Bloggy Giveaways Carnival

Yea! It's Bloggy Giveaway time!

I entered lots of giveaways last time, but {sigh} didn't win anything. I also didn't have a giveaway. But I do this time.

I'm giving away an autographed copy of Liz Curtis Higgs' book, Embrace Grace.

I've got a copy which I'm reading right now. It's easy to read and the chapters aren't very long. I'm reading about a chapter a night before bed. I'm not a great reviewer so here is what Liz's website says about the book.

"Embrace Grace offers hope for all of us who long to let go of guilt and embrace the boundless freedom God's grace offers.
Liz Curtis Higgs speaks directly to the hearts of her readers in an engaging and deeply personal way. Page by page, she conveys a simple, powerful message of encouragement, showing women how to accept the gift of divine forgiveness, step by gentle step, and release lingering doubts, fears, and regrets.
Wherever you are in your spiritual journey, Embrace Grace will help you move forward with joy and confidence!"

You can read more about it on her website http://www.lizcurtishiggs.com/waterbrook/Embrace/Embrace%20Grace.htm

So what do you have to do to enter my giveaway? Well... I'm glad you asked. I drink bottled water on a daily basis so I was thinking, there has to be some sort of craft or nifty idea to reuse all these water bottles other than just recycling. So, to enter my giveaway, leave me a post with an idea for reusing water bottles. Contest ends Friday, February 1 at 5 p.m. CST. I'd love to run it through Sunday, but I'll be out of town. I will ship to anywhere so feel free to enter.

The winning entry will be drawn and I'll announce the winner on Friday night. If you don't have a blog be sure to leave a way I can contact you.

To see other giveaways you can click on the link to the right.

Good Luck and come back and visit sometime!

Sunday Scrappin' #11

Well, I missed another Sunday Scrappin' last week. But to catch you up....

My TaDa's: In all honesty, I haven't gotten any scrapping/cardmaking done this past two weeks. I did help host a baby shower last weekend. Since the father is a huge University of Tennessee fan, the theme was orange and white. My friend Kim made the invitations and some party favors. My sister Jenni made the cakes. Another friend and her husband took care of the punch using a baby bath tub and rubber duckies. My mom and I made a couple of flower arrangements. Then I made some little pacifier decorations out of lifesavers and jelly beans.

Here are some of the pictures:

I put some centerpieces together with clear baby bottles filled with orange paper, bibs, baby rattles, pacifiers, teethers, etc., the lifesaver pacifiers and Kim's party favors. She has a post on her blog that has some better pictures. I wasn't quite tall enough to get good pictures of the cakes. If you have a moment, skip on over to Reality Show Reject. You can also see the cute invitations she made. They were adorable!!! She also has a picture of the punch table.

My ToDo's: I'm probably just going to try to organize my supplies and straighten my workspace. I do have my God's Girls scrapbooks to finish though. I should try to get those done. I've been sick this past week and have been battling a migraine today, so I'm not feeling particulary creative at the moment.

The question of the week is when do I find time for crafting? That's a good question. Too often it's 5 minutes before I have to leave to go to work or meet someone or go to bed. I always seem to get an idea or have the urge to craft at the least opportune moment. For instance, today, laying in the dark, wrestling with a pounding headache, I wanted to get up and go piddle at my craft table. The next second, I was berating myself. What the heck am I thinking? I didn't even go to church, my head hurt so bad. So I squelched the urge and then slept the rest of the day.

I wanted to thank everyone for their comments on the cards and scrapbooks from my last SS post. Now, if I can only get them finished....

God's Girls Scrapbooks

If you've been reading my Sunday Scrappin' blogs, you'll want to see these pictures. It's hard to describe just what I've done. A picture is much better. So the following pictures are of the scrapbooks I've been working on. Actually, a sample of the scrapbooks.




I took a mini photo album and replaced it's pages with scrapbook pages and added a ribbon to tie them closed.

Each girl's scrapbook follows the same layout. Name and picture on the inside front. The God's Girls page is also similar in each book with the color scheme changing in each one.

The pages pull out, accordian style. This one doesn't have the journaling yet.

This is the other side. The last panel on the right is the inside back cover. The flower there in the middle was stamped and then hand stitched around the petals. I didn't do that on every book. I'd be working on them until next Christmas if I tried that.



This is one of the panels. The flower is holding the "doors" closed.

And it opens up to reveal the whole group.

