The wheels are in motion!

Well, I cut my Christmas card list unmercilessly this year and they are addressed and waiting for pictures. Maybe I can take the Christmas picture this weekend...
I also did the home spruce up worksheet from organized Christmas. I would really like to complete something on that sheet this week! Guess I'll start with finishing the paint in the boy's room. I'll have to post before and afters , as DH did a fabulous job building a bed in the eaves for DS8. I need to oil the wood on the bed, too! Sheesh-forgot about that! I'd love to do a Suessical, Mount Crumpet/Whoville theme for Christmas in there. I'll have to see what I can come up with.
I've got to do a bit more digging in the storage space, as there are a few gifts I've bought and just stuffed in there!(Not good!)
To Do(Weekend edition!)

1. stitch snowflakes on apron
2. take Christmas card photo
3. paint in boys room
4. take Christmas totes out of storage, put summer totes in storage, put Christmas totes back in storage!Phew!

I'll let you know how I make out! Happy Weekend!

Okay, so I didn't quite FINALIZE my craft list. I got hyperfocused on my gift tote and ended up wrapping one gift! One down! Anywho... I'm classifying anything I have to make as a craft!
Here's something tentative...(I'm so lucky my hubby can build things, too!)

1. Christmas cookies gift 'basket'. This consists of a metal lunchbox I have to alter with "born to shop, forced to cook" saying on it; recipe cards scrapped with family favorites on them; a store bought apron with blue snoflakes stitched on it; and copper cookie cutters.
2. 2 crokinole boards(hubby)
3. recycle centre(hubby)
4. 2 bedpockets with books and flashlights
5. Lasagna wih garlic bread
6. Chili basket packed with western hat and bandana, veggie tales movie, french onion soup bowls, corn chips and chili of course!
7. Tree in a box-pine cone garland, pine cone carolers, tree topper, tree skirt, painted ornaments(rustic). Lights and tree stand.

That's it for now. I'm sure to add more baking as I finish these things up! Better get started!

Holiday Preparations

Today, I got together with my sister and niece and donned my 'Naughty or Nice' Christmas vest to start 'honest to goodness' preparations for that merry old time of the year! They got out their laptops and I got out the looseleaf and we collectively logged on to Organized Christmas to begin the Christmas Countdown, albeit, one week early. We gave ourselves a daily task this week in order to stay on track. My weekly list looks like this;

1. Monday- Talk to my spouse to find out what things he enjoyed most in past celebrations. This I did, and after a few strange looks(Christmas already?) I found out we agree that church service on Christmas Eve doesn't work for us, yet. (We need to give our youngest child a couple of more years)
2. Tuesday- Work on Master gift list and finalize a craft list.
3. Wednesday-Christmas card list (with addresses)
4. Thursday-Home Spruce up list. This could take more time than I've allotted...
5. Friday- inventory and gather card supplies
6. Saturday and Sunday- fine tune this week's work and prepare for next week.

I guess the Christmas bug is quite contagious, as I recieved an excited call from my niece, after she left. She had picked up a gift for my son and that was one more checkmark on her list! Way to Go!

Hope to post my craft list tomorrow evening! See you then!

Altered Clipboards

Here's how I did my clipboards-

What I used -

~clipboard

~old wrapping paper,wallpaper or scrapbook paper

~coordinating acrylic paint

~Matte mod podge

~cutter

~old christmas cards

~printed numbers, stickers or rub-ons

~washers

~glue

~sticky back magnets

~exacto knife and cutting board

~double sided tape

~container for numbers

~chipboard or wooden tags

~Coordinating fibers and/or ribbon

The first thing I did was paint the top of my clipboard with a coordinating color. This saves me from having to cut my paper all around the clip.
Then I clipped my background paper in the clipboard to hold it in place while I traced it on my clipboard. This makes cutting easier which is what I did next. I used my cutter, but you could easily use scissors.

Next I cut a background for my numbers to go on and I Mod Podged it to the clipboard. After that was semi-dry, I glued the washers to it with Tacky glue. Then I cut this snowman off an old Christmas card and podged him on to this clipboard. For the snowflake, I had been given some free cardstock die cuts from our local scrapbook store, so I podged that half on the board and cut off the bit hanging off the edge.

I had a sheet of 'Scenic Route' numbers,(that's just the brand name), so I podged them to some leftover pastebord (from some packaging for something, sometimes it helps to be a packrat) and cut them out, using scissors and an exacto knife. Then I cut and stuck my magnets to the back of the numbers. For the snowflake board I used wooden tags from the Dollar store and stuck some number cut-outs tags to them.

Then I took a rubber band and tied a whole bunch of fibers to it. This made it easy to wrap it around the clip.
Next I printed my sayings on the computer and mounted them on the board. For the snowman board I took my brown ink pad and sponge and just inked the edges of the sayings to 'dirty' them up a bit and make them look more rustic.

I found an empty plastic battery container and a tin peppermint container to use to hold the numbers. they weren't very pretty so I stuck some coordinating paper on the tin to use for the snowflake numbers and I printed a reindeer on sticker paper for the battery container. I inked this to go with the rustic look of the snowman board.