Kicking and screaming towards the holidays...

I don't mind hearing Christmas music at the grocery store.
I don't care if you put up your tree the weekend before Thanksgiving.
When someone says "I'm finished my Christmas shopping" I'm happy for them and more than a little bit envious.

But, for the most part, I'm not one who gets into the spirit.  I'm not cranky or bah-humbug, I just...I just like routine, and Christmas (holidays in general, in fact) really messes with that.

So you can imagine my reaction when I found out that I had to create a Christmas decoration using Silhouette's Advent Calendar.  I was centered somewhere between a knot of dread in my stomach and full on panic.  And that lasted for days.  Every moment in the shower, driving to work, loading the dishwasher and folding laundry was spent wondering how I was going to pull this off.  Surely, I thought, my Christmas non-spirit would show through, and everyone would know I was a big, fat phony when it comes to Christmas cheer.

And maybe that was true in the beginning.  Maybe I was faking-it-til-you-make-it, but just as that implies, somewhere along the way a switch got flipped, and I started to have fun. Then I started glittering stuff and then I started having a LOT of fun.  And then I noticed glitter in Kerig's beard and, well, you just can't get any more fun than that!

Maybe you're asking yourself "So what did you do with it??"  Or not.  But let's proceed like you were actually curious, shall we?

After all the thinking about how I was going to do this, I finally came up with the idea of combining two of my favorite childhood Christmas traditions.  Our family didn't decorate the tree until Christmas Eve (I know, right?  Ridiculous!) so we didn't have the same level of daily anticipation that "kids these days" have. We did get the cardboard Advent Calendars, and the best part of them was hunting for the day.  What was behind the door was never really all that great, but there was something about looking at all the numbers and finding the right one - that was the exciting part to me.  The other thing that I liked was this thing that my aunt made for us.  It's too hard to explain, but it suffices to say that it had 25 peppermint candies tied to it and every night after dinner we got to untie one and have our mint.  Twofold greatness: candy AND getting to watch the line of mints get shorter every day!

So my thought for this was to combine the two elements I liked best - the hunt for the right day and candy.  On December 1st, this will be nothing but rows of numbered bags. On the first day, we'll find the number 1 bag, and have the Hershey's Nuggets that are inside, and then rehang the bag with the decoration side out.  Every day we'll repeat this process, and as Christmas approaches, it will go from boring rows of numbers to lots and lots of sparkling Christmas and winter scenes.

 Here's a couple of the decorated sides:

Ok. I'm not going to pretend that I don't have favorites.  And this snowman and that penguin? They're the favorites.  You can't tell in the picture, I don't think, but the snowman's eyes and coal buttons are actually black glitter.  Who knew there was an actual use for black glitter??  Well. Now you know! Adorable.  (That is so not humble. But I'm just so pleased with them!)

These are distant runners-up in the favorites category, but it doesn't matter, because the cumulative effect of all these little boxes is sheer Christmasy goodness.  This is going to stay on the shelf behind the sofa, where it'll get seen a lot and is easily accessible to for bag-flipping-and-candy-retrieving.

Be sure to stop by the Silhouette blog to see the other girls' ideas for the Advent Calendar.

And if you're wondering about supplies:
Simple Stories Snowflake-Chevron paper (for the bag)(I *love* this paper and wish I had some left over.  the black/grey chevron is fantastic)
Lawn Fawn Peace Joy Love 6x6 paper pad (for the little patterned bits)(except the snowman's and penguin's nose - that's a scrap of BoBunny paper.)
Lawn Fawn Peace Joy Love Mixed Sequins  and Lawn Fawn Peace Joy Love Snowflake Sequins are the random bits here and there.
The glitter could be from Silhouette or Martha Stewart, and the penguin's hat is glittered using Doodlebug's Sugar Coatin Chunky Glitter
All the shapes except the bag are from the Silhouette online store.  You can see the Silhouette blog post for clickable links for those.
The bag itself is something I made so it would fit perfectly within the structure of the advent calendar and be wide enough to hold a couple of Hershey's Nuggets.  If you're interested, ask for it in the comment section and I'll send it your way.
And, ohmygoodness, is that another aflairforbuttons flair? Why, yes. Yes it is.  And I'll tell you another thing: that link takes you to the set of flair that has the one I used, but I didn't buy that.  I actually did the 12 custom buttons option.  I just didn't have a need for 8 (eight!!) Christmas themed buttons.  So I picked a couple of Christmasy flair and then mixed in some more Caroline-friendly themes.  ;)  (No. I'm not in the aflairforbutton lady's back pocket.  I just love these flair pieces.)


Thanks (as always) for stopping by! I hope your December is off to a great start!