Since I have 8 books, I didn't take pictures of all of them. I will take a picture of each girl with their book, probably open to the first two pages. Those will be for me to go in MY scrapbook whenever I get around to making it.

Thanks for reading!

Sunday Scrappin' #9

Ta-Da's: I didn't think I would do anything this week. But, I was feeling a little crafty and needed some solace time, so I just sat down and piddled around at my desk. To my surprise, I made two cards.

Here is the first one:

Maybe not the best of scans but better than waiting to get my film developed. I had found this cute paper with the cars puttering across the page. I had a scrap piece of the green so I put them together. But I had this large expanse of green and thought it overwhelmed the cars a bit, so I made a car to go on top. I sketched it out and used the colors from the car paper and added a little detail with colored pencil. I wanted to add a little fluff at the back for the exhaust, but I didn't have room. The sentiment is from Printworks clear stamps using the Colorbox cat eye ink in Royal Blue. I finished it with a thin baby blue ribbon. I still have the car paper left so I may take this concept and make a couple more like this in different layouts (adding my fluff to it, of course.)

And the second card:

I liked the brown and green papers together. I stamped the design on the green paper with the letter "g" from a stamp set I got at Wal-Mart. I don't remember the name. I used Encore Ultimate Metallic ink in Satin Rose to tie in the copper eyelets. I had a hard time choosing what color ribbon and what layout I wanted but I think I'm satisfied with the result. I used the Absolutely Fabulous sentiments from Stampin' Up. In case you can't make it out, the outside reads "You're so thoughtful" and the inside sentiment says "Thanks for all you do". I used Stampcraft black ink I got from Wal-Mart.

I finally made a step to get back to the scrapbooks for my girls at church and did a little bit of journaling. Which leads me to my....

To-Dos: My goal is to finish the journaling in the book I just started and maybe add some more embellishments as I go. After that book is finished, I'll two more books to complete. So I'll get a start on at least one of them this week.

This week's question:
If you could only do one kind of paper crafts for the rest of your life, which craft would you pick? I would have to say scrapbooking. I can always buy cards or other types of crafts elsewhere, but a scrapbook has your personal photos and memories that your family can enjoy for years.

Side note: I finally got pictures of my God's Girls scrapbook project (mentioned above). I'm putting them in another post that you can see here. To catch up on the particulars of this project you can go here to read the description.

I'm also going to post pictures of some crafts the girls did and a table I did for our Christmas party at church. Go to walkbyfaith.blogspot.com if you'd like to see them.

Thanks for reading and good luck this week!

Sunday Scrappin' #8

I missed the last Sunday Scrappin'. I'm not sure what I was doing. Probably sleeping. I've taken a break from all things creative the past couple of weeks.

This week's question: Do you prefer to stick with only big name-brand supplies (Creative Memories, Stampin' Up, etc.) or do you usually buy less expensive supplies?

My answer: Usually less expensive supplies. I do have a drink/trash bag holder from Creative Memories which I love. I'm even thinking of getting one for my mom. She is a sewer and a coffee drinker, so it would be perfect for her. Other than that, I tend to pick up odds and ends here and there. I've found paper at Big Lots for $1-$2 for a package of 25-50 pieces. And I've found a few small stamps at the Dollar Tree.

So my Ta-Da's: This is all before Christmas. I made about 6 cards to put in a gift for a family member. I found a beautiful painted box at Hobby Lobby. It was fairly large, painted with a white background and light pink images. The inside was lined with dark pink velvet. It was very feminine. I made some dividers for birthday cards, celebration cards, etc. added some store bought cards and a set of gel pens. I think she was happy with the gift. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the cards. I ran out of time so wasn't able to. I also altered some gift boxes for my sister to use to package homemade cookies. She's a baker/cook hobbiest and makes tons of goodies every Christmas. We give gifts of her homemade goodies so this year, since I've gotten more into scrapbooking/crafting, I thought it would be neat to help her out. I got packages of white gift boxes and Christmas patterned paper at Wal-Mart. I made about 3-4 boxes for my brother to hand out at work. I do have pictures but haven't got the film developed yet. As soon as I do, I'll post them and explain what I did. (Seems I'm always saying that).

And for my To-Do's: I'm not expecting to do anything crafty this week. I have some programs at church that we're kicking off this month that I need to prepare for. I also absolutely need to get my bedroom and living room cleaned up and organized. My sister, our friend Sandra, and myself have decided to help each other with our New Year's Resolutions. Come on, we all know what they are. Yuppers. Dieting and exercising. So we're going to set up a sort of homemade gym in our basement. We each have a couple of pieces of exercise equipment not to mention workout tapes, etc. So, the basement needs to be rearranged.

