a gift

I highly recommend Personalization Mall for their ceramic photo ornaments. I took a chance and tried them out this year, and they turned out very well. So pleased with the quality.

* not done YET *

One of my favorite things about Christmas is receiving Christmas cards from friends and family--especially if they include/contain a photograph of the family. It's a nice way to say you are thinking about someone even if you don't purchase a gift for them or even get to see them! And I love hanging the cards to display. I even made a Christmas card display out of fabric a year or three ago and have loved using it since.

It's sad, but we only have three cards hanging on it this year. I know it's early in the Christmas card sending season, and my birthday hasn't even come yet, so the majority of the cards will come in the next week or so, I KNOW, but, I am starting to feel terrible about it because we don't have a photograph taken of us yet... oh we tried, one nice fall day at noon, to take a photo outside with my tripod, but that just didn't work out. I'm HAVE TO get my family to cooperate this weekend with this necessary photo session. Especially because Shutterfly is offering a great deal right now.

Now, while I haven't made a desk-calendar I have made one of their wall-calendars and everyone who has received them has absolutely loved them--everything from the color choices, fonts, background theme possibilities, and the numerous ways I can arrange the photos--they will be so impressed this year with the photos on specific dates---like for our wedding anniversary and Aunt Judy's birthday!

For my hubby's first Father's Day I made a Shutterfly photo card which my husband asked to have scrapbooked :) That made a big impression too :)

So, needless to say, I am excited to be offered 50 free Christmas photo cards for simply blogging about how wonderful Shutterfly is--I use them constantly for sharing photos on our photo site, printing photos for scrapbooking (have to get to that... mental note) and making our annual Christmas calendar for our family. And now that my sisters have moved across the country and the globe, there is more reason to use Shutterfly! They need to see my growing, adorable boys.
Em, this Sunny Christmas card would be great coming from you in FL! Gina, you should use Shutterfly's birth announcements when your little girl arrives in a few months! There are so many cute designs, and it will be great to have Shutterfly mail them for you once again (from your address book; sweet, huh?)!

Oh, and here is the link for blogging about Shutterfly and receiving free Christmas cards!

Check out the great card designs they have---the photos in this post are all from Shutterfly's website :) I think I'm going to go with a photo collage if we don't get a good family photo this weekend. I'm also really lovin this Christmas letter style card. Does for me what I always attempt to do :)

Billy's new quilt

In preparing, mentally and physically, for the new baby, I decided to make a new quilt and theme for Billy's room. It was kind of hard to decide what to pick for a theme, since he likes so many things, but transportation won when I found the main fabric for the front of the quilt.

animals

Billy's been all about animals recently, koalas and monkeys especially, so I decided to make a book about koalas. I made it on the computer this afternoon during nap time... oh that blessed time when he sleeps and re-energizes... using clipart, photographs online, and two great websites: Australian-wildlife and kids nationalgeographic.

I have just finished printing and it's turned out well; printed on white cardstock to hope for a durable Billy-proof page. Going to cut the pages and put it all in a small photo book with clear pages; we'll see how long it lasts :)

Fun "Martha" Moments

After reading a book about simple sewing projects I blogged about here, I decided to make some cloth napkins for our daily use... we use so many paper napkins I thought I would try using cloth and see how well they work for us. So I bought some "fun fabric" and got to work last week during naptime and at night. I still have fabric for 4 more, but here's what I've made so far! Billy's only tried twice to throw out one of these (as he loved to throw out the paper napkins after our meals together).

[I told my dad what I was doing and he was the one to call sewing for fun a Martha Moment...]

VMware

De passed his test and is now certified in VMware (a software that enables one to make virtual servers, as I best understand it). He's been working on this for months, reading books, setting up a few virtual servers at our house, taking a class, and studying for the test.

Congratulations, Honey!

It's Amazing What You Learn!

So our humidifier smells; it stinks. It smells like a skunk, a skunk who threw up and left it for someone else to clean/enjoy. It's smells TERRIBLE.

I smelled it one day, but didn't know what I was smelling... [the humidifier is near the kitchen trash can, which is closed, but can stink as trash occasionally does.] De gets home and know right away where the smell is coming from--he has a hound dog's nose, if you didn't know :)

Anyway, we turn it off and I decided this afternoon during nap time is the time to clean it out. I'm not really sure what to do to clean it, so I pull out the users manual... Here's what I find out:

• We are supposed to clean it out weekly while in use (using a water and vinegar solution).
• We should clean the two base pieces, water tank, and the splash guard (which seems impossible to get to).
• We need to disinfect it after this aforementioned cleaning.

Who knew? I recall scrubing it out last year, and maybe even the year before, when we were done using it for the winter, but we've never done all this before! Go figure! READING the DIRECTIONS! What a novel idea, huh?

Church Cookbook

The cookbooks are due to arrive tomorrow! I'm so excited to see the fruit of my/our church's labor :)

Please let me know if you would like to purchase one. I will try to get a few pictures up in the next week or so...

It's a 3-ring binder hardback cookbook that comes with tabbed dividers for each food type (salad, soup, main dishes, desserts, etc) and a cookbook stand that is stored in the book when not in use. There are 190 recipes in the book, from 18 countries of the world. All this for only $15.

We are using the money raised from the sale of the cookbook to purchase new playground equipment.

Cookbook Cover

I told you recently about a project I've been working on; an international cookbook with recipes from our church congregation, the proceeds of which will help to fund the purchase of new playground equipment for those groups that use our church facilities (Sunday School classes, Daycare, upcoming Christian School, and the community).

Here is the cover of what our Twinbrook Community Church cookbook International Cuisine will look like!

Finally Finished!

I've been working on a church fundraising project that I thought of -- an international cookbook. It's been quite the project, collecting recipes, typing them, making announcements in church about it, asking people directly for recipes, and deciding all the printing choices... I've probably spent 50 hours or more on the project so far. Today I edited the recipes (twice) and created the paperwork for the selling of the cookbooks (it's a fundraiser for new playground equipment to be used by the Sunday School, Christian school, daycare and community). De has been a great encouragement, giving suggestions for making things easier and cheering on my progress. My sister Emily has helped too, typing and gathering recipes from the congregation.

I send in the paperwork tomorrow morning... sure hope I didn't miss anything!