Christmas is over? SAY WHAT?!

Ummm...yea. I guess I didn't quite get the blogging bug during December. I missed a whole Christmas season worth of fun things to share! However, I did do more of my picture sharing on my Facebook page. Short and sweet. Things just seemed way too busy to be wordy, and for some reason I feel like I can't make a blog post without being wordy. Interesting...

So, now that Christmas is over and all the decorations are down (except for a few snowmen here and there...I'm still hoping for SNOW this winter), what happens next?

One of my first "crafty" projects of 2011 that I would like to accomplish is scrapbooking my Christmas photo cards I receive from family and friends. I blogged about this "way back when" (January 2009 to be exact...seems forever ago!). Here is a sneak peek from that post and click on the picture below if you want all the details. (pssst...can I confess something? I haven't scrapbooked my photos I received for Christmas 2009 yet. Eek! This will definitely be a goal of mine for the month of January to do TWO year's worth!)

{a sample 2008 page from my Christmas album}

This year I hung my Christmas photo cards onto ribbon and put them in the window of our kitchen. By the end of the month, I had so many cards that I could have made a second garland, but didn't get around to it (geez...what's new?). I'll remember that for next year! I used mini clothespins that {for next year} I plan to decorate to make them a little more festive. This year, I just knew that I wanted to get them UP!! And, if I kept waiting to get the clothespins decorated, they never would have gone up, so I just did it and that added little touch will just have to be a "must do" for next year's Christmas planning!

What do you do with your Christmas photo cards, letters, and Christmas cards after Christmas? I'd love to hear!

Be looking for a post (soon, I hope!) to show you my accomplishment of getting both 2009 & 2010 scrapbooked and ready to share!

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I realize Christmas is already over and it's probably too late to share my decor for this year, but let's pretend it's still Christmas for just one more day! ;)

Hope you all had a
Merry Christmas!!

out with fall and in with winter

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving time with your family! We were able to celebrate it with my dad's side and got to see some family we haven't seen in quite some time. It warmed my heart to see all of the kids running around together...and the grown ups lazying the day away together. It was the first Thanksgiving that my parents have been to in many, many years, so it was extra special to us!

The Fall decorations are coming down tomorrow. Last year, I got a slow start on the Christmas decor, but that's not going to happen this year! I want to be ahead of the game...unlike when I decorated for Fall. Before I started taking down my Fall decor (what little there was of it), I decided to snap a few pictures to say goodbye before I packed it away for yet another year!


And, speaking of bringing in winter...we had our first snow of the season last Tuesday! It wasn't much, but that didn't stop the kids from wanting to bundle up to go out and play in it. 15 minutes later they were back inside ready to get warmed up again...it was fun while it lasted, I suppose!


P.S. I extended the giveaway at my Stuck on Stampin' blog until Sunday! Head on over to enter to win some fun Stampin' Up! goodies!

Jingle All The Way frame - you can have it, too!

Who remembers this Christmas decor idea I created last Christmas? For those of you who have stuck around long enough to wait me out during my "blogging fast", maybe you do remember! (Feel free to check out my easy to recreate tutorial HERE for those who need a refresher or for those who are new to my blog.)

The "Jingle All the Way" Decor Element (vinyl) is Stampin' Up! exclusive and I have had a handful of blog readers contact me about ordering this vinyl.

There are 2 easy ways to order one or more of these vinyls, so you can make your very own:

Option 1) Visit my Stampin' Up! website where you can order anytime of the day, anytime of the week at heidiboos.stampinup.net. Find where it says "SHOP NOW" at the bottom right of the screen and you will then be looking for the "Home Decor" category on the left hand side...click on that and then the next category you will look for is "Vinyl Art", after that you'll be looking for "Seasonal". If you do choose to order online, I suggest you take a look around to see if there are other things you can't resist because shipping is a minimum of $6.95, but by ordering online it gets sent straight to your home! Plus, if you were to make an order of $150 or more, YOU will get hostess benefits - which means FREE STUFF! You could even gather a large order together by collecting orders from your friends! You can visit the online catalog HERE. I'm warning you...once you start looking, you just can't stop!!

Option 2) You can contact me by leaving me a comment on this post with your name and e-mail address or send me a message to heidilynneboos{at}hotmail{dot}com. I will then add it to my next order and your shipping will only be 10% of your total purchase. If you are strictly ordering the "Jingle All The Way" vinyls than I will personally mail them to you after I receive them...at no additional cost. If you order other things with it, then I will have to add the appropriate extra shipping fee to mail it to your home.

Cost: Jingle All the Way (small vinyl) - $3.50
Color Choices: Black, Red, or Chocolate

Why do I share this with you now? Well...because Christmas will be here before we know it and this makes either a great holiday decor idea for your home or a great gift to give! And...I just picked up a whole slew of jingle bells at Michael's Crafts for 40% off (on sale until Wednesday, I believe)! I will be making these for an upcoming craft fair I will be a part of in 2 weeks. I just picked up my shadow box frames from IKEA and I'm ready to get to work!

Let me know if you have any questions! I'll be placing an order Monday afternoon (Nov. 8th), so if you e-mail me or leave a comment before then, I can add it to that order. However, I will be placing another order sometime within the next two weeks, so feel free to still contact me if you're interested in having me order you one, or two...or more!

