Family...Vintage Tree...Awards....

Happy Black Friday!

Okay, I must be getting older since I didn't make it out to Michael's last night for their 6 pm - 9 pm Thanksgiving Day sale. My mom and I had a magnificent dinner at McCormick & Schmick's and quite frankly, my belly was sooo full that I just wanted to go home {gasp!}. Our meals were absolutely delish and we would definitely do it again. I was surprised to see how full the restaurant was...

I have a couple things to share....every year my kids get their pictures taken. I have a "picture wall" in my dining room that has photos of them since they were 1. I'm trying to get our family photo taken every other year...we look so different from our last one taken in 2006. I didn't buy enough photo's to put in with everyone's Christmas cards and I still need to make another batch of cards. I didn't have enough but decided to deal with the 2nd batch over the weekend. It took me forever to write in the 50 I'm sending out tomorrow. I forgot how much I don't handwrite...I'm so use to emailing and texting. I typically do short & sweet messages in the cards that I send out but there are peeps that I like to be "chatty" with...I "packaged" our photo's in glassine bags that I bought at Paper Zone.

I'll share my main Christmas card design early next week. The next thing I wanted to show you is my vintage Christmas tree. I'm a HUGE fan of Cavallini products. I have their Japanese Woodblocks calendar in my dining room. I have several of their stamp sets... Recently I picked up a set of their Holiday Bird Glittered Gift Tags...look what I did with them:

I love my Vintage glittery Christmas tree!!! Here is a close up of one of the tags...they are wonderful...you can't really tell but they truly are glitter'licious. I replaced their strings with the fabulous Stampin' Up Riding Hood Red grosgrain ribbon...whaddya think?

Stacey over at The Crafting Adventures of a Left-Handed Blonde gave me 2 awards. She is such a sweetie pie {from the UK}..you have to go check out her blog. She says the cutest things like: blimey, yonks, chums, Marmitey...lol....AND of course, she designs fab cards!
"This blog invests and believes the PROXIMITY - nearness in space, time and relationships!These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind blogger's aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight blogger's who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award."

~AND~

"Pick 5 bloggers that you consider as your best blogging buddies and deserve this award for their contribution towards the blogging community, no matter what language.State the name of the author of each blog as well as a link to each one's blogs.Each blogger (upon acceptance) of this award should do a post and show the award on their blog and put the name and link to the blog that has given her/him the award."

I'll go ahead and nominate 6 blogging friends. I'd love it if they can play along but no pressure...they can select 1 or both of the awards:

1. Catherine of Inksomnia
2. Angie of Schwoo!
3. Susan of One4Joy
4. Suzy of Paper monkey
5. Carla of Paper Pastorale
6. Elaine of A Place for Ink

I could soooo add more and more people but will go ahead and leave it at these lovely six people. They all have fabulous blogs and are super creative.

Whew! Hugely long blog post...thanks for taking the time to visit! I hope you all had a magnificent Thanksgiving and were surrounded by the ones you love.