us eating at the Cheesecake Factory (which had been on the agenda as our lunch destination the next day) as their wait was only 30 minutes. Due to the wait for dinner, we chose to drive with my parents directly from mall to the Michael W. Smith concert. The concert was beautiful, such melodious music with a 65 piece orchestra. What a treat and a great way to celebrate the reason for the season. From the concert we headed to the hotel that my mom found on-line. It was really, really nice. My hubby's favorite part was the 42 inch plasma TVs in each room. Gotta love that! Sunday saw us leaving the hotel and doing some shopping before heading to P.F. Chang's for lunch (after Saturday's mix-up, we booked a lunch reservation). Yummy food! It was a wonderful mini-holiday and it made it very special to share it with my parents. We had a lot of laughs and my dad said that it needed to be the beginning of a new seasonal tradition.

I thought I'd share a few things I found on the trip with you. Unfortunately we didn't do any antiquing, but I did find 2 crafts stores and brought home 4 stamps. The scallop oval in the middle is by Paper Source, the other three are by Impress Rubber Stamps. I can't wait to use them!

Now here's what I'm sure many of you are wondering about....what do I have up my sleeve for the Winter Cheer Giveaway #4. Hmmmmm, well I knew that I wanted it to be big, crafty, and fun. I also  know that many of you come and visit me because of my job at Melissa Frances, a crafting product line. Sooo...after talking to Melissa, it's my pleasure to announce that Melissa Frances is sponsoring Giveaway #4!!!

The winner of this draw will receive a whopping $150 worth of Melissa Frances scrapbooking products. We're talking scrapbooking paper, acrylic stamps, and embellishments galore. What an awesome Christmas gift to one lucky winner!

So cross your fingers (and your toes). Giveaway open to those with Canadian/US mailing addresses (Thanks for your understanding). Please leave a comment to be entered in the draw for the prize.  I'll accept comments until 12 Noon on Friday (PST). Then, we'll do the draw and select the winner.

 

We have a winner, vintage treasures and weekend plans

What a Fun Giveaway! It was neat to see how many of you are already familiar with the Canadian Scrapbooker, and how many of you didn't know that we had our own scrapbook publication this side of the 49th parallel. I also wanted to say how much I appreciate the kind words that so many of you had regarding the column I work on each issue. You made me blush!!

Without further ado, the winner of this week's Giveaway is:

I will be sending you an email as soon as I finish this post Wendy! Way to go....and because I'm having SO much fun with the giveaways and I happen to have a few of the Winter 07/08 issues around the house, I also chose two other winners who will receive the Winter issue to peruse. Those two lucky ladies are: Debbie, who posted Dec 11th at 4:43PM, and Holly who posted Dec 11th at 3:11. I know you'll each enjoy receiving the issue!

In vintage treasure news, the other day I picked up the buttons that I'd told you about last week from the antique store. Right now they're still in their boxes sitting on my kitchen counter. I get such pleasure from looking at them, they're so pretty. While I was there, I also found a darling photo and a another spelling primer with a beautiful notation on the front page. Here are the goods:

This weekend I'm really excited about going to this guy's concert. I've never been to one of his Christmas concerts before, so I'm really looking forward to it. My parents are coming too, so I'm sure it will be a blast. We'll stop at some of our favorite Seattle restaurants and hopefully an antique store or two as well. I hope that whatever you plan to do this weekend, you have safe travels and a wonderful time. Be sure you check back on Monday for the launch of the next (HUGE) giveaway!

Winter Cheer Giveaway #3

Today I'm excited to announce the details of Winter Cheer Giveaway #3. The winner of this week's giveaway should buckle up their seat belt and get ready for a year of inspiration, education and eye catching paper crafts. Yes, indeed!

I'm so happy to share with you that my friends at the Canadian Scrapbooker are offering a ONE  YEAR SUBSCRIPTION to the lucky winner of this week's draw! Just imagine, one whole year of an amazing magazine being delivered to your mailbox completely free of charge! Gotta love that!

The Canadian Scrapbooker is really unlike many of the other scrapbook publications out there. It's real. I'm so proud to be a small part of their team and I want to give a HUGE 'THANK YOU' shout-out to Jackie and Katharina (the co-founders) for the gift that they're offering to one of you!

Giveaway open to those with Canadian/US mailing addresses (Thanks for your understanding). Please leave a comment to be entered in the draw for the prize.  The Giveaway will close this Thursday at 5PM PST.

Here's a peek at a layout I did for the Winter 2007 issue. It's called 'Snowman Addict' and it's all about my snowman collection. Enjoy & Good Luck!

A Celebration of Traditions

Today my friend Jill is hosting a blog celebration of traditions. As soon as she mentioned it to me, I knew that I wanted to participate. Like many of you, there are so many traditions, services/ceremonies and family gatherings that make this year special. Funny as it may seem, especially given that I scrapbook, I have never challenged myself to write any of them down. I thought that not only would it be fun to share my tradition, but it would set me well on my way to scrapbooking these memories.

 

One of my favorite traditions began by my parents on my fifth birthday. I'm one of those lucky souls whose birthdays falls a few days after Christmas. The year I turned 5 my parent decided to take the family into Toronto to see the Nutcracker Ballet. I can remember being enthralled by it. The music, the dance...it was magical. It seemed that every year after attending, my brother and I would dance around the house for about a week afterwords and ask mom and dad to play the tape so that the Nutcracker music would fill the house. Looking back, I am so thankful that my parents shared the gift of the Nutcracker with my brother and I. It built within us a love of classical music and an appreciation for dance. This is a tradition that I defiantly plan to share with children should Rick and I be blessed with a family of our own.