The Spoils of "Another Happy Tuesday"

Hello folks! Today is NOT another happy Tuesday.  Heck, it's not even another happy Wednesday. It's more of a sip-your-coffee-and-keep-all-your-angry-thoughts-to-yourself kinda day.   But the good news is, I have a blog post to divert my attention! Yay for blog posts!

I started this layout over the weekend.  I've mentioned before how hard I find scrapping sports layouts.  I've also mentioned that I don't own and can't find a lot of blue that works with the royal blue in his uniform.   So I feel like I'm scrapbooking with one hand tied behind my back.

That said, I knew I wanted the word teamwork in the title, but I also had another die cut and I couldn't make it work.  I'm not in love with the finished page, but after several hours of shoving around titles and embellishments, this was a good compromise.

I'm also finding it difficult to find sports themed embellishments that aren't juvenile.  Even on my beloved Silhouette, the pickin's are slim.  So for this, it's stars (aren't all athletes stars? Even if only in their own minds...) and arrows (to show the forward momentum of the play) and a semi-generic GO! banner that I made.  (If you're interested in that file, let me know and I'll send it your way).  I worked in a little blue with the accents and figured green, brown and grey would work well enough, for the grass, mud and general overall grey quality of northeast Ohio during football season.

And the journaling tells why it was worth it for me to get the page done when I just wanted to abandon it and move onto something more scrap-friendly.  I love this picture.  On the way home from this game Ted and I were talking about the game and he asked it I saw that one play where Sushi was carrying him.  Uh. No.   I have no idea what you're talking about.  He went on excitedly, telling me about how in the one play when they were starting off at the 15 yard line he ran the ball and just as he was about to be tackled by South, Sushi was right there behind him and "he carried me for like 20 seconds!"  Later that today I was scrolling through my pictures and noticed this shot and sure enough, Ted's feet aren't on the ground, and sure enough it was Sushi (#71) and #70 who were hoisting him up by his jersey and carrying him - and the ball - down field.  Judging by the fact that my camera shoots 6 frames per second, he was only off the ground for about 2 seconds, but still: that's teamwork.

These are a few of my favorite things:
Flair: Minimal 1 flair at aflairforbuttons.
Wood veneer: Arrow Wood Chips from Freckled Fawn and they're colored with a dumb ole Sharpie and sanded a bit.
Enamel dots: Ombre Black Enamel Dew Drop Stickers, also from Freckled Fawn.
The washi at the top and bottom is also from Freckled Fawn.
The font on the main title is Blackout Midnight from Font Squirrel - and you know you want to check them out based on the name alone.

So that's that.  Things are probably going to be scarce here for a while.  It's Christmas in retailland, and theoretically we're coming up on final exam time for school, but I'm thinking that's not going to be a big deal this time around.  And no, you won't hear me complaining about that!

Thanks for stopping by!  Don't forget to say "Heyyy" in the comment section.  Not gonna lie: I love a comment or 2 here and there. ☺

Escaping to my happy place

As I begin to write this, the store has only been open for about an hour.  We've only had a handful of customers, but the tone is set: It's going to one of those days.  It's not a day where money will change hands.  It'll be a day of "why is this not working the way I think it should."  Which sometimes appeals the problem solver in me, but...sometimes not.

(I just gave the address and a phone number for a school uniform place that's in the next city over.)(Not the kind of thing that appeals to my inner problem solver.)(Although, when I'm in a better mood, I think of the scene in Miracle on 34th street where the Macy's Santa refers someone to Gimble's and the Gimble's exec have a fit.)

I might also mention that many of these posts are written at work.  My boss knows, she's sitting right next to me, so it's not taboo or anything.  So between customers, this is sometimes how I kill time.  This might explain some of the choppiness, dropped words and sentences that look like maybe they were started and finished by two different people. :P  But today, this blog is my escape, my happy place.  My oasis of sanity, where no one will thrust their problems at me and expect a tactful, hand-holding response.    And no one here will call me Charlene.  Ok?

Ok.

This is sort of all over the place.  I started it, stopped to make dinner, futzed with it a little after dinner, took Molly to her summer band camp concert, watched Project Runway and then finished it late in the evening.  Somehow I lost all my journaling room, but I think that what I ended up sums it up nicely - I love having a kid who's adventuresome enough to try some foods that others in her age bracket (and gene pool) might find to gross to sample.

By the way, the stars are something that I made in the Silhouette software.  It wasn't hard by any means, but I couldn't find anything quite like them in the Silhouette store.  If you want the file feel free to send me an email and I'll send it to you: cnd3167 at yahoo dot com.  I'm sort of half heartedly trying to figure out how to share files from here, but I keep coming across roadblocks.

Alrighty.  That's all I've got for now.  My 'i' key is sticking.  I think I've caught most of the i-less words, but if you spot one or two, that's why.

Thanks for stopping by!