merry and bright

was our Christmas. I hate the fact that it is over now... back to work tomorrow.

The 23rd we went to a park where they always put up a lot of lights and it is nice to just walk in the market and have some hot cocoa...

The 24th is our Christmas here in Sweden and as you can see it was a lot of present opening going on! At my grandma´s house.

The day after Christmas we always go out for a really long walk with the dogs in the woods, it is so nice to be outside after being inside with so many people for a while.

Then in the evening my daughter and my BIL and his girlfriend jammed a little in the studio. Fun times!

Ps. The other blog was updated dec. 26th!

have yourself a merry little Christmas...

...leaving...

So, we are leaving for Gothenburg and Christmas tomorrow at my grandmother and then to my husbands parents. I so look forward to some down time. But be sure, I will be here posting away!




Ps. The other blog was updated friday dec. 22. Welcome!

a new blog

I have had an awakening :) I bought Keri Smiths book "Living out loud - activities to fuel a creative life" and I am in awe over everything in this book! So much that I decided to create another blog where I will be sharing my progress and exercises that are suggested in the book.

Please come on over and visit me!!!

Offcourse I will not abandon this blog at all, no I will post here as usual! Oh, i am so excited about this I really am!

...my kind of saturday...

...ah, the company of good friends...kids playing without any fuss...good food and great conversation...just the right way to spend a saturday night in december :) We had a wonderful time at our friends house and it was hard to leave!
Now it´s tuesday night and the weekend can´t come fast enough!!! I want some time off!!! I start early on friday morning and are taking the ferry into town at 12.30 so thats a good day for me. I am going for that last minute shopping thing (blah). I usually don´t but the budget for this Christmas was hard this year :( Anyway I only have to find something for my husband, and I have been thinking of a book that he had mentioned a while back. I find him the hardest to buy for...anyone else? I can´t stop shopping for my daughter haha... I know it is really not about the gifts, but I just love giving out gifts on all occasions. I love to whatch other people open gifts and be all ah.. wow... because I have found THE perfect gift for them. I really hate wishlists...ok in way they are good because you get a little direction on where to go, but really it is so much more fun to find something that just has someones name all over it, am I right.
I am looking forward to some time off just being with my family and sleeping in/staying up late :) We are going to my MIL and FIL on saturday and meeting up with my family too.

I am happy to say that the magazine I was talking about in previous post is publishing yet another 2 layouts of mine :) happy happy happy :)

a little bit of this & of that

I just wanted to make a little this and that post today.

~ we set up that tree tuesday. I love trimming the tree! We usually do it on December 13th, but I just couldn´t wait this year. My daughter was jumping up and down she was so excited! When we were done she took a few steps back and just whatched the tree in awe. I love that too, that is like the essence of Christmas that I want to try to bring out every year - joy. Especially joy from children. Don´t you agree?

I snapped a few this morning, because those we took "in the making" where all grainy and blurry. Hm...well it is not easy taking photos in a dark room :)

I also wanted to show you how those altered chipboard letters I made look in the tree. I really like them up there. And I made some other photo ornaments aswell. Fun stuff!

Now the church. This is the little church that I grew up with in my dads and moms house. When mom told me that I could have it when I moved out I was so happy. It is a music box that plays Silent night (my favorite!). I reminds me of home...

~I put some mini albums in that huge glass container I bought at IKEA (do you remember?). I put it right by the tree so that it would look tempting to just open it and look at the mini albums. I like that. That you can touch the albums or other things that I create. I want to make them as sturdy as I can so that my daughter can have them in her hands and they don´t break.

~Talking about my daughter, she is in a fase (I hope!) of feeling insecure about herself. It is so important, I think, that our girls have selfconfidence and confidence at all if they want to make it in this world as it looks today. I feel worried everytime that she puts herself down thinking that she can´t do this or that. I want her to belive in herself and just absorb every oportunity to stand in the light. Because she is a smart and beautiful girl. We will work on that! Anyway, here is a typical example of how she can look being put in attention. And please don´t think that she is that miserable, because the minute the Christmas play was over she was happy as a bird!

~ I have been having a little down period moodwise lately...maybe it is the darkness that is outside these days or just plain depression...I have those periods sometimes and they are really a pain in the ***. But I have overcome them before and am determind to do it again!

~The Christmas shopping is almost done and the presents are all wrapped. I used the little tags I made and this is a little example of how they turned out!

~We are going to some really great friends tonight for a little Chrsitmas party. We are having some food and we´ll make gingerbread houses! We are looking forward to this and have been for ages. My daughter nearly freaked out when my husband came down with one of those "just shoot me" colds this week. She was afraid that we couldn´t make it to the party. He is feeling better now, so yes we are going. No it is the wait...oh the agony of waiting for children! :)

~I am going to do some scrapping this morning after breakfast, I hope! And I have to figure out a contribution for a CJ I have right now...hm...I will share as soon as possible! In the meantime I will share this as a little reminder to look back on the year we have had!

I was TAGGED!!!

OMG I was tagged by the faboulus Kim. I was just strolling by her blog as I do daily and just happened to see my name of the list of people she was tagging! How cool is that! So, here it goes!

