My Dandelion Wishes

Gosh it is so hard to believe another year has flown by. They seem to go quicker as I age. This has been a good year for our family with Jenn's trip with her family to Disneyland, Mom, Dad, and Sister Jo visiting in October. A good year all in all! TJ and I are still at WSD working with the dialysis patients, Jenn and John are still at Nationwide working and all of us have been in good health. What more do we need? Another layout I finished up today Playing with some new art medium Liquitex. Love this stuff. It is a gel medium with varnish and gives a translucent effect to the paper. Below the paper which is tissue paper and a dinner napkin have one coat on. Six coats later and I think I'm satisfied with the results. Love how thepaper napkin turned out. Going to make an envelope out of the tissue paper. Hope all my family and friends have a safe, prosperous, and Happy New Year

After Colleen's new dryer and refrigerator were delivered we hit a few stores. Country Manor in Gilbert was having a sale on all their Christmas stuff so I was able to get a few more ornaments for my tree next year. Colleen's new craft table from Pottery Barn. I helped her put the top on and put the dividers in. This is a beautiful craft table and darker wood than the picture shows

I have had these ideas in my head for a while and decided to see if I could get them on a page. I had seen a layout similar to the first one but as usual changed it to my thoughts. It was fun to dig out the sewing machine and stitch on pages again. I even found a spot for the machine to remain up so maybe I will use it a bit more. Anthony seemed to really like his camera and had taken over 40 pictures by the time they left. The pics are great and I need Jennifer to download them to my computer so I can use them. It is amazing the pictures Anthony took. No fear or limits and he really had fun. I wanted an informal family pic of us Christmas day. I have had my camera at least 2 years and had not figured out the timer. Well, I finally figured it out so we tried to get a family pic with no one left out. Yeah we did it. Not the best pictures but it was fun and at least we are all together. So my plans today are to scrap, help Colleen put her pottery barn bookshelves and desk together and ...

Christmas 2006 for our family was indeed very special. We"downsized"and tried to focus more on the family being together rather than the gifts. We had a fun day with good food,games and lots of laughs. Everyone loved their gifts but more important was the togetherness we had. Trying out the timer on my camera to get a group shot. Little Anthony had the timer figured out on his camera within minutes. Me???? 2 years it took to accomplish this. A new potato recipe we tried for dinner. It seemed to be a hit Prime rib cooking another Christmas tradition Food is done and ready to be served. Anthony enjoying his meal

My sister sent a big box with bags to open every day beginning December 13th.Each bag had one of the 12 days of Christmas poem. Too cute. Today I opened the beaded watch she made me. I put it next to the beaded key chain for one of the other days My find at IKEA the vase, reeds, mirror and the metal platter Love it Colleen made a stop and delivered her famous RUM cake and the pumpkin cookies. Good desserts for tomorrow The wrapped carmel chocolate pretzels are a surprise for the family. Close up of the famous rum cake Ornaments I made this afternoon I put 3 of them on the table My new monogram stamp toy. Haven't had a chance to play with it yet

It is hard to believe that it is Christmas Eve already. It seems to come faster every year. I remember as a child thinking Christmas would never arrive. The anticipation of all the celabrations, food, family get togethers and chaos of Christmas morning were looked forward to with great anticipation. This has been a different year for me. As a family we decided to downsize with the gift giving. Basically very hard for me as I love giving gifts. We are concentrating on being together and playing games with the kids.Of course John and TJ are so competitive that this will be fun. It has also been a more peaceful holiday season. Everything has fallen into place more easily and I'm ready. Yeap you heard that right I'm ready. House is cleaned, groceries have been bought, meal planned AND the gifts are wrapped and under the tree WAHOO Now I can sit back and relax today and enjoy. First time in a long long time Might even get to play with my scrap stuff The least blurry pic of my tr...

Had a pretty productive weekend and accomplished more than I had anticipated.Devine Memories had the neatest star box make-n-take so I met Colleen and we completed the star boxes. Thanks Sandy. I also bought more boxes to make some here at home. Then Sunday Jenn and I made match book treat holders for both Sadera and Anthony and my staff and after Jennifer left I did the BIG candy bar wrappers all in all a good day a good weekend!

This was the 9 PM challenge to scraplift and this was my version. Fun nite and I got 5 layouts completed.

Virtual crop with Amy and Nancy . Nancy did the first 4 challenges andAmy is doing the next 4. Last challenge is at midnite 8PM 7PM 6PM 5PM ok off to do 9 and 10 pm challenges

It's finally beginning to look like Christmas around my house. Besides laundry and a bit of shopping I worked on my tree and started putting up Christmas decorations. This year I decided to change the theme of my tree from Snowmen to red and gold. Picked up some decorations today and need to get some more. Many bare spots. So far my favorites are the red and gold birds and the red beaded angel. Still trying to figure out how to get a good pic of the tree lit up. Without the flash it was blurred badly so what you see is a dark room with the flash As you can see I still have snowman decorations sitting around. Chest by my back door with a big Snowman and altered H for holidays

So here are some more pics of our family celebration of Anthony's party All of us after our dinner before we left what a fun meal and experience The kids. Sadera was practically on Uncle TJ's lap the whole time and yes she had a cute sweater to wear over her"summer top" Jennifer did her hair and it looked so cute Using chopsticks. I think they should have given the adults the learner sticks Enjoying the experience Wednesday was monthly Stampin Up class at Jan's. We had a ball. Each of us brought a project to share and make. Jan gave each of us our named framed and a picture of 5 of us in the club

Anthony turned 6 on Friday December8th. It is hard to believe that he is that old already. We can all remember him as just a baby. Anthony's Birthday was celebrated on Saturday at Tsunami in Tempe. What a great time we had. This was Anthony's choice to eat at a Japanese resturant. Both he and Sadera really got in to the spirit of this Anthony and Sadera backing up from the flames of the grill Anticipating our food Fried rice being cooked Japanese beer is the best and goes so well with the food Fried rice shaped like a heart The onion volcano Kids were so impressed Opening gifts Staff signing happy birthday to Anthony Blowing out the candle on the red bean ice cream