Tis the season...

Today is the first day of advent. The Christmas season has officially begun! Christmas music has already been playing in my van for a month. The Thanksgiving wreath is down. The pumpkins are ready to be put away. And the adventure of living in under 300 square feet has once again presented challenges.

I knew I wouldn't be able to put up a tree. But I hadn't really thought about where presents would go. I'm not really a last minute shopper. (Everything else I do is last minute.)  I tend to buy little things all year long for Christmas. We don't really do big, expensive gifts for Christmas. Everyone gets several gifts, most of them under $10.00. So there isn't that huge, memorable Christmas present each year. If you can imagine, between my brother's family and mine, 7-9 kids, plus a few spouses now, and usually a few grandchildren sprinkled in, plus 6-8 adults, all opening presents at the same time. There's always lots of wild chaos with tons of paper on the floor. It's awesome, crazy fun.

In our house I had a couple of places where I kept my stash. Since there isn't any room in the RV for it, I've found a few places to stick things. For now there are a few bags of random things in my van, a few in hubby's car, and a couple of items stashed in storage. Now the real challenge will be remembering where I hid things, which could prove to be interesting. I guess I'll wait until the last minute to wrap everything. Yay! Anyone want to come over December 24th and help? Lol

Blessings to you during this beautiful time of year. And let's all try to remember to keep the main thing the main thing. It's all about the greatest gift of all time. Jesus.

Renea

12 hour crop!

We have met the minimum to hold the crop this Saturday at Michaels, Flowood! Woohoo! I would still like to have a couple more croppers. If anyone is interested let me know!
9am-8:45pm, $10.00
Door prizes!

Downsizing sale . . .

Take a look at my Matildy Jane Designs Facebook page for lots of things I have for sale! Gotta clear out some product.

Another favorite and a little tutorial . . .

These layouts are from a DCWV sketch that we had for Scrap-IN at Michaels. The papers are all from the DCWV paper pad, Vintage Collector, which I absolutely LOVE! The only thing I added was the little chalkboard titles, 1st beach trip, 1st Disney trip, the 2 black mats and the mat under the zigzag on the second page. Those are Recollections chalkboard paper found in the open stock 12x12 paper at Michaels. I used a white chalk marker for those titles. You can find chalk markers in most Michaels over close to craft paint. They come in a set of 4. I can't remember right now what comes in the package, I think 2 white, a red, and a blue, maybe. You can also get colored chalk markers. I love these things! 

So a little info on the sketch. (I will try to post a picture later. Don't have one at home.)

Sometimes people look at a sketch and think they can't use it because their pictures are the wrong orientation, or too big, or too small, or whatever. Don't be afraid to alter the sketch! The first one was actually supposed to have been turned the other way. But that didn't work for the pictures I wanted to use. So I just flipped it on it's side. Simple!

I also changed up the title and embellishments a bit. The frames were all cut out of the paper, as were the hearts and the 'I Love U'. The zigzags (known by some as Chevrons) are from a whole page of, well, zig zags! I just cut them apart. Fun! And on the detail shots you can see that some of the hearts and zigzags are glittered around the edge, already done for you in the paper pad, as was the 'Make Good Things Happen'! No stickles or glitter needed! Woot! I did use a couple of circle punches to get those circles on the second page. Isn't it awesome when you can just take a paper pad, scissors, and glue and do an entire layout? 

Love it! 

There are 2 detail shots of the 'I Love You' for a reason. I used 2 different thicknesses of foam tape to pop that up. Don't have 2 thicknesses? Just use one behind your lowest embellie and double the foam dots to make the higher one. Yep, just pop one on top of the other. And see all that striped fun inside the brown frame? Well, keep reading and I'll show you the easiest way to make that!

Now for a little tutorial . . .
You know all those little paper pieces you end up with after crafting? Come on, you know you have them. And you horde them because ONE DAY you might need them? I really know nothing about that. I've only heard that some of my friends do this. Not me. Yeah, right. lolWell, here's an idea. You start with a piece of cardstock, any color, doesn't matter. Cut it to the size of your finished embellisment. Run it through a xyron. If you don't have a xyron, you could use any dry adhesive, even a glue stick. I just prefer the xyron. You do have to make sure that the entire piece is covered with sticky.Peel back a little of the plastic covering.Start placing your strips side by side over the sticky. (I inked first with Distress Ink.) Continue until you have the whole piece covered. Then trim the excess from the back. Viola! A beautiful embellishment from that stuff you thought you should have thrown away but just couldn't bring yourself to do it!

