I've done it!!

And.... before December is here!!  May only be a mere 1 hour and 45 minutes left of November but I accomplished my Christmas Card!  It helped that I earned 50 free ones just blogging about them! Have I mentioned I love FREE! And making things!!

I wish I had more time, but I seem to be far behind the 8 ball this year! I can't seem to wrap my mind around the fact that Christmas is only 26...almost 25 days away! I am normally so on top of these things! I would be the first person to suggest to the family to put up decorations before Thanksgiving, but I just don't know when it will get done this year!

Well, here is to checking things off the long list! Ahhhhh, it feels good!

Have you done your Christmas cards yet? Did you know that for a price Shutterfly will even address and send out your cards for you... I haven't gone there yet!

With Love Blue Christmas 5x7 folded card

Make a statement with Shutterfly Christmas photo cards.

View the entire collection of cards.

Leaves, Leaves and more Leaves!

Wow!!  So, we bought this house in this lovely place because of the trees and the backyard!!

It's one thing to view a property when the snow is melting, the grass is green and the trees are blooming... to envision the future and all the wondrous things we could do with unlimited funds! Then, reality sets in and it's quite another thing to understand the up keep of such a wonderful yard!

                                                  So here is our trusty rake... that we have NOT used!













And here are some of the wonderful people that we hired to help us out!! Amazing what you can do with blowers... I think if I tried it they would be all over the place, not in a neat pile!



Scary thing is we have this many
leaves every week!!!















And...we still have plenty more to look forward too!!


It's amazing what you find under the leaves....




















Here are some great pictures of the kids enjoying all these leaves!!

I love this... it actually looks like he is laying on them when in reality he is about 3-4 feet off the ground!

Annie enjoys having the kids to run around with!

Luckily, the guys doing the clean up didn't see the kids jumping in these huge piles!!

Final product: a nice cleaned up yard... well worth the $$!!  
Don't you think?? 

Free!! A lovely Early Christmas Present - to ME!

This is very exciting stuff!!

I love photography, I love scrapbooking, I love making gifts!!  What I don't love is that I don't have the time to accomplish all of this!

Each year about this time, I start to think about my Christmas card lists.  The list gets longer and longer each year, which is a good thing right? In the past, I have planned and spent hours making a unique design with papers and embellishments to accompany our family Christmas picture.  With my life so crazy busy and my card list growing, I need to channel my creative juices toward the digital product!  I'm excited to try something new this year!
http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-cards

I'm in between two designs... both have the cool monogram and I think I like the mix of color with B&W photos.  I am leaning more towards the Blue and Brown pictured above!

I recently saw a fellow blogger post about the incredible offer from Shutterfly for bloggers to receive 50 free Christmas cards!! 

This is going to make my life so much easier this season!

The last 5 or so years I have made Shutterfly Calendars for a select few!
http://www.shutterfly.com/calendars

They are so fun to make and even more enjoyable through out the year!  It is a very user friendly website and lots of options to really personalize each page, or calendar depending on how in depth you want to make it!


I love how I can even add family and friends birthdays or other significant events right onto the printed calendar... AND Shutterfly saves this info for me for the next year when I want to make a calendar again!


I will also be looking into some other gift ideas like stationery...
http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery
My daughter loves writing letters and what a great way to encourage her with her own personal stationery!!

I love photography, I love scrapbooking,  I love making gifts and I LOVE having it in all one location!