Christmas

Today I am thankful for Christmas.

I just wanted to start by wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas. I am so thankful to be able to celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  I use to not really be a big fan of Christmas because I feel it has become far to commercialized and people are not remembering the true reason for this season.  Jeremiah and I have tried to teach the kids why we celebrate Christmas and that it is not about the gifts we get, but rather the gifts, or better yet the service we can give others. They are still young and learning and yes we still hold the fun traditions of some gifts and stockings. Jeremiah shares the story of the birth of Christ first keeping the focus on him, then we have followed a tradition from Jeremiah's family where we open presents on Christmas Eve, and all of the presents are from mom and dad. Christmas morning they get their stockings filled with goodies and such and this is what comes from Santa.  This is our family tradition, what are some of your favorite traditions you do in your home?

Today I thought I would change things up a bit and craft a Christmas card.  I didn't want the standard red and greens so I when with black, red, white and some silver.  I used white embossing powder to really give the pop I wanted on both the red and the black card-stock.  I used stamps from the Holiday Wishes set.  I really love how this turned out.  I added some silver embossing powder with my white on the little snowflakes and tied a sliver ribbon around the card to mesh the red and black better without having a bold line.  I added some black dew drops from The Robin's Nest for the final touch this card needed.

Here is a closer look at the embossed snowflakes, ribbon bow and dew drops.

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas with family, friends and loved ones, stay safe!

Happy Crafting, 

Tara

Outing to Old Colorado Territory Days..

Today I am grateful for the fun family outing we had last summer with all of the boys to the Territory Days in old town Colorado.

Jeremiah decided it would be fun to have the old fashioned pictures taken while we were there.  The boys loved getting to hold the guns and be dressed up like cowboys.  They all looked so cute too, even little Weston who was just three months old was all decked out like a little stud.  They were all so good and we really got some great shots.  I have had these pictures hanging around my room where I can see them because I have loved them so much and I was so happy to finally put them into a scrapbook.

This one made me laugh so hard when we first saw it, everyone was in perfect character pointing their guns at daddy, and looking at him too.  I used the striped side of the Cowboy paper from The Robin's Nest.  I used some brown mailbox letters for my words.  I stamped and embossed the scallops, stars, and paisleys with the Wanted stamp set and a copper emboss powder from Stampin; Up!.

Just a little close up of the embossed scallop circles.

Again I used the mailbox letters, and this page shows off my embossed paisleys. I placed these on the page with foam pop ups to give the page just a little more dimension.  

We could not have asked for a more perfect picture, everyone is actually looking at the camera, eyes are open and smiles all around!!

  I know we all really enjoyed taking these pictures and they whole day just being together.

I love having pictures of the fun memories we have made together as a family and love to be able to scrapbook them and share it with others.

Happy Crafting, 

Tara

More functional and usable space..

Today I am grateful for more functional and usable space.

The left page is the cubby space and closet in our master bedroom when we bought our house last year.  We have since painted the room a beautiful midnight blue with white trim, as you can see in the pictures on the right page.

It only took one look at this wasted space, for Jeremiah to say he was going to open it all up and put some shelves in.  That is just what he did last summer.  We wanted to make the space really feel like a part of the room and so we carried the colors over into the bookcase area and it really looks like it has always been there.  He gave the shelves a beautiful curve instead of just a plain straight across.  We have so many books and various decorations and items from places of travel.  It is so nice to have all this space to store and display so many of the things we love.

For this layout I used just some nice textured blue card-stock. Lined my pictures with a red.  For the before page I used a lot of rub-ons and a few dew drops for some dimension. 

Here is a close up of the bookshelf. We hung some rope lights around the inside where they can not been seen and have them on a timer so they light up the room very well in the evening hours.  

I really struggled at first scrapbooking these pictures.  The colors in the before pictures are just awful and they aren't exactly exciting.  I ended up really liking them when all was done and said but it sure took some creativity for me to be happy and feel like they were actually complete.  I used a journaling tag from The Robin's Nest and made a darling clothes line with items hanging from it, I kept laughing at this cause I just thought it was so dang cute!

As for the closet, we took off the bulky doors.  When they were open they hit the bedroom door so we decided to just take them off.  Shortly before Jeremiah left for his deployment he finished the closet.  I swear we have become pros at figuring out how to get more functionality and usability out of small spaces, and this was no exception!  He built these great square boxes in the top part of the closet that have fabric boxes in them, this allows for storage of the smaller clothing items or things that are worn less often. At the bottom where there was so much space that seemed wasted he built a couple more boxes and shoes racks.  You can see that he left a section on the far left so that my dresses still hang nicely without getting bunched up.  

All in all both of these projects turned out very well, I have plenty of space for just about everything!

Happy Crafting, 

Tara

O'Crowley Sisters

Today I am grateful for the amazing sisters I received when I married my husband.

This was such a fun page to create and I just LOVE how it turned out!!

Here are the O'Crowley women, a force to be reckoned with for sure!  What a great group of girls and I am so happy to be one of them.  From left  to right we have Rachel, Jessiciah, (Robin - mom) Robyn, Tara and Brittany.  We took these photos on Thanksgiving day and unfortunately Brittany was unable to make it, fortunately enough we saw her and her family a few days earlier and had this picture of her to combine with the other sisters.  I love the accent flower in the upper left corner made from tear drops and a small dew drop in the middle.

Here I added a beautiful silver embossed emblem saying "friends", the picture doesn't fully do it justice,  it is bright and shinny and really adds to the page. I placed a pink flower cut out with a punch I had and added another tear drop flower to coordinate with the one up on the top portion of the page.

Using the same punch, I made this cute trio of  flowers next to the picture of us girls.  I feel like it really gave the page the final balance it needed.  

Here is the complete page again.

 These are great women and I truly consider them all to be not only sisters but friends!

Happy Crafting, 

Tara