12 Months of Christmas Catch-Up

I'm back! Did you miss me? I missed you. I missed having time to sit and write on the blog. There just aren't enough hours in a day are there?

I've been enjoying a busy summer with my handsome hubby. He is now a teacher, and this was his first summer vacation since he was in high school. We had a lot of fun! We were pretty busy getting several items checked off our "honey-do" list and we managed to sneak a couple of mini vacations in there as well. If you're interested in hearing more about it you can check out our family blog.

School has now started back up and I am trying to revamp our schedule here at home so that I can get some time at the computer. We'll see how well it goes.

Anyway, back to the 12 Months of Christmas Challenge, how are you doing with it? Me? Ok, I guess. My goals for April-September were to make 10 cards each month and start making gifts. While I didn't get the cards done, or make the gifts, I did come up with several ideas for gifts for loved ones and have gathered supplies for some of them. I will be back later next week with details of some of those gift ideas.

How's your Christmas folder coming along? Mine was at a stand still for several weeks while my computer was acting up, but I'm hoping this next week to finish getting the Menu section finished up by adding one recipe to it each day. I've also been adding links to gift ideas I've found on the web. My friend mentioned that it might be a good idea to go through the address book this month. I know we've had several of our friend's children get married this last year (am I really that old?!?) and I need to get their new addresses and check in with a few of my military friends who are, or have, moved.

So, it looks like I've got some catch-up work to do now so that I'm not super swamped come the end of November. Here's what I plan to do this month:

1. Make 16 cards.
2. Finish the Menu section in my Christmas folder.
3. Organize my Gift section and finish filling out what I'd like to make/buy for friends and family this year.
4. Make at least 4 gifts (that's 1/week) this month. 
5. Check address list.

I think that does is for me. My schedule is busy enough, I don't want to add too much to the list. How about you? What are your plans to help make the holidays a little less stressful? 

Since I think blog posts are pretty boring without a little eye candy, here's a card I made back in June. It's the only card I've made lately that I have a photo of. Looks like I need to spend some time with my camera and get some pictures taken. 

I used the Awesomely Artistic stamp set to make this card, and I will say that I had a really hard time with it. I just couldn't figure out what to do with the fern and flower stamps at first. I ended up masking off most of the vanilla cardstock and stamping several of the images. The card on the right I did a bit of a watercolor wash first and then stamped. The one of the left was just stamped. To get the lighter blue color on the flowers, I stamped off once on a scrap piece of paper, then onto the cardstock. I stamped the linen and "friend" images after I removed the mask. The dragonfly was just stamped and then fussy-cut and popped up on dimensionals. Which one do you like better, the watercolored one or the plain? 

I think that does it for me. Time to get ready for bed here. I hope to be back in a day or so with my updated Stampin' Up! class schedule for you and a couple of projects. 

Till next time...

God's love and blessings!

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