MY what a month!

Hello everyone,
Well it has been quite a couple of weeks. I won't go into details, but we've had a very stressful situation. One of my children has been in jail and unfortunately had to spend Christmas there. We were able to bail him out the day after and he is now staying with us for a while. It is a long story and I'm sure will be a very long haul, but we are taking it one day at a time. We appreciate all the prayers and such that have been offered in our behalf.
Onto Christmas. I love it when we have snow, and we sure did this year, but we also had some wind and that makes it difficult to get places. We ended up kind of rushing the family Christmas Eve party so everyone would make it home afterwards. We didn't even go to Mom's for Christmas dinner the next day, as her driveway was totally buried. We just stayed at home and relaxed. It was kind of nice.
I think everyone was happy with the gifts they received and gave. It's always so fun to see what is given and satisfying to see the happy faces and excitement of the recipients. We actually got our cards out about 3 days before the holiday. Sad, considering they have been done for almost a month. Things just kind of fell apart that last week. But we hope everyone will enjoy them even if they were late.
My work was closed on the day after Christmas and that was nice, so I had 2 days afterwards to get things sort of back in order and take down decorations, etc. I still feel like things are in a disarray, but maybe on New Year's and then the Saturday afterwards I can finish putting the house back in order.
I am looking forward to some crafting time in the next few days. I need to get things ready for my technique club in january - we're doing water coloring projects. I wish I could figure out how to make better use of this blog to advertise and show my stamping stuff, but I'm not too fast at learning and I need to have more time to read all the "tips" out there to help dummies like me get it right.
Hope you are all having a wonderful holiday and that 2009 will be everything you could hope for. God Bless!!

December Already

Wow, how time flies. It has been a very busy week, and the first 5 days of December are gone. I have great plans for all these cool hand-made items for gifts, but I'm not sure it's going to happen. Good thing I made my cards last month and they are ready to be sent out. I sent the first one today, and plan to address a bunch more tomorrow.
I am helping at the Burley Festival of trees tomorrow. Then I will be spending some time at my craft table trying to finish up more projects. I am trying to have a box of gifts made that can be grabbed and given at a moment's notice to people. I am excited about them. There are a few picture holders (sheet metal standing in a wooden stand) some cute little coaster calendars, some ornaments with rub-ons on them, and maybe some cinnamon stick santas.
Tonight was our church Christmas party. We had a nice dinner and a short program. Very nice and not too long. It is too cold and I wish it would snow so it would warm up a bit. Besides it's much easier to get in the Christmas spirit when there is snow outside.
Our puppy is NOT getting the idea of where to go "potty" and it is getting very discouraging. Too bad the people that had her, didn't let us have her a month sooner, so we could have worked on this when she was younger. I am not sure we are ever going to get her trained. It's sort of sad because when she wets or messes on the floor, and we scold her, she runs and jumps into her time-out box. But she still doesn't understand she should go outside to do her jobs.
I have to get busy filling up my Christmas Count-down book that Lois (my wonderful creative sister) made for me -upon condition that I would do SOMETHING with it!!! If I want other cool stuff I have to follow through on this.
I have finally decided I have to start my Christmas shopping, so I ordered something today for one of my daughters. The time is going fast, so I better keep working on this.