About a week ago or so ...

.. Hayley and I did our annual Christmas shopping at Granville Island ...Such a fun place to visit and look and dream and just enjoy ... i love this place even on the rainiest of days ... in fact i think i like it better in the rain ... afterall that's what Vancouver is all about ... right??? Best place to shop for stocking stuffers ... totally the kids market ... fave store .... way too many to name, but Circle Craft has long been a fave just because there are so many uber talented artists represented in this one store ... love the blown glass sea creatures ... (not allowed to take pics in there) but they are amazing! Off course lots of shots of the plentiful fruits, veggies, flowers, food ... yummy ... and a few other shots ... here's what the day looked like ...

Merry Chrisbird and other random flights of fancy ...

Christmas ... my Dad is pulling the turkey from the oven ... it is perfectly roasted, the skin looks deliciously crisp and aromas of the cooked bird and veggies and other delights fills the room ... and I think to myself "Merry Chrisbird" ... Years ago .... decades actually ... a long time ago when I was married my husband bought me a beautiful grey English Budgie ... it was a hilarious bird and very friendly. We used to let it out of it's cage quite a bit ... it would fly and swoop and it loved to land on the rim of glasses ... I cant begin to tell you how many times it tried to take a sip of coke and ended up at the bottom of a glass and us shaking him out into the sink and then of course trying to clean his feathers from the sticky mess he had gotten into ... Anyways ... he talked ... and he had a huge vocabulary ... he knew hundreds of words .... he could say his name "Precious" (yes we were into the LOTR long before it became as big as it is now) ... he could say almost anything we tried to teach him ... we left him with my parents for a week when we were on vacation and during that time my dad taught him to say "oh shit" ... hilarious stuff .... but during the last year of his life he started mixing up his sentences and words ... no longer what he was taught verbatim ... so we would hear things like "pretty shit, pretty shit" or "I'm a ring bird, I'm a ring bird" The funniest of all was when he came out with "Merry Chrisbird ... have a Merry Chrisbird" ... i think we just about peed ourselves we were laughing so hard ... So that's what i was thinking and remembering just before it was time for the Christmas meal ... hilarious, yet odd ... I hadn't thought of Precious in a long long time, but it was a wonderful memory ... sparked by the site of a truly pretty & well cooked bird ....

And while we were enjoying the warmth and aromas and wonderful Christmas decorations inside the house, Mother Nature was decorating the outdoors in crystals made from morning frost, and softly muting the backgrounds with fog ...
Hope you all created some memories and had a wonderful Christmas ... and thanks for stopping by...

Would you let your kids eat this???

Seriously ... this is DD breakfast ... looks rather .... toxic? full of empty calories and chemicals? They don't sell this stuff in Canada ... One of Hayley's friend's mom picked these up for Hayley during a cross border shopping trip ... Trix Swirls ... yumm ..... Yeah, we are hardened criminals here ... we employ cereal mules ... psssst, lady wanna make some quick cash .... just bring a few boxes of Trix across the border for us .... maybe some of that Trix yogurt if they still make it ...
I just love these cards that I made at the Scrapaholics Christmas crop .... These are from Sue F's "16 cards class" ... she did a wonderful job of prepping everything so all we had to do was assemble ... I brought them home and tarted them up a wee bit with some stickles ... they are now wrapped in wide lace with a vintage tag, ready to give as a Christmas Gift.
An envelope for my friend Lisa, who has been missing real cards made with real paper and sent in the mail .... she's not enjoying the whole cyber card thing so much ... it was way to late for me to mail her "real homemade card" so I tarted up the envelope a bit ... even put red sealing wax on the back, and dropped it off to her mailbox today .... I'm hoping she likes the envelope as much as the card.
mmmmm, can you just smell these .... two whole batches of gingerbread men cookies ... now all decorated ... Hayley did these last night and then whisked them all off to work today ... all of them ... seriously every last crumb is out of this house and I didn't get a single little nibble ... which is for the best, but gosh they sure made the house smell yummy!

My next post will be a little scrappier ... i did get some scrapping time in yesterday ... thanks for stopping by!

What comes around .... part 2 & Happy Happy Mail

Remember that post way back in October?? no?? ... this one ... well i got my prezzie from Carrie on Sunday at the scrapaholics crop ... so this is what she made me ...


very pretty isnt it!!! Thanks so much Carrie! now i just have to get my butt in gear and make prezzies for Hayley, Carrie and Sue C. hopefully i can start after the new year!

and the happy mail ... I was finally able to get my hands on a 7Gypsies stamp i have been lusting after for ever! This stamp is a copy of one of their most popular rubons (and i have burned through 3 of those) so I am stoked to get my hands on this beauty ...



I just know that i am going to be using this stamp set forever!!! Thanks for stopping by!

So last week ....

I was at the store most of the week ... the building POTP is in had a few problems with pipes ... and oh not so lucky us had not one but two pits dug up right in front of the entrance ... and then there was that whole issue where they actually had to tunnel underneath the building .... luckily the neighbours allowed our customers to use their entrance and their back halls to get to the store ... it was weird though having people enter the store through the back ...



I actually did two layouts with the new Collage Press Joyride line ... my style seems to be getting simpler ... i think ... and as much as i love patterned paper i seem to be using less of it these days ... but i do love this line ... the colours are astounding and the content so playful ... and the chipboard ... love it!!! just wish i was better at photographing my layouts, especially in winter when i just dont get lots of natural light into my home.



and guess who got to go to the Lady Gaga concert??? well not me .... i won the tickets but let dd take a friend with her ... they loved it ... and they loved the audience ... and just about everything about the show ... so i missed a good one, but it did feel good sharing the wealth so to speak!

Happy Birthday Dad! ... the topiary and a little macro shot ...

I made this card for my dad using Collage Press die cut scraps ... you know, those little bits left over after you pop out the diecut from the sheet ... these were the "rings" of pattern left on the 12x12 sheet, that i then cut out and used ... and lucky me, the "witty" patterned paper had a Number 78 on it ... perfect for my Dad's Birthday. Happy 78th to my favourite guy!

The topiary is back ... well it never left ... but it was redone for the winter... and now sits in the store at POTP. Last year it was a lollipop tree in BG Wassil ... then it became a bright yellow daisy tree ... now its a Pointsettia tree using this years BG Eskimo kisses. The Pointsettia flowers were made the same way as the ones on the wreath .... the only difference ... different paper and i used some of those old shaped paper scissors to cut out one of the flowers.



And here is a little macro shot ... not that great, just used my point and shoot ... these are a few of my mom's itty bitty decorations... these little imps and others sit in a little snow carriage ... the pipe cleaner sprite is well over 50 years old ... i think it is actually closer to 60! I have no idea how old the elf is and the little christmass bunny is something i made for my mom about 15 years ago ...

And Izzy ... the only one to hazard a guess on my last post ... and you were totally right ... I will bring some vintagey bits of joy with me when I see you at the crop next weekend!

As always, thanks for stopping by ... now go glue something fun!