And since I missed the last Sunday Scrappin' question, which was what are my crafting goals for 2008: Finish my girls' individual scrapbooks. I'm ashamed to admit, I haven't got them done. After working frantically to finish them and then not meeting that goal, I just haven't been able to bring myself to get back to them. I got so many contributions from the ladies at church that I decided to put them into a little booklet to put in with the scrapbooks. I had found a little tin with a slot in the lid to put a picture. That's where I'm going to put the booklet.

So, now I need to go try to prioritize all the things I need to do.

Good luck to everyone else for the new year and your goals, crafting or otherwise!

Halloween

Our church hosts a "Trunk or Treat" every Halloween. The church members decorate their trunks and the kids can go from trunk to trunk, trick-or-treating. The parents love it because they know their kids are safe. We also have a bonfire and hotdogs, marshmallows and chili. This year we added a drawing give-away which went over pretty well.

This is my car. I try to stay away from ghosts and goblins and scary type things and stick to a neutral theme. Last year I had a Hawaiian theme. This year I wanted to do something more traditional so I decided on pumpkins.

OK, I know it's a little late for this, but I had the picture so here you go.
I blurred out the girls face b/c I didn't know her and didn't know if she'd appreciate her picture on the internet. This was the only photo of my car though. My taillights weren't on, I think that was a reflection of the flash.

I'll post some of the other cars on the church's blog soon. (Walk By Faith)

David & Goliath

I worked with my 5th graders to create this bulletin board. The girls love to make things so this was right up their alley.

David was so cute. We used muslin for his tunic and leather pieces for his shoes, headband, belt and slingshot. His face, arms, legs and feet are foam and his hair is made from brown felt.

I know Goliath was the bad guy, but you can't help but love this version of him.

We made his face, arms, legs and feet from foam as well. His boots, belt, sash and, er..uh..skirt, are from leather. His "armor" is aluminum foil. The girls thought since he was in armor that it was probably battered from previous "engagements", so they wrinkled and scratched it up before adding it to him. The embellishments on his belt are also made from aluminum foil. We cut his helmet from a piece of cardboard and covered it in aluminum foil as well. Personally, I think his hair and beard are the best part. They're made from pipe cleaners. His mustache and eyebrows are fuzzy pipe cleaners.


We made a border of "rocks" (balled up newspapers), cut out the letters and hearts and stapled everything up. It took us about a month and a half to finish it but the girls loved every minute of it. The white square says "tiny".

I can't wait to see what we do next!

Gingerbread Houses

Our God's Girls group got together before Christmas and made Gingerbread Houses. The girls had a great time and I think the adults did too. We worked in teams of two or three and wound up with 5 houses. Here are a few of them.





Our "Host" for this Interest Day was my sister, Jenni. She made the gingerbread dough from scratch and cut and baked the houses beforehand. Each group had "construction" materials for their houses. They had pieces for the walls, roof and chimney. We provided a wide range of candy for decorating and icing for putting the whole thing together.

I don't know if you can see them very well, but I found the cutest snowman "Peeps" at Big Lots and thought they'd be perfect for the yards. We also had peppermints, hot mints, chocolate santas, fruit gummy wedges, christmas candy corn and marshmallow trees. Each girl brought a bag of candy to share as well. They ranged from M&M's to Hershey Kisses.
This one was in honor of Faye, one of the ladies of the church. Her husband passed away in early December and the girls were thinking of her. Faye had "hosted" our November meeting where she taught them to make purses. I have a few pictures from that I'll try to post. It was really sweet of the girls to do this for Faye.

The girls are very creative. They used the fruit wedges and lollipops to make "parking lot lights". They laid front walks with hot mints and even had Santa coming down the chimney.

We wound up having extra materials so the girls decided to make a house for the church. Unfortunately, we had a mishap with one side of the roof so it was an open air church. They made little benches and a pulpit to place inside. Santa was the pastor of a congregation of little gummy bears. I do have pictures of it and as soon as I get them developed, I'll be sure to post them.

In addition to providing the gingerbread and candy, Jenni also shared with the girls a little about the history of Gingerbread. Needless to say, that part wasn't quite as interesting for them as getting their hands (and elbows and clothes and faces) dirty!