Have a creative Friday!

Well, as Porky says, 'Ehhh, th-th-th-that's all, folks!' 

Blessings, 

Renea

A few of my favorite things at Michaels right now . . .

Over the next few days/weeks, I will be posting pics of a few of my favorite things at Michaels right now. This is the first of numerous posts coming. Get ready to do some shopping!

DCWV Ultimate Sports 12x12 paper pad. Regular price $19.99. I rarely use sports related papers. Honestly, I don't usually like them. But these are just awesome. I love the baseball mitt and the stadium shot. Actually, I didn't find any papers in this stack that I didn't like! So now I just need more pics of the grandkids playing sports! I'm planning on working on a few layouts this weekend of little man, Freelyn. Gotta get some pics of big boy Gavin to work on. 

Hey, Andie, did you hear that? lol

Dear blog . . .

Dear blog,
I am so sorry for neglecting you. I'm afraid it will be a while longer before I faithfully check in with you. See, we moved into our RV. We thought we had things figured out for all the high tech gadgets we use. But, alas, as Mr. Murphy would have it, we still don't have internet. And typing from my phone with Mr. Autocorrect is just not fun.

Here is a picture of our new, very much smaller home sweet home. (We are adjusting. No murderous threats . . . Yet. Lol)

Hopefully I will be visiting you regularly soon. Thank you for understanding.

Your long lost friend,
Renea

We are moving . . .

Yes, we are moving. I would almost rather be water boarded than to move. I dislike the whole process. The packing. The deciding what to pack, what to get rid of, what to sell, what to give away. Then the moving itself. I really hate it.

But this move is different. We aren't moving because we found a nicer house or have a job transfer to another city. We are moving because of the crime in our area. After our home being broken into several (I think 7) times, our cars being broken into, even having the plants on our front porch stolen, we are leaving.  As you can imagine, this has been an emotional roller coaster for me. I can't tell you the number of people who have told us for years to get out. We kept thinking it was going to get better. We wanted to believe that it would. We love our house. We love our neighbors. We felt we would be betraying them to leave. About a year ago we knew we were going to have to look at moving. We hoped the economy would rebound and our house value would come back up. It hasn't in our area.

A couple of weeks ago at church I went to the altar to pray for peace, for guidance, for strength. My conclusion of that prayer was just, 'Lord, whatever we have to do, wherever we need to go, when I get up from here I need you to help me be ok with it.' The next day we made the tough decision to move, and have set a deadline for ourselves of before school starts in the fall. Since we haven't been able to find anything we feel comfortable with that we can afford, we are moving into our RV. Yep, hubby, me, and our college kid, in an RV. Can anyone say 'family bonding'? lol

I've been journaling some of the emotions and realizations I've had since we made this decision. (More on that later.) We will be renting a storage building so I'm not having to let go of everything I own. But I'm choosing to embrace the opportunity to make some adjustments in my lifestyle. One of these is as I'm getting ready to pack up my home, I'm asking myself this question:

Do I love this?

If I love it, for now I'm keeping it. If it don't love it, I'm letting it go. 

So let the purging begin! Huge yard sale coming up soon!

Blessings,

Renea

*As I was getting ready to post this, I was looked back at a few posts and saw this one. I had forgotten I'd even written it. It was a great reminder to me of how perspective matters. Hopefully I can remember to have a joyful heart through out this whole process. And, I'm sure my hubby will be right as usual, and things really will get better!

http://matildyjanedesigns.blogspot.com/2011/12/joyful-heart.html

Just keep smiling! Newest precious granddaughter.
Keeping this sweet face in front of me makes everything happier!

So excited to be having a 12 hour crop at Michaels, Flowood this Sat! Want to join us? Let me know if you plan to so I'll have enough tables!

May classes have been added to Google Calendar! Click the 'My Classes' tab. The link is at the bottom of the post!

April's classes are posted under 'My Classes' tab!

IT'S OFFICIAL!

I am moving to the Michaels Store in Flowood, MS!

As of April 1st, I will be teaching the PaperEd Classes in Flowood. Please come by and see me! We will have a Scrap-In (formerly called Crop Night) the first Saturday of each month, 3:00-9:00pm, only $5.00! It includes door prizes, a sketch handout, and lots of fun! Plus you get to use our classroom tools to play with!

I will be posting a list of classes for April next week.

Blessings!
Renea