Now that I've shared mine, you can head on over to Jill's to read more fun traditions and memories, I'd love to hear about yours too. Please feel free to share in the comments or link me to your own blog posting.

We have a winner, and other assorted things

Sorry for the delay in getting the winner posted from the Winter Cheer Giveaway #2. Yesterday I was anxiously waiting for a friends results from some medical tests, so decided to try and distract myself by going antique shopping in the States. Miraculously although she was never far from my mind, it did help. It's been ages since I've taken a day to hunt for treasures. I've stopped for a few moments the odd time when picking up my mail (there is an antique shop right by my US post office box). But as for spending a whole day? That hasn't happened since before Silver Bella. So yesterday I headed off to my favorite haunts, seeking treasures to add to my collections. By the time I came home I'd bought the following:

• I had found 11 silver glass ornaments with just the perfect amount of tarnish on them
• 2 glittered houses (I really want to make something like these ones that Linda made which were shown in the Melissa Frances Dec/Jan newsletter)
• a spelling primer from 1892
• the most perfect portrait (approximately 9x6) of 2 sisters taken in 1902  (I paid too much for it, but they looked so lonely and in need of someone to take them home. I felt positive that my studio would be a much happier place for them than the antique mall)
• a new doll head (yes, it is an illness, lol!)
• Oh, and I found the mother-load...a huge tray of mother of pearl buttons and another one of rhinestone buttons. I left an offer for the dealer with the antique shop and they called me back this morning with a counter offer which I've accepted. It's one of those things where all being said, it's a lot of money to buy them, but it's still a good deal....you know what I mean? It's like buying a house that is valued for 5 million for 1 million. It's still a lot of money, but it's a good deal...I'll show them to you when I bring them home sometime next week.

I got home around 7pm and after hearing no news from my friend spent the rest of the evening incredibly worried (she'd told me the day before that no news meant bad news, and to please give her space)...so hopefully you understand why I didn't post the draw. I had horrible luck trying to fall asleep, last time I looked at the clock it was 4:32 AM and my mind was still worrying. Fast forward to this morning, and Rick wakes me up and tells me that my friend is on the phone. She was all apologetic and told me that she was so worn out the day before that after getting good news she'd gone right to bed. (Poor thing, she'd been incredibly worried and not slept much in the preceding days). I was SO relieved. What an answer to prayer. We needed a Christmas miracle, and this certainly filled the bill!

So now to the question that most of you are wondering about...who is the winner of Winter Cheer Giveaway #2?

I'll be emailing you shortly sweet girl!

To finish up, here's my holiday music pick for today. It's from the Celtic Woman Christmas television special which is airing several times throughout the holiday season on PBS. I find the choreography a bit too staged, but my-oh-my, those gals can sing. It's a beautiful holiday album. Enjoy!

'I learned everything...

from my mother'. Another one of my Silver Bella collages that went home with my dear friend Kelly.

In other news I'm riding a creative high as I've been working my butt off this week creating projects using the Melissa Frances products that we're introducing at CHA Winter in Feb. I really wish I could allow you a peek, as I have no doubt you're going to love the new stuff and, on a personal note, I feel that some of the layouts I've designed are my best ever!

Looking forward to watching my guilty pleasure tonight 'America's next Top Model', and having left over Chinese food for dinner.

ps - for those of you following along with the Winter Cheer giveaways, I wanted to let you know how excited I am about the coming weeks. There are some REALLY amazing packages coming from some very cool companies. So stay tuned!

Ho-HO-OH NO!

This weekend heralded the first big snowfall of the year in Vancouver. Rather odd to get snow this early in the season, but the neighborhood kids loved it and it's always a bit magical to see the world blanketed in white. Saturday and Sunday it snowed all day and we stayed home all snug and cozy in the house. The roads were pretty bad, so a family Christmas party with extended relatives was canceled which was disappointing. But it did allow Rick and I to start to get caught up on the 30 or so shows we had copied onto our TV hard drive. (If Rick is working, I tape the shows we like to watch so that he and I can watch them together at a later date).

The snowfall changed to rain sometime late last night and so as quickly as it came, the snow has pretty much all disappeared. (sigh) It was pretty while it lasted. In the meantime, I was working in the studio mid-morning and heard a little 'drip, drip, drip' noise. I went to investigate and found water dripping from the ceiling into the unfinished room next door to my studio. Turns out that our sliding glass door (above this room in our kitchen) has something wrong with it and water was steadily leaking through it onto the kitchen floor (which is a floating laminate) and then seeping through the floor boards and down into the basement. The water stretched all the way across my kitchen to my living room (about 12 feet wide)...so I spent my afternoon mopping up water and on the phone with my insurance company. (Thankfully Rick came home to help me) I have to wait for an adjuster to phone me back. But we're pretty sure that our floor is wrecked as the edges of the boards are already lifting. I'm also worried that with all the water under the floor boards, we may develop a mold problem should the floor not be removed. Anyways, it sure brought my great mood crashing down...

So in an effort to cheer myself up, I thought I'd post Winter Cheer Giveaway #2. This weeks giveaway is for a bundle of vintage photos and ephemera. We're talking cabinet cards, postcards and even a tin daguerreotype. Throw in some anagram letters and vintage papers, and you've got a fun little packet containing the basics for vintage style artwork. It's difficult to put a dollar value on this prize as old photos, etc. sell for such different prices around the country, but trust me, the winner will not be disappointed. Please leave a comment to be entered in the draw for the prize. Give away open to people living in the States or Canada as I have to pay for postage. (Thanks for your understanding)

Forgot to add that Giveaway will close this Thursday at noon PST.

Good Luck!