It's All About The Journey

A Spa Gift in a Basket

I love putting together gift baskets and then giving them away. So when it came time for me to make baskets for the 3 oldest girls I decided that I would make them each a spa gift basket. I know that many of you prefer to make gifts using boxes that you make. I wish I could whip up a box and make a lovely gift using them but I can't. So I use baskets and tins.

Here is what I made.

   

Here is the basket all made up. I will be adding another photo of just the soap that has a stamp image on it from The Rummage Bin Winter Vintage Signage from Cornish Heritagee Farms. I love this set! I made many gift tags for gift bags that were vintage looking so I have gotten a lot of use from this one stamp set.

To make my gift baskets I used  cream colored doilies that I purchased from Jo-Ann Fabrics.  I purchased  Maple and brown sugar Potpourri and the Primitive tin holder from my local Primitive gift store. I thought  it would be nice to put the potpourri on with the bag opened. I added a buff pad, a tube of Vanilla butter cream body moisturizer by bodycology, a Yankee candle called Christmas cookie inside of a votive glass holder. I also added a small  jar of bath dead sea salts and a bar of dove soap that has the stamped image on it. I used Espresso and Cranberry Adirondack inks from Ranger and purchased from CHF. Once the baskets looked the way that I wanted I wrapped them up in clear cellophane basket wrap and then tied them up with a cream colored satin ribbon. I should have taken a photo of them all wrapped up but I ran out of time. Every thing smells very sweet but light. Just right for a long soak in the tub. :) I sure hope that the girls like them.

I still have the little gift bags of nail polish that I put together for Molly and Darcy. If I get enough time I will post them on my blog. They are quite sinple but they are sweet little gifts to give teens.

Just a few personal things.

We have had two snow storms in the past few days. I think we received a total of 8 inches of snow. It is quite pretty to look at. We may get snow again on Wednesday or we mayget rain. It depends on the temperature. Wayne and I did go to Hillary's home despite the fact that we were having a lot of snow. Thank goodness Wayne has a 4 wheel drive Ford Explorer or we would not have been able to go. We had a wonderful time with the girls and the grandchildren. They are so darn cute. I am hoping to post a Smile box of that visit and of  our Chrsitmas day by Christmas night. We shall see how it goes.  

It has been very cold here. Today I had a doctors appointment and it was so cold that it only took seconds for me to feel it through my jeans. The wind was strong and made it feel even colder. Needless to say my face sure did get cold. I thought it was going to freeze up on me. Ha-ha. I just checked the temperature here and it is 6 degrees. But it will be going down to zero or lower in a matter of just a few hours. Brrr.

I'm happy to say that all of my Christmas shopping is finished and that all I have left to do is wrap Wayne's gifts. I'm all set for my Christmas dinner. All that I have left to do now is finish cleaning my home. I'm right on schedule. I hope that all of you have finisihed your shopping. If not then I sure do hope that you do not have to trudge through the snow and cold weather.

Have a wonderful Tuesday. Smile. :)

A Christmas Gift Card Holder

I'll skip the part about my being a very bad blogger. :)It is the holiday season and I have been out straight. Unfortunately the only time I have for stamping right now is if it is a part of my last minute Christmas gifts. 

Have any of you been to the stores to pick up the little gift card tins? Every year I buy them and put my gift card inside and then wrap and put a pretty bow on each one. A few days ago I realized that I had not purchased any of the tins and needed to buy 8 of them. I went to Walmart to buy some and they still had a good selection left. I started picking the tins that I wanted and then stopped. They were 2.50 each!!! At walmart of all places. I could not believe that it was going to cost me 2o.oo to buy 8 of them ouch! I put the tins back and decided I would just wrap the cards and put them in gift bags.  Unfortunately, I did not like the look of the cards wrapped in paper but was determined not to buy the tins. So off I went to Dawns Stampin Studio and there I found a tutorial that she made to make a gift card holder. Here is what I made using her tutorial.