A - Available or single: Married
B - Best friend: my husband
C - Cake or pie: pie (apple)
D - Drink of choice: Cola light
E - Essential item you use everyday: my computer
F - Favorite color: green
G- Gummy bears or worms: Neither (blah!)
H - Hometown: Visingsö, Sweden
I- Indulgence: anything chocolate :)
J - January or February: February (my b-day is on the 22nd)
K - Kids & names: Stina
L- Life is incomplete without? family
M- Marriage date: 2004-04-27
N- Number of siblings: 2
O- Oranges or apples: oranges
P- Phobias or fears: I fear the dark
Q- Fave quote: "Choose your battles!"
R - Reasons to smile: many...
S - Season: Fall
T - Tag 3 or 4 people: Marie, Lucy and Nadine
U - Unknown fact about me: I get chills when I watch a emotional movie or hear good music.
V- Vegetable you don't like: I like them all...raw onion maybe?
W - Worst habit: crying...
X - Xrays: cheek, knee, head...haha yes I am glowing in the dark :)
Y - Your fave food: fried chicken and potatoes
Z- Zodiac sign: pisces

This was fun! I can´t wait ´til the other girls make theirs! Have a good day ya´ll!

looky looky

I have had a "scrap- all- weekend" type of weekend. i love those, don´t you? :) I scrapped 3 lo´s which you can see here and a little tag project for gift tags going on the christmas gifts this year. It is also a great way to use up some of those hoards of scraps a lot of us scrappers house in our scrap rooms!!! A flower here, a brad there...you know. I cut up some cardstock as tags and printed out some little photos of the person recieving the gift and embellished away! It was a fun little project that doesn´t have to take that long to make.

Before

After

I also created a little something for a friend who is in the same CJ as me! She had her birthday saturday and I posted this is the gallery along with some of the other girls in the CJ aswell. I baked some cupcakes too! As she thanked us on our 2peas CJ thread she announced some great news!!! I am so happy for you Inge!

Suzie!

...did you see me at that great womens dinner at your church! I was the goofy girl with a pony tail and colorful necklace! :) I made this! It is a scrap mat (ish) thing...:) I made it with cardstock and all sorts of old and new scraps. A great way to use up your scraps by the way. And if you have a really great paper that you have trubble to find again, it doesn´t waste much! It is here too!

So, GO make one it is fun!!!

a mini album

A little mini album from our vacation in Mallorca this past June. I love how it turned out. I wanted it to be all about the photos really. (I have tried to upload the pictures so that the right page in the album would display on the rigt here too... but you may see all the pictures in a long row...if that is the case the right page is ontop of the left one. )

this was supposed to be...

a reflection on a sunday morning, but blogger was messed up for the last days... :) I was sooooo lazy sunday and I was absolutely loving that! I finished up a Christmas gift for someone at work this morning. I made a mini album with quotes and a few of my own photos to go inside. I am hoping it will serve as a coffe table book or something like that. It was fun to do, but I can´t show it here just yet! ...ok here i s a sneek peek:

Then I send in a few more layouts to possible publishing to that swedish magazine I have told you about. Keep your fingers crossed! :)

And then I did something I would advise all you scrapbookers to do once in a while...go through your BOS at 2peas. I do that from time to time and I find new inspiration everytime. You know how it is, you see a lo in the gallery and put it in the BOS and you try to take some inspiration from it or lift it at some point, but if you are like me you have like pages and pages of BOS things. I love going back to like page 12 or something and see what I have there and what inspired me then. And you know what? I can see a lo and understand what drew me to it in the first place, but now say a cuple of years down the line, something else catches my eyes on the same lo. Am I making any sense? For example todays latest add to my book of scraps is this layout by Karla Dudley. I like the whole thing here, but especially the small photos and the text.

Then I jumped to page 10 in my BOS and found this one by Doris Sander:

I remember that I liked the title right away and that is why it is there in the first place...but now that I look at it 6 months later it is the composition that catches my eyes. The border is fab and the sewing also...

A favorite (still) from page 20 Marie Cox´ layout is one of the jummiest I have ever seen. I fell in love with it right away. And still I can just sit and look at it... I love the small photos and the calendar feel to it. I lifted this on and mine is the second.

Well, I think you get my drift right?! I love doing these things and as I said I advise you all to do the same thing from time to time. See what inspires you now with something that inspired you a year ago, a month ago or just yesterday! Have a great tuesday!

Edited: Haha...thank you for helping a busy mind BRADS!!!! Is the name!!! haha...

can you believe...

...that I missed that today is december 1st...which also means that the new Garden is up?! That my friends has NEVER happened before! You (scrapbookers) have to see all those very cool holiday projects... Makes me think of my own a little...I have finished the advent calender project and it turned out ok I guess. I would have wanted to embellish it somewhat more..but I just didn´t have the inspiration enough. My daughter loves it all the same! And that is really the most important. She got this Lego christmas playset a few years ago and it is really a nice tradition to take them out every year this time.

I love Christmas decorations and it can´t be soon enough to take them out. In Sweden we usually wait until the first of advent (the first sunday in dec) to take out the decorations..but this year I couldn´t hold myself...:) I put up the lights in the windows and almost all my angels (I collect them). It is so nice to have them out! Here are a few of my favorites. Oh..and that glass container and angel is the first thing you see walking in the door and it will be filled with gingerbread cockies we are making on sunday!

I am working on some new gifts that I made up ideas for in the last minute. My sweet SIL mentioned that she didn´t have any pictures of her and her boyfriend and I have a few, so I am making her a little photoalbum with a few photos of them. This is the cover...I am going to add a title of some sort...maybe their names or simply the word LOVE. I made the album out of cardstock and....um...MY GOD I totally forgot what they are called...it is not pins...ah!!! you know the small pin-like things wich you put in a hole and seperate to things so that they stay there. I am so sorry...but I am seeking help for this!!! Haha...

And my dad mentioned that he hadn´t recieved a picture of my daughter in a few years (a lie!) but I am making him an album too!