Serenity Finale

I can't believe that it has been five months since I last posted a layout of our trip to Asia.  I finally got back to finishing them up and using up my Bo Bunny Serenity stash.  This first layout is from our trip to Bangkok and includes some cute family pictures.

This second layout is the last one from our time in Hua Hin.  You will have to excuse the kissy picture -- it was our 9th wedding anniversary!

This final layout celebrates the amazing food we got to enjoy while in Thailand and Japan.

Since I had so many layouts using the Serenity line in this album, I decided to decorate the album cover with pieces from the line too.

I also had enough scraps left over to do a few cards.  This first one is based on Scrapbook Express's January card sketch. 

Last but not least, this final card was inspired by Bo Bunny's January card challenge: to have 70% of white space on your card.  I love the simple elegance!

Tree Verdict

I am here to report on our live tree experiment.  We really loved the look and smell our our tree for about the first week.  After that, the tree stopped drinking water and began to smell like over-ripe vegetables.  Over the next two weeks, the tree got progressively harder and deader.  Still green, but the limbs started drooping with the weight of the ornaments.  We took our tree down and put it outside before we left for Christmas and just took it to the dump today, where Jesse threw our tree into the huge pile:

Disposing of it was pretty easy, and Jesse wants to give the live tree thing another go next year.  I am less excited, but could be convinced (I am quite a push-over when Jesse gets excited about something).

Last Hens' Den Post

This Country Boutique layout is both the final layout of our trip out east this summer and my last layout as a design team member for the Hens' Den.  I truly loved working for the Hens' Den this past year, but felt that I should step back from design team work in 2013, which is shaping up to be quite busy!  Don't be surprised, though, if I come back as a guest designer for the Hens' Den at some point.  Head over to the Hens' Den blog for more details about this layout:

Christmas-time

This year we spent Christmas at my sister's brand new house, which is really cute.

Nicole showed us around Southington, and we went shopping at a nice mall nearby.

Then, of course, we celebrated Christmas and opened tons of presents.

We tried to fly to Indianapolis the day after Christmas, but there was a blizzard there that caused all of the flights to be canceled.  We ended up getting re-routed to Chicago, and Jesse's dad was nice enough to pick us up from there.  One good thing about having a snow storm is being able to play with the snow.  I didn't, of course, (too cold!) but Jesse's sister made a pretty cute one.

We were also able to play games and go to dinner and a movie with Jesse's mom and Butch.

Now we're back at home for a nice, quiet new years.  I don't typically make resolutions, but I am thinking that we should probably travel less in 2013.  Not that I didn't appreciate all of the cool places we got to travel to in 2012, but the amount of travel was a tad excessive.  Between the two of us, we traveled to five foreign countries (Thailand, Japan, England, Jersey, and Guernsey), eight different states (Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts  Nevada), and five cities within New Mexico (Las Cruces, Carrizozo, Raton, Santa Fe, Socorro).

Of course, we will fly to see family and will likely have work travel, but hopefully it will be limited (unless, of course, we go to Hawaii to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary -- I am always up for a trip to Hawaii!)

Chesapeake Layout

I decided to continue using Fancy Pants Country Boutique line for all of our east coast trip pictures.  This layout is of our stop in Maryland, where we stayed in Chesapeake City for the first time and took a boat tour.  

Here is a closeup of some of the embellishments on the layout -- I love how the papers from Fancy Pants Country Boutique coordinate so well with buttons from My Mind's Eye All is Bright line and trim from Teresa Collins Vintage Finds and May Arts.

Go to the Hens' Den blog for full instructions on how to create this layout.

Merry Christmas

We have been to a number of fun Christmas parties this year (this picture is of our small group's Christmas party) and will be spending Christmas with family.  Merry Christmas everyone!

Country Boutique

This month I got to play with the darling Country Boutique line by Fancy Pants.  I used it on this layout of our trip to Gillette Castle in Connecticut.  I love how this line came with corrugated cardboard, which was fun to use. 

Check out all the inspiration on the Hens' Den blog.

December Newsetter

The Hens' Den December newsletter is here!  My contribution to the newsletter is this layout of our trip to Colorado with Jesse's dad and uncle.  We were there just in time to see all of the beautiful yellow aspens.  I decided to use a lot of the yellow in Teresa Collins Vintage Finds for this layout.

Here is the entire newsletter for your viewing pleasure:

Open publication - Free publishing - More cards

Noble Fur

Mark this down for the history books -- this is the first year that I have ever had a real Christmas tree!  Our old fake tree is getting kind of sad, and Jesse wanted to try to buy a real one, so that is what we did.  We bought this cute five foot tree, which is really full and green.  

It was actually easier in some ways than I thought it would be and then harder in others.  We had no trouble picking out the tree and strapping it to our car, but it was more difficult to get it in the stand that I thought it would be (of course we realized afterwards that we didn't use one of the tools that came with it!)  We'll see how it lasts and how easy it will be to dispose of it before deciding whether we'll do it again next year.

Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving is the last one that we will spend at Pop Pop's house (he is moving), so it was special.  We also got to celebrate his 95th birthday!  As always, we got to spend time with lots of family, who we are grateful for: