Our very own Rudolf

When I saw what Tartan Kiwi over at Craft and Nappies had made for her Christmas Ornaments I had to smile. Her Rudolf ornaments were so CUTE and so I asked if she would like to do a one-off swap. Luckily she agreed and so in the post we received our very own lovely little Rudolf in a little woven heart basket...

Isn't he gorgeous? And here's a close-up of Rudolf in all his cuteness...

P.S. Tartan Kiwi's blog is well worth a read. She has a list of crafty tasks to carry out and it's fun seeing her progress. She is also due to give birth to her 2nd baby any day now...

JYC Update

I'm getting somewhere with my jyc (Journal Your Christmas) 2010 album. I have been writing down some notes each day in a notebook even if I can't get my page done and I've been thinking about what photos I can include.
A big help was finding this software which allows you to put more than 1 image on a 4 by 6 print without Photoshop. Seriously helpful in general and awesome for this project as my pages aren't big enough for full size pictures.
Here are the pages I have completed so far.

Day 1 - Manifesto

Day 2 - the prompt was about the weather, I mentioned it a bit but mostly this page is about our roadtrip to Rotorua (hope to post some bigger photos from the roadtrip over the next few days)

Day 4 - I skipped the prompt topic altogether and talked about heading home from Rotorua

Day 5 is about Advent - I talked about counting down and also putting up the Christmas tree

Day 3 is a work-in-progress - it needs a little something extra. Day 7 is half done and I haven't done anything for Day 6 yet (except my notes on the day)

I am trying to follow the prompts mostly but if they don't really apply or something more exciting happens that day I will make more of a December Daily page.

As mentioned in my earlier post I am keeping it simple and not getting too focused on the scrapbook-y details. It's more about capturing baby's first Christmas and making sure I can get it done in the small amount of me-time I have these days!

Hope to be back with a few more pages in a couple of days :-)

All of my Journal Your Christmas Posts can be found here.

Simple Pleasures

Taping two candy canes together to make little hearts

Red carnations - $2.99 a bunch at New World

A felt flower hair tie bought at Brown Sugar Cafe in Taihape

Milky Mint Hot Chocolate in my starbucks candy cane mug, complete with chocolate spoon

A sticky Christmas Tree on my window 

Add to that a gently snoring baby asleep beside me and I might just be in heaven :-)

Christmas Wreath

We've never had a Christmas Wreath before but I've seen some lovely ones this year and decided to have a go at making one for our front door.

I got a plain white wicker heart for $10 (it was on sale) and a length of red tinsel and some candy canes. 

I tied the tinsel round the wreath and then wrapped it round and round until all the wicker was covered. I bunched it up as I went to make it nice and thick and when I got back to where I started I tucked in the loose end.

Then I stuck some candy canes to the tinsel using double sided tape. I tied some ribbon round and used a Command removable hook to hang it on our door.

Pretty simple but I like it. 

Kiwi Christmas Ornament Swap...the finished products :-)

My ornaments have been posted and should have all reached their recipients by now so I can finally share what I made here on the blog.

To begin with I thought I would make a felt tree ornament and even made a prototype. But whilst I think it's quite cute it's not exactly great standards of sewing! So that one is just for me and I moved onto Plan B instead.

I've seen quite a few little photo frame ornaments around this year and decided to have a go at making something along those lines. It fitted in well with my love of scrapbooking as well.

So here is what I came up with...

And here are the 5 ornaments I made for the swap plus the one I made for me (complete with cute baby photo!).

And we all know that the packaging of wee parcels can make it so much more exciting to receive them so I made envelopes (from hot pink card!) and hand drew borders on address labels. I wrapped the ornaments themselves in tissue paper and also included a little card and chocolate santa with each one.

I really hope my swap partners like them and find a lovely photo to put in theirs.

And once I've received all my ornaments I'll be sure to post a picture of them all together :-)

Stuff we love: MOO Cards

Don't you just love exciting mail?

Little parcels that you are expecting and you check the mail box every day with anticipation and when the parcel finally arrives you rip open the jiffy bag as quick as you can to get to what's inside!
On Wednesday I received a little parcel such as this...

A couple of weeks ago I ordered some Mini Moo cards. Moo.com had a sale and I couldn't resist. It was an impulse purchase, not something I had been planning and before I knew it I had uploaded 5 recent photos that I loved and designed my own little tiny cards.

They are part of a grand plan that will be revealed if it comes to fruition but in the meantime I will keep opening my tiny box and look at my lovely mini cards!

I had hoped they would arrive before I sent my Christmas ornaments so I could send one in each little parcel but it was not to be. Nevermind.

And I think I might start squirelling away favourite photos in a special folder ready for my next order...you get 100 cards in the box and they can all have different images on if you wish.

And here they are in all their glory....cute huh?

It's nearly Christmas :-)

Happy December Everyone :-)

And Happy 1st Day of Summer Kiwi's :-)

I managed to get my Christmas journal covers and pages made up yesterday during the baby's nap times.

I kept it simple and used some brown corrugated card I had (I think it's US sizing so 8.5 by 11 inches) cut in half for the front and back covers. I inked the ridges with my green stamp (the same one I used to ink the page numbers) and then stuck on a piece of pink card, added the holly embellishment (one I made years ago for a Christmas card but didn't get round to using) and the letters and numbers. I had hoped to use glittery letters and numbers but my alphabets are pretty depleted and I didn't have quite enough.

The pages inside are a mix of black and burgandy card (I couldn't find any white card and the burgandy looked reasonably festive) cut a little smaller than the covers.

I've hole punched the covers and all the pages and will join it all together with book-rings. I need to get 2 in the right size as I only have 1 that's too small at the moment!

Here's what it looks like...

 

I might have to add some ribbon or more embellishments at a later date but for now it will do!

And now it's just a matter of waiting for the first prompt to come through. The time difference goes against me a little as I end up a day behind...by the time I get the 1st Dec prompt it'll probably be the 2nd Dec here.

I won't post pages everyday - probably do a few together in 1 post a couple of times a week and intersperse it with other blog posts.

In other Christmas-related-news, I made it to the post shop yesterday and spent an obscene amount of money posting all my overseas Christmas cards and some parcels. Still a couple of parcels to send to friends but they require a few small purchases first.
Good job Christmas is only once a year or the price of postage alone would bankrupt me!

I've already sneaked a few decorations up here and there but might have to get more decorations up over the weekend.