   

In the upper left hand corner is a photo of what the inside looks like. If you would like to see it a bit better then double click on my photo or go to Dawns blog and watch how she made it. I *love* this idea and the neat thing is that I had all of the materials that I needed to make it. All I had to do is choose the stamps and the colors that I wanted to use to make mine. The stamp set is Winter Post fromStampin'UP!  It is one of my favorite sets from SU this year. I love vintage stamps so when I saw this one I had to have it. Every thing I used is from SU. The background stamp is called Sanded. I used Very Vanilla and Old Olive card-stock. The envelope that I used is Very vanilla and the ink that I used is Chocolate Chip. To tie my little gift card holder together I used Ribbon Originals. This little  holder took me 10 minutes to make once I decided how I wanted it to look.  Now the gift cards I am giving will be an even more special gift because it was made by me with love. :)

Are you all set for Christmas now? I wish that I could say that I am but I still have a few gifts to finish up. They are very simple  little gifts that I have been slowly putting together. I will share them with you as soon as I am all finished. I still have more gifts to wrap and the candy boxes that I have to put together for the guys that Wayne works with. This Sunday Wayne and I will be going to visits with  Colleen and Hillary and the littlest grandchildren. We will also be leaving our gifts for them under their Christmas trees.Then on Sunday evening I have 2 Chocolate cream pies to make for Wayne to bring to work on Monday. So I continue to keep busy day after day. I'm sure that all of you can relate. This is, after all the busiest time of the year.

Will you be having a White Christmas? We will. As I type this post it is snowing again. We had a couple of inches of snow on Wednesday. The snow started coming down just before midnight tonight  and is suppose to keep coming down until we have 4-6 inches. Then on Sunday we will be having more snow. So I think we will be all set for a White Christmas. :)  

Okay, I am off to go and do more wrapping before I turn in for the night. I hope that all of you have a wonderful weekend. I will be back when I have something to share with you. Keep warm, keep safe and keep smiling. :)  

Warm & Cozy Christmas Card

Due to a severe ice storm that we had last night that lasted right into this morning, I was able to stay home . It was nice not going to an appointment or run all of the errands that I do every Friday. Of course that means that I will have to run my errands tomorrow but that's cool. :) In my spare time today I was able to make a Christmas card for both Molly and Darcy using the same design.

   

The stamp set that I used is called "Warm & Cozy Christmas" from Gina K. Designs. Both the little girl and the little boy in this Set have the sweetest little faces. I knew when I saw this stamp set that it would be perfect to make  Christmas cards for my grandchildren. It is also perfect to use for any type of  winter card, on a scrapbook page with children playing in the snow, on a topper of a winter treat bag and so much more. I love this set!

To color my card I used Copic markers. I have not used them in a long time so it was fun to get them out and color the image. I used the Wassail designer papers from Basic Grey, Always Artichoke and Cranberry Crisp card-stock from Stampin'UP!  I used the 120 pound Pure Luxury card-stock from Gina K. Designs. It is every thing I read it to be. I love,love, love this paper. It is so smooth and is a  fantastic weight . Finally, I can make a white card if I so choose and have it stand up and not have it falling down. I used white twill that I bought at Michaels, tiny black buttons on the snow lady, little red crystals on the hat and Dazzling diamonds on the rim of the little girls hat and on the snow. I love using glitter on images with snow. It makes it look sparkly the way that snow looks when the sun is shinning on it.  To make the layers look a little different I used a corner punch. Lastly I added pop dots to make the image 3-D. I wish that I could have captured this card better then I did. It looks so much better in person. 

As I mentioned above we had an ice storm here in NH. Last night. It was around 11:45PM when I lost my lights. I was not concerned though because we have lost our lights over the years  during winter storms. But we have always been very lucky about losing power for a very short time. This time Wayne and I lost or power for 9 hours. It wasn't too bad at first but but by 2 AM it was getting quite cold in our home. We do not have a generator. I put extra blankets on our bed becuase I was freezing. It does not take much for me to get cold. :) Anyway, we fell asleep thinking that the lights would come back on within a few hours. Much to our surprise we woke up at 8 AM with no heat, no lights and quite cold. I think it was about 9:30 AM when our power was restored. Boy did it feel good to have some heat again. Wayne and I are very lucky. As it turned out nearly 500, 000 homes in NH lost power from the storm and 400,000 homes are still without power and may not get it back for another 2- 3 days. Not cool because many people will be losing their refrigerated foods, will have no water and no heat. It is 28 degrees as I write this and it will be going even lower tonight and tomorrow. The reason why we lost our electricity is due to all of the pine and birch trees falling down onto our power lines due to the ice making them heavy and then they fell. If you would like to see some photos of  the ice storm in NH here is a link to WMUR. Most of the photos are beautiful but Wow it just goes to show what beauty can some times do. I wish that I could have gone out and taken some photos of my own but it was very icy out there and I did not want to bring my camera out into the storm and  ruin it. Perhaps I will have another chance to photograph ice on the trees. It is one of my favorite things to photograph in the winter.

I hope that where ever you are, your staying warm and staying safe. I also hope that you are able to take the time to have a little fun this weekend.  Smile. :)