I participated in an inchy exchange over on the Inchybyinch blog for Christmas. Twelve of us signed up which turned out to be a good number. Don't these make up a wonderful little set? Click on the picture to make it bigger and you'll see the creativity involved and some humor too. I'm really happy about having joined in.

Snow!

Hey everyone! I know a lot of you live in snowy areas but look what we got here in sunny, northern Arizona! This is the first time in seven years that it snowed all day. We've only had a few other snow days and they ended and melted off by about 10a.m. but not today. It snowed all day and now that it's night time it's turned to rain. Our big dog Sarah had fun running in it during part of the day but doesn't want to go outside now that it's dark and rainy. Look at that palm tree - and I thought I'd even throw in a pic of me out in the snow. We were only in the mid 30's so it was cold but not freezing! Lol, I even got a pun in there.

Well we thoroughly enjoyed watching all that white come down. It is such a rare occasion for us I wanted to share it with all of you.

Christmas Cards

I've got my cards done and mailed. I took part in a card exchange this year and sent the original of this colored pencil drawn card to the person I was trading with (it was a group trade but each person was given one person in the group for which to make a card. That way we could go to their blog to see what they might like and make a card accordingly - a neat way to do a trade. No one knew who would be making theirs).

I liked the card so much that I decided to make prints of the kitty and glue them onto cards I made with Elements which I am learning how to use. Originally these were all going to be red cards with green envelopes but I goofed so many times on my layout of the words I ran out of red cardstock. So now I have red cards with green envelopes and green cards with red envelopes and the recipients won't know it was due to mistakes. The envelopes are handmade out of Dick Blick construction paper. It is actually a nice 80 pound weight craft paper and I don't think they call it construction paper anymore. The colors and feel of it are great. I recommend everyone try it for crafting. I think you'll like it.


Hope you are all busy getting ready for your holidays be they Christmas, Hannukah or Kwanzaa. It's good to celebrate something especially when times are not so good.

Thanksgiving

Well Thanksgiving has come and gone but I wanted to share with you a bit of mine. My granddaughters love to do some arts and crafts with me when they visit. Usually I'm too busy to join them but I almost always have something planned that they can do especially with their mom to help.

The girls drew and made some turkeys for decorations. I don't do well with decorating so I am always glad when they come up with some pictures or other decorations. The youngest (age 7) drew here family as turkeys and we taped it to the sliding doors in the dining room. I love her unique take on the turkey feathers. The next in line made this paper plate turkey and used a sprig off the Chinese elm for it's feathery tail.

My daughter found a square tablecloth at a Bed and Bath shop by her house that would actually fit my square table. I'd suggested that coloring some leaves in fabric crayons would make a great tablecloth so she also dug up her fabric crayons and brought them with her. The 3 girls drew most of the leaves (with cookie cutters my daughter also brought) but my grandson actually joined in and did one along with almost everyone else. I think only my husband and my daughter's didn't. We've even got Happy Thanksgiving on it

after first ironing one message backwards. You see, with these crayons you first color on paper and then turn them over to iron onto the tablecloth so printing is backwards unless you take that into account. My daughter spent a whole afternoon ironing the leaves on as we got them colored. Didn't it turn out great?

We had a great Thanksgiving even though it rained for more than one day. We go for months with no rain, my family shows up to visit and bam, rain! The older kids had fun playing out in it though and they haven't had a lot of rain in southern California where they live either. My daughter surprised me with a couple of pumpkin pies so I didn't have to bake them, just one apple pie but I waited till Friday to do that. We had the usual turkey and stuffing routine but I also made a mushroom pot pie for the two vegans (my son and his girlfriend) along with leaving the butter out

of the corn so they could feast too.

Then during the weekend my son and the older grandkids helped my husband move the goat shed, their rock pile for climbing on (very heavy - our son moved them with our daughters help) and put up some fencing for them. We moved the goats because their hay attracts the rabbits and the cars were by the goats and the rabbits then climbed into the car engine to eat the copper wires. Big job but it needed doing.

My daughter decided it was time for me to get started on painting my kitchen. I had the paint;

it was a matter of getting to it. She got up into the corner where I would have found it difficult to get into so she really helped a lot. Doesn't the yellow look so much better than that icky mobile home wallpaper stuff? Oh, yeah, that gray haired woman is me. Boy the time has flown. We were reminiscing about painting her bedroom when we moved to Minnesota during her senior year of high school. I was only four years older at that time than she is now!

Anyhow, that's how my Thanksgiving weekend went. I enjoyed it a lot. Hope yours was as good.

A New Inchy

This week's theme from Inchy by Inch is Trees. I can do trees. I didn't have a tree stamp and especially not one small enough to do an inchy but I did have a tiny 3-leaf sprig stamp so I stamped it all over the top of my inchy for the tree top. Then I took a fine tip pen and added a few more leaves and a trunk. Colored the whole picture with watercolor pencils and wet it down. I edged the square with a wet watercolor pencil and felt it was done.

Hope you enjoy this little tidbit and wish some more people would join in. You can draw, stamp, paint, quilt, embroider or bead an inchy. They cover all the art stuff you can think of so don't be shy - come on!