12 Day of Christmas

I'm going to try something new this silly season and do a 12 Days of Christmas series! I will be sharing a variety of quick & easy Christmas crafts, cooking and sewing projects. I'll post one project a day, starting on the 1st December :) Feel free to leave any suggestions or requests!

Christmas cooking and gift tags

Thursday was our weekly Christmas cooking day at mum's. We made bacon & garlic sausage rolls and choc mint biscuits. There were more biscuits, but Craig discovered them and insisted on having lots of "taste tests" LOL He doesn't want to save them for Christmas, so think I might have to bake another batch he he


After we cleaned up from all the baking, we started working on some gift tags. We decided to keep them simple - using pre-cut tags, a packet of stickers, some Christmas paper packs I got free with magazines recently and stash left over from last year.

Clear mini album - Our Trip

As I promised yesterday - here is my 6x6 clear mini album I created for the final round of Scrapbook Apprentice :) **Click on picture to enlarge**

Layouts and acetate OTP

I realised that I hadn't shared some layouts and OTP that I submitted for the last round of Scrapbook Apprentice. I ended up scrapping 3 LOs - this was my main LO that I submitted (they printed a different LO though) with step-by-step instructions.


The third LO that I created - working with acetate was fun and very different to using paper / cardstock for a background!


After making my clear mini album (sharing pics tomorrow) I had a bit more of a play with the acetate and made some small OTP :) A tealight holder -


A key chain. I had a go at making paper beads - very easy and I will definitely make more :)


An acetate pillow box

"Sky" embellishment and "Love" card swaps

I had a lovely day at Simply Crafty yesterday. As usual, there was more socialising then scrapping, so will have to finish my LO's sometime this week :) Here are the "Sky" embellishments - always fun to see everyone's interpretation of the theme!


The card swap theme was "Love" (eg wedding, engagement, anniversary, etc). I ran out of time to come up with a new idea, so I CASEd a wedding card I had done a few months ago - you can see it in this post.

My card - I made it in pink, purple and blue again


Lorelle's card


Helen's card


Linda's card


Rachel's card


Sandra's card


Danielle's card

Cross stitch

Kylie brought me this cute cross stitch kit a few months ago. I stitched it up in one afternoon - I love quick & easy projects :) It took me ages to find the right sized square frame, but I managed to find this one at a dollar shop last week! How sweet is this?!?!


Just a quick share - another pony card :)

Thrifty Thursday - DIY garden markers

While surfing the net I found a great idea for painted rocks used for garden markers! I thought they would be perfect for my little garden bed :) On our Sunday drive we found some rocks the right shape and size, then gave them a few coats of matte spray paint. After that I drew the pictures and words in pencil (don't look too closely - I'm not the best artist LOL). Then I just painted over the pencil marks with acrylic paints.


And here are there the markerrs in my garden bed :)

Sky embellishments

This month's embellishment swap at Simply Crafty is "Sky" eg clouds, birds, planes, etc. I knew exactly what I wanted to make - kites!!


After I finished making the kites, I decided to make some tags as well. I think these hot air balloon tags turned out really cute :)

Sunday drive

We had a wonderful day today :) We started out having a wander around the PCYC craft markets, then headed off to have fish & chips at the beach. It was such a lovely day, that we decided to go for a drive around the beaches :) We stopped in at the Mon Repos Information Centre and had a look at the turtle displays (we will be going to see the turtles being hatched in Jan-April!).


The gorgeous beach at Mon Repos!


Then onto Burnett Heads for a bit more sightseeing, then the Port and then back home. What a lovely way to spend a few hours on a Sunday :)

Christmas cooking

Mum and I did a bit more Christmas cooking today to add to the freezer. We made 3 batches of rum balls and 2 batches of passionfruit biscuits - yummo! We just go halves in the costs of the ingredients and then share the goodies.




Mum's heading to Blackwater next weekend for my nieces' birthday, so no cooking next week. We will be cooking up a storm again the week after - we are going to make choc mint biscuits and sausage rolls!

Cards for "Angels for the Forgotten"

Thought I would share the cards donated so far for "Angels for the Forgotten" (see this post)! I went through my stash and found about 15 birthday and Christmas cards to donate. Thank you to Bev, Margaret, Lorelle and Danielle for also donating cards :)


Last week Tanya came over for a card-making day, so I made another 3 cards to add to the pile :)

Cards

On Sunday Craig and my BIL Adam took the boat out for a run and a bit of fishing (they didn't catch anything though LOL), so I took the opportunity to put on some DVDs and do some card-making. I used the new Stampin' Up! catalogue for inspiration and managed to get 4 new cards made :)








Just thought I would share the cute (and quick) way I packaged up some cards for Mum's birthday. I usually make a bag topper, but ran out of time so thought I would still package them in cello bags, but tie with ribbon and a cute gift card.

Stampin' Up! workshop

Saturday I had the girls over for a fun filled, noisy and busy 2 hour card workshop :) Thank you Lorelle for such a great workshop - we all had a great time and loved the cards that we made :)

Bunting progress

I've been so busy lately that I haven't had a chance to work on my crochet project. I finished the triangles a few weeks ago (Cathie went with a nice purple for her 5th colour), but hadn't stitched them together.


Yesterday I stitched the first row (5 triangles) together - very quick and easy to do! How cute is this bunting?!?!


I'll finish the other 2 rows over the weekend - then will start on a new crochet project :)

New haircut

After much indecisiveness about styles and length - I finally got my hair cut and I love it!! I used a new hairdresser (always a scary thing) and she was amazing - she took my vague description (layered bob) and a photo and cut my hair exactly how I wanted it :) I didn't get a chance to take a pic after I left the hairdressers (when your new hairstyle always looks the best LOL), but took a few self-portrait photos on my phone yesterday while I was all dressed up for Melbourne Cup Day :)


Today Mum and I started our Christmas baking! We made 80 spring rolls - yummo!! We went halves in the ingredients - it worked out to be $11 each for 40 spring rolls!!


They are now in the freezer - ready for Christmas entertaining :) We are making rum balls and passionfruit biscuits next week.

Angels for the Forgotten

My friend Kimmie is a very generous and kind-hearted woman who is involved with the local branch of Angels for the Forgotten.

A little bit about Angels for the Forgotten -

Angels for the Forgotten is dedicated to giving dignity, hope and joy to our community's most vulnerable who are entering foster care or living in crisis. Our aim is to put a little bit of Sparkle in to otherwise bleak and traumatic situations. Pure kindness and small gestures, combined can mean the difference between hope and despair. We believe in bringing back the personal touch to an otherwise cold and impersonal systematic society.Our aim is to instill the feeling "somebody does care" in to the hearts and minds of those women and children , who feel alone and isolated in this world. With your help we can all "real change" ,"a real impact" and a "real difference".

Kimmie recently contacted me with a request - she wanted to know if I could ask friends and the blogging community for some help. She would like some Christmas cards or birthday cards to give to the children that they work with. So readers, if you can help by making some cards that would be a wonderful gesture. I am hoping to get at least 200 cards - 100x Christmas cards and 100x birthday cards. Can we do it? As many cards as you can put together, or even find in your stash, would be a help. If you would like to help please email me at littlemissscrappy@bigpond.com.au for mailing details. Every card you make will help towards making the goal of 200.

Male card swap

I am really behind in posting my swaps :( These are the cards from last month's male card swap. I really struggle with male cards - I think it's because I feel limited with colours and embellishments. It's great to see what everyone else has created and boosts my card stash :)

Lorelle

Katie


Dilys


Linda


Paula


Pauline


This month's card swap is "Love" - engagment, anniversary, wedding, etc.