What to say...

There's nothing I can say about the recent tragic events in Sandy Hook.  It's devastating, and almost unbelievable.  It's terrifying. I know how I am feeling but I can't even begin to imagine what those families are feeling.  The beautiful angels taken way too soon.  I'm so very sorry doesn't seem to be nearly enough....

2012 Christmas Tree and Ornaments

This year I went with a white tree with mulit-colored lights and lots of my favorite decorations.  I love it!

 A few weeks ago, Doug and I went to the Tulsa flea market and I found this sweet vintage little Christmas bird.  There was no way he was staying there so he had to come home with me!  I love his chippy paint and his precious eyes.

Of course, everyone remembers Precious Moments.  My mom bought this angel for me while I was in nursing school.  I had just gotten my own apartment, I was totally broke and had just started collecting Christmas decorations.  Most of what I had that year was homemade (which I still love!) but this ornament has special sentimental value to me. 

 Look at this squishy owl!  He is brand new to my collection this year.  Doug and I went to a local nursery to check out the decorations and Doug bought this sweet guy for me.

 Remember the island of misfit toys?  We joke that our home is that island and I love this sweet little doll.

 Isn't this cute - a little fawn kissing a snowman.

 And finally, a bunny on top of an icicle.

I love looking at all my Christmas things!

Snow Queen

For several nights over the past two weeks, this Snow Queen slowly came to life.  I had an idea of her in my mind and am so excited at how she turned out. 

Her head is sculpted paperclay and she has a soft, cloth body.  You can't see very well in the picture but she has linen pantaloons with lace trim.  Her dress is made from a recycled Laura Ashley paisley skirt that I found last year at Goodwill.  She has a golden crown on her head surrounded by white feather boa, adorned with a sequin holly berry.  (Click on her picture if you want to get a closer look!)

I made Snow Queen for the secret exchange at the Tulsa Dolling Dames Christmas Party. I hope the person who got her loves her.  It was very hard for me to give her up.

We put our dolls in a plain brown paper bag and then draw numbers to pick.   In the bag I chose was this little pink mermaid doll ornament made by one of our club members that comes over from Arkansas.

Mermaids are going to be a theme this next year at the Doll Club.  We are having Arley Berryhill come to Tulsa in the spring to teach us how to make one of his mermaid dolls, plus learn lots of new techniques.  Should be lots of fun! 

Christmas Ornament Swap

Last night, several of us girls met at PF Chang's in Utica Square to have dinner and participate in a Christmas Ornament Swap.  

 We had alot of fun and a delicious dinner!  Here is the cute ornament I received.

 This is the snowman ornament I made for the swap.  I think he turned out really cute.  In fact, I didn't really want to give him up. But at least he went to another crafty home.  ;)

We've got a busy weekend of parties coming up. Saturday is the Tulsa Dolling Dames Christmas party in the afternoon, then we travel to Oklahoma City for Doug's company party. Sunday, it's back to Oklahoma City for my investment group's Christmas Party.  Monday night is Bunco at my house (yikes - better get this mess cleaned up around here!) And on Tuesday is another Christmas Party with an ornament swap.  Gonna be busy...

I love snowmen!

I've been squeezing in some crafting despite the craziness around here.  It really is so therapeutic and puts my mind in such a better place.

In a conversation one day last week,  my sister January happened to mention that Karen, her baby's grandmother, loves snowmen. Karen is one of those ladies that always does so much for others all the time.  She takes such wonderful care of my nephew Garrett,  and always includes my other nephew Joao as if he was her grandson too.  She is just very thoughtful and very generous and I can't begin to express my appreciation at all that she does for my sweet little nephews.

I wanted to send her a little something to say "Thank you" and maybe put a little smile on her face.  It's nice to receive unexpected happy mail, isn't it?  

I hope she likes him - he was hard to part with!  ;)

One of my "friends" on Facebook put out a message that one of her friends is sick with cancer.  She too loves snowmen and has a snowman tree.  I made this sweet little snowman ornament for her to place on her tree and a little card with a message of hope. 

Speaking of hope, I *hope* to finish my Christmas decorating this weekend!  I pulled out all of my decorations last week and I have unorganized stuff everywhere. I took a break from cleaning and decorating to get my snowmen finished... It looks like a Christmas tornado around here at the moment.  Wish me luck!

Fall Tag Swap

Before Christmas gets into full swing around here, I wanted to make sure I blogged about the Fall Tag Swap hosted by Dawn Blackstead.  Our tags could be anything related to fall or Halloween. As always, they all came out wonderful! I love how different they all are and all the textures.  Just amazing... So, here we go:

By Tami Hacker of Vintage Connections blog:

 Not signed:

 Not signed:

 By Laurie Jackson of Indulge Your Shelf Blog:

 By Dawn Blackstead:

 By Dawn Blackstead:

By  Robin Weins of My Glittered Life Blog:

 By Nora Neeley:

 I made this one:

 By Jane Palmer of AraliaJane Blog:

 By Tamatha Kaplan of Snips and Threads Blog:

Aren't they just great!?!

Christmas Decoration

I took another one of Bobbi's classes over at the Paper Crown this past weekend.  Isn't it just adorable!?

I'm sorry that I haven't been a very good blogger lately - I'm kind of overwhelmed at the moment with a few things.  Plus, I haven't felt like taking many pictures and don't feel like I have much to say these days. 

I did finish my tags for the Christmas Tag Swap but I mailed them off without taking a picture.  I'll have to wait until I get my Christmas Tags back in the mail.  Last year, I participated in an ABC book of Christmas.  I had to make 26 pages for a book swap and my letter was "D".   The hostess of the swap FINALLY received the last two letters - it's about time - they were only due A YEAR AGO!!! I'm looking forward to receiving that.

