TrailMakers

Exciting news -- I was asked to continue on designing for TrailMakers! I am excited because they have such great kits and fun challenges!

Speaking of challenges, for the current TrailMakers challenge (create your own embellishment) I created a snowman embellishment by fussy cutting him out of one of the sheets of patterned paper from the Paper Trail's January kit and attaching him with pop dots for dimension. I love how the puffy ribbon adds to the warm fuzzy feeling of this page!

Just a few more days to get your handmade embellishment project in! And, don't forget - if you participate in both of our January challenges, Karen will put your name in the hat to be a guest designer here at Trail Makers in March! Don't let this opportunity go by - you will love the kits we have here and the opportunity to play with them for FREE is awesome!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We had a fun (and cold) time with my family in Connecticut for Christmas this year. Rachel schooled Jesse and Nicole at poker . . .

we get lots of loot . . .

which we were very excited about . . .

decorated sugar cookies . . .

and enjoyed each other's company!

January Kit

I am so excited to debut the January kit from The Paper Trail -- I love the blues and the reds and the browns -- such a lovely color combination! And the embellishments are stunning! Check out the entire kit, which features Echo Park's Wintertime, here: http://leaveapapertrail.com/zencart

This trimming the tree layout is important to me because I really never feel like it's Christmas until after I put up a tree!"

Tag!

I have been having a great time working with the December kit from The Paper Trail Store (http://www.leaveapapertrail.com/zencart). I especially love how you can create black and white pages with pops of color, which I though was perfect for this layout of our first (and so far only) trip to the Albuquerque Auto Show.

For this create-a-tag challenge I used one of the stickers from the kit to create a journaling tag. I can't wait to see what everyone else does for this challenge!

Movies you can watch with Jesse

Building on my earlier post, these are movies I would absolutely watch again (in no particular order):

Kung Fu Hustle (2004)
The Bourne Trilogy (2002 - 2007)
Babel (2006)
The Chronicles of Riddick (2004) only for serious fans of mindless sci-fi action
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
Serenity (2005)
Seven Samurai (1954)
The Constant Gardner (2005)
Charlie Wilson's War (2007)
Primary Colors (1998)
The Social Network (2010)
Event Horizon (1997)
The Fog of War (2003)
Riding Giants (2004)
Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Movies to Hate with a Passion

Krystle and I just watched one of the most horrendous things I have ever seen, charmingly entitled Eat Pray Love (2010, with Julia Roberts). I hated this movie from just after the opening credits, though I will admit that my utter lack of sympathy for the main character likely comes more from me than any egregious issues with her.

Regardless, this spurred me to make a list of the recent movies that I hate, with a passion, to warn you, our friends in the blogosphere, before your precious evenings are ruined. Feel free to spew your own cinematic venom in the comments.

In no particular order, and without explanation:

Eat Pray Love (2010)
Atonement (2007)
Sex and the City (all of them)
Green Zone (2010)
The Departed (2006)
The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)
Anger Management (2003)
Bride Wars (2009)

Vegas baby, VEGAS!

The title above is how Dave summarized our trip to run the Rock 'n Roll half marathon. We had a lot of hang out time the days before, stuffed ourselves ("carbo loaded") at a French themed buffet, walked more than we wanted to up and down the strip, and eventually ran the half right through the action. Check it out. Dan and I set personal best times while Dave and Tiffany finished looking like they wanted to do it again. For my trouble I received a solid metal participant's medal and all the bananas I could eat, which turned out to be 1.

The highlights were a dirty old man and his acolytes handing out beer at about mile 4 and a guy in a Marines shirt that we passed at mile 2 rolling by me at mile 13.

Check us out:

Stamping

I have to admit that I do not stamp all that often so I am glad that The (paper) Trail Makers Challenge Blog is challenging everyone to stamp on their projects. For this challenge I used tone-on-tone stamping (a technique that I have never tried before) and used the stamped cardstock as part of my background:

I created this layout with the beautiful December kit from The Paper Trail store, which you can find here: http://www.leaveapapertrail.com/zencart/.

Thankful

We were able to see almost everyone on Jesse's mom's side of the family for Thanksgiving at Pop Pop's. We were also able to celebrate two very special birthdays:

We are thankful for lots of family fun!

Trail Makers Blog Hop

There are two exciting things going on at the Trail Makers -- the first is the debut of the lovely December kit and the second is a blog hop to show you what the design team has done with it! So first things first, here is the kit! It features Lily Bee's Christmas Town line with a good helping of embellishments, including Prima flowers, Thickers, and ribbon. You can get more details and purchase the kit at the Paper Trail Store: http://www.leaveapapertrail.com/

My favorite thing about this kit is that it is so versatile that you can use it for any type of layout. Here, I used the kit (along with candy cane stickles, which you can also find at the store) to create a layout of my inlaws' trip to visit us in New Mexico. I especially love the sheer red ribbon that I pleated and taped to give extra dimension and richness to this layout.

If you are interested in seeing what the other design team members did with this kit, hop right along with us. If you came here from Jen's blog, head over to Karen's next: http://leaveapapertrail.blogspot.com/. If you came here first, go back to the beginning of the hop at the Trail Makers blog: http://www.trailmakers.blogspot.com/. I am sure you will be amazed at all of the beautiful projects and there are PRIZES involved!