Christmas box

Here's a close-up of one of my Christmas boxes. I cut it from two sheets of 8.5x11" papers; one for the bottom and the other for the top. I decorated it with my whole collection of Christmas stamps from Unity, PTI and an unknown Santa.

Thanks for looking! Merry Christmas!

Deck the Halls...

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! The kids setup the tree and decorated the house when I was at work on Thursday! What a surprise to come home to a house all decorated up for Christmas!

The stockings are up, waiting for Santa to arrive!

Chris found himself a nice hidey-hole tucked in behind the Christmas tree.

Jena found a nice comfy spot for herself too.

I took Friday off work and finished all the Christmas shopping. Then I spent all day today wrapping! Poor Jena... her comfy spot is now full of presents!

I need to show off my boxes and tags! Cute, huh? (That's why it took me all day to wrap presents ;oD )

Jim and Chris did some decking on the outside of the house too! Don't the lights look great?

It's been a long day of Christmas-y activity! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

She Art - Christmas Carol Angel

We went to see the play "The Christmas Carol" at the South Coast Repertory a few weeks ago, and even before we left for the play, I had this project in mind. Here she is:

The white night gown and top hat were taken from Scrooge himself. Snow is blowing in the Christmas Eve night. I broke from the typical She Art tradition and didn't start the quote with "SHE." I used my favorite quote from the book. "I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year."

I like how the girl came out, but the background... YIKES! What a mess! I wanted to make it black, because it's night. But, I didn't like it black. It was too dark. I tried to add white and colors to lighten it up, but ended up with a mess. I'm glad the girl covered up most of it... In hindsight, what I should have done was covered the background in cream instead of dark brown; and not been so afraid to cover up the play paraphernalia, keeping only what mattered most, the play ticket. Then I could add colors and have it not be so messy looking!

Here's the ticket from the play in a place of honor.

Here is another close-up of the background... I stenciled the snowflakes with modeling paste. It adds some fun dimention! I don't know why I used blue instead of green. I guess I thought it might lighten it up more.

New Flash! Our house is decorated for Christmas! I'll post some photos later. Now it's time for the annual Bunco Christmas party! Good Night All!

Happy Birthday Olivia!

Enjoy your day!!!

She Pair Drawing...

Here is a pair of girls drawn by Cheryl. Aren't they cute? I think I'll do a She Art based on these two!

Girls in Hats....

Knowing my current obsession with mixed media girls, it's no wonder that I LOVE this idea by Junelle... Girls in Hats!

I don't know if I'll actually make any, but I started drawing hat pictures just in case (all on yellow post-its of course).

Speaking of girls in hats...

They brought a photo booth to the company Christmas Party! A couple of my running friends Shanaz (left) and Paloma (middle) talked me into this little adventure. You can see that I'm starting to get into it there at the end, hahaha!

She's making me dizzy...

Jena is such a funny girl!

A Late Birthday Gift...

For my birthday, I said that I wanted to go up in the Great Park Balloon. We tried a couple weeks ago, but the winds were blowing and the balloon was closed. But today, the winds have calmed down and it's bright and sunny! The perfect day for a balloon ride. Nowadays, everything costs money... If this was a "normal" park, we'd have to pay for admission to the park, pay for parking, and pay for the balloon ride. BUT, this is the Great Park! Everything here is free. No admission, no parking, and no tickets to ride. All we have to do is sign in, and they call us when it's our turn. Here's Chris checking out the FAQs. The balloon is tethered, we'll be going up 400 feet, and the donut shaped gondola can carry up to 30 people. There were only 6 other people in the gondola with us, so there was plenty of room to move around.

Here it comes! You can see the cable that tethers it to the ground and the shape of the gondola in this picture.

And here we go!!!

There's Jim and Chris on the other side of the gondola.

There's a good view of the Great Park area. Eventually, the Great Park will take up the entire marine base, but right now it only covers a tiny corner. There's a merry-go-round, a couple museums, an agricultural area, and a hanger that they converted into classrooms and meeting areas. They also fill it with ice for ice skating in the winter.

Here's a view of the business end of the base. It's still filled with offices and hangers. If you look past the hanger's off into the distance, that's where we live.

The old runways are still here too... If you watch American Top Gear, you might see the Great Park balloon in the background, because this is where the Top Gear race course is...

Here is a view of the soccer fields and agricultural areas.

I couldn't resist taking a panorama of Saddleback Mountain from the balloon. I put it up in the blog header temporarily. Thanks for stopping by!

Being Sketchy

The She Art instructor, Christy, doesn't use any patterns for her She Art girls. She doesn't even draw a cutting line on her patterned paper. She just grabs the scissors and starts cutting! I can't do it! I think it's the engineer in me. I have to plan... I have to sketch it all out... I have to make a pattern... I have to trace my pattern on my paper... THEN I CUT!

I do most of my sketching at work! {gasp} Well, some people surf the Internet when they have a few free minutes... me I like to sketch. I used to carry around an engineering notebook, but gave up on that when it started looking more like a sketch book, hahaha. Now I carry around a yellow sticky post-it pad. Now when I make sketches that I want to take home, I can just take the sticky note instead of having to Xerox my engineering notebook.

Here are my last two sketches. They are made on two post-its stuck together to get the height I needed. The first you might recognize as the Pride and Prejudice girl. The other girl is going to be a Christmas Carol Angel. Right now she's wearing a top hat, red scarf, and a white night gown. I'm rethinking the night gown, she might end up wearing a Victorian era dress.

Here's a post-it sketch of Jena. What do you think? Is it a good likeness? hahaha!

This "sketch" is by Chris. A few weeks ago we had a problem with the lawn mower. When Chris plugged it in, it caused a surge that flipped off a circuit breaker. He didn't know that at the time, and he was the only one home. So, he went through the entire house testing every outlet to try and find a pattern to the outage.

This is an accurate floor plan of our house and every outlet in it. That's my boy! He's an engineer in the making!

Well, that's all I had for today!
Have a good evening everyone!

Another Christmas Card

When I saw this card by Mary VP, I knew that it would make a GREAT Christmas card!

Here is mine using the Unity Ippity stamp set, Totally Happy... it's pretty much the same card. I gave it more of a clean look by leaving the bird solid. I also added glitter stickles to the white areas in the fence to make it look like snow. Then I added an elegant Christmas sentiment and I have another Christmas card ready to go!

Thanks for stopping by!

Friday FWF

It's FWF Friday again, and I'm continuing my quest to finish Christmas cards! Here is my latest card:

Thanks for stopping by!