Gosh - I'm sounding kind of grumpy - I guess I am... I'll snap out of it once I start my Christmas decorating. But first - Thanksgiving!

31 Wishes Swaps!

So part of the fun of any event is signing up for the swaps.  In the past, when I've missed signing up, or if I've been too intimidated to sign up, I've been disappointed.  Despite being so busy I could barely keep my head above water, I still signed up for all three of the swaps for 31 Wishes.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of a couple of the pieces I gave away - probably because I was sweating finishing them at the very last minute... Oh well.

The first swap was a cuff swap organized by Betti Zucker from New York.  It was a blind swap in that we didn't know who our cuff would end up with nor did we know from whom we would receive a cuff.  Each of the cuffs were put into individual bags and we played a sort of "musical chairs" with the bags until the music stopped.  Whatever bag we were holding when the music stopped, that was the cuff we received (as long as it wasn't the cuff we had made).  Make sense?  Of course, when the music stopped, I had no bag and one person had two.  So I probably got the bag she didn't think she wanted - big mistake for her!  Look at this awesome cuff with a cute skull surrounded by tulle and silver garland, with gorgeous black lace on buttery soft orange leather.  It was packaged so beautifully too.  Susan from Texas made this and put it on a little cushion inside a clear chinese to go type container.  Just lovely! I've worn it everyday since 31 Wishes.  

The cuff I made was a cute leather cuff that went to Kendall Anderson and she loved it!  She has a new blog and she has posted a picture of the cuff if you want to pop over and take a look. 

 The second swap was a book of "Buried Secrets of the Dearly Departed".  We had to make a page for this coffee table book and come up with some sort of secret that the author of the page took to the grave with them.  This was hosted by Lisa Thompson, and co-hosted by Susan Linn and Susie Vergenz,  and what fun it was! Believe it or not, I had a hard time coming up with a secret! The creepy cover:

 I believe the page below was made by Dana Young. A little book with a fun poem was included and tucked into her page.

Susan Linn created the page below.  Susan claims she is not a paper artist - but she is a fabulous jewelry maker.  However, this page and the story it contains proves that Susan has many talents.

 Lisa Thompson made the page below.  Unfortunately, the picture I took of this page covers up the photo of the little girl who took the secret to her grave.  I didn't notice until I'm halfway through tis post.  Ugh.  The texture on this page is amazing and I love the story Lisa included.

Below is the page I made.  The photo of Ms. Emma was done on tape transfer transparencies.  My secret is about what happened at the base of that old, gnarly tree....

 Mary Willia made the page below.  I love all of the embellishments she used - the clock, the spider, the candelabra and the eerie picture of the body in the coffin with a vial of "ashes".  Ghoulish!

 Dean Bartlett's creation is below.  Great old photo!

 Leisel Milford's page hints at what buried secret is revealed.  When you pull on the tab under the photo, the secret is revealed.  How fun!

 I love the way Susie Vergenz made her page. So visually appealing.

 Melody Winston made this fun page.  The photo is the front of a "file" that contains a Wanted poster.  Next to that is the Obituary.

 Betti Zucker made this page and it's creepy and fun all at the same time.

 Cathy Bruhn made this Rattlesnake page.  Sends shivers up my spine just thinking about those creatures!

 My friend Nora Neely made this page and it's so her!  Vintage romance basically sums up everything that is Nora.  It's beautiful.

 Wow ~ if you are still reading this, you must *love* swaps as much as I do.
The third and final swap was a one to one swap of a 31 Wishes Wand Swap.  We were paired with a partner and we were to make a wand that was 24 inches tall. We only found out who our partner was a few weeks before the event.  I was paired with the beautiful Cassie from Texas.  While all the wands were completely amazing, I knew everyone had their eyes on this SPECTACULAR  creation that Cassie made for me.  It was so beautifully wrapped, I didn't want to open it and let anything happen to it.

 Can you even believe this??? A vintage doll head topped with a fabulous vintage hat and surrounded with more vintage goodness in flowers, rhinestones, lace and ribbon.  Cassie painted her eyes to have a creepy white tinge to them.  To top it off, when you lay the wand down, the doll closes her eyes. Cassie's creativity is over the top!

So, there you have it.  Three amazing swaps, one over the top, fabulous event, lots of creative friends.  Does it get any better?

Ann-Denise's 31 Wishes Event

 A few weeks ago, I headed once again down to Ft. Worth to attend Ann-Denise's 31 Wishes Halloween Event.  If you've read my blog for a while, you might have read about last year's Halloween Event: A Wicked Tea.  Ann- Denise *always* goes way above and beyond in every way for her events.  These were the decorations that greeted us as we walked in the front door.

When you look to the right inside the front door is her dining room.

As you scan around the room.  Every inch of this house is ready for Halloween!

This is the candy table.  Later in the day it was filled with all kinds of delicious cupcakes.  The little dracula boxes were made for us by Kimber.  Kimber lives in Texas but she is also a member of Tulsa Dolling Dames. 

With any Ann-Denise event, there is no detail that is over-looked.  These adorable sewn pockets held our napkins and utensils for dinner.  They were too cute to use!

 Of course, this is the embellishment bar.  Can you believe this?  Ann-Denise is so amazingly generous with her supplies.  C'mon up - pick your favorite goodies to embellish your project - there's enough here for everyone!

There's always some sort of fun "kit" and no event would be complete without an amazing name badge!

I would have taken more pictures but my camera battery died.  :(  But be sure to click on each of the photos above to enlarge them for a better look.

 We had a couple swaps too - but I'll have to save that for the next post.
If you want to take a peek at the other events that I've been to hosted by Ann-Denise, check these out:
A Valentine Makery
A High Tea