If you haven't been over to my Stampin' Up! blog yet (stuckonstampin.blogspot.com), please head on over to check it out! My stamp club just met on Friday and we made some fun punch art, creating Santa & Rudolph! I will be holding a giveaway sometime this week of stamps and other goodies, so I suggest you head on over and become a follower, so you can join in to win!

room redo - tackle it tuesday

Surprised to see me?? Don't fall off your chair in shock. I know it's been awhile, but we've been B-U-S-Y with a project here, a project there, a whole bunch of clutter everywhere!!

We've been in our NEW home for 6 1/2 weeks now (hard to believe!). I wish I could say we've painted all the walls that need to be painted, decorated each room, hung up frames, etc. but...nope. The reality is: We have 2 kids, the husband works, I have a side business with Stampin' Up!, on the MOPS leadership team, and if we want to eat, I make meals, too. Oh, on top of cleaning the house and trying to tackle the garage for our garage sale in June. Yep. Reality. So, I'm OK if everything isn't done yet. We have time!!! I'm trying not to stress myself out about all that needs to be done around the hosue. We'll just take it one day at a time and do what we can when we can! I'm trying to have the same mentality with blogging...I'll do it when I can and not feel guilty about it when I don't. (Something I'm trying to work on!)

A couple of weekends ago we decided (OK, I decided...I think my husband had other hopes for the day) to tackle the upstairs bathroom (the one the kids use). I figured if we started on something relatively small we might feel more successful in getting it done quickly. Well...most of it was done quickly and then there was ME putting off a project that I wanted to finish to make the room complete. I finally decided I just can't wait for that one little thing to be done to show off our hard work. So, the {little} project will still be on the back burner coming one day, but for now...the room reveal!!

Background: The previous owners had painted the bathroom an orange color (even the ceiling!) and sponged flowers all over. Now, I'm not going to diss the hard work that someone put in to do this, but it is just not my style. I needed more light and plus, I was keeping with the theme from our former guest bathroom and wasn't about to go out and buy new stuff when I already adored my other bathroom decor.

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE
(we'd already taken things off the wall)
AFTER
BEFORE
(snapped a quick picture in the middle of taping up the room)
AFTER
(See that empty frame? That's the project I was putting off. I plan to make a collage of some bath tub pictures from when the kids were little and include a poem.)
A little accent I added was using an Uppercase Living vinyl to put on the mirror. It says, "{Begin each day with a smile}" I love how it adds a fun little touch to an already "smiley" room!

Does the paint color look familiar? It is the same color that used to be in our play room at our old house. We opted to paint the ceiling this color as well vs. white (since they had it orange) and were a little shocked at how bright it was, so we decided to paint a darker 6-inch green stripe along the top to break up the ceiling from the wall. I am so pleased with how that turned out!

Those little wall "spot" decals might also look familiar. I was able to salvage them from the decor in our old play room and used them to make a "wave" around the room. I couldn't believe how well they matched the shower curtain...which by the way was a new addition! The shower hooks were brought over from the old house, along with all the froggy accents, towels, polka dot accessories, candle, and faux flowers.

Nothing like tackling a project and feeling proud of the accomplishment! If you have a project you've been putting off (big or small), tackle it and show off your hard work by linking up with Tackle it Tuesday at 5 Minutes for Mom.

Next room redo I hope to tackle? My son's room! It's currently purple with butterflies and flowers...but I'm hoping to transform it into firetrucks!! This one is going to be a GIANT-SIZED tackle, so we'll see when this one gets finished!

Fall decor and more!

Wow! November has just flown by. It seems that the last 2 weeks of being sick here at our house (either me, Ryan, or the kids) has stopped us from participating in some Thanksgiving traditions that we started last year. I've seen some super amazing ideas out there this year, but I never got around to any of them! How sad! And now with Christmas fast approaching, I'm feeling rushed to move onto the next holiday. However, I do have a few {simple} plans for some special Thanksgiving activities this week, so I'll share those hopefully later on. Although it may be after the holiday.

I figured it's still considered the Fall season...for at least another week, so what better time than TODAY to share with you my Fall decor for 2009. (Although I do know many who have already started decorating for Christmas, but I won't mention any names! *wink*)

~ Fall Decor 2009 ~
{click to view larger}

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Last year, we had the pleasure of hosting Thanksgiving at our house! This year we get to give that pleasure to someone else and are traveling to Ryan's parents for Thanskgiving Day. I had a lot of fun with the decorating portion of last year's hosting experience. The food part? Let's just say I'm glad it was a joint effort between 3 families. Our turkey turned out great, but the mashed potatoes? Don't even ask...

Because I never got to share the Thanksgiving table from last year, I thought it would be appropriate to share for any of you getting ready to host your own Thanksgiving this year! I especially like to keep things simple and last year's table wasn't any different.

These were the place settings at each guest's seat.
I did happen to blog about these if you'd like to take a look!

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On Sunday, I held a 4 for $10 Christmas gift giving event.
It was a small group of stampers, but we had lots of fun!
Visit Stuck on Stampin' for more information on
each of the projects we made below.

the play room again?

OK, some of you will laugh at me right now and some of you will just roll their eyes. Either one, I'm OK with because it's just the way I am.

But...I just didn't feel like the arrangement of the play room after the last time I rearranged was officially the way I wanted it to look. My own crafty space feels perfect, but something on the other side of the room just seemed off, so I was determined to fix this before it drove me insane. I know...I need serious help!

I'm all about things being even, so when I shared about my new way to fit more of MY stuff into the play room, I had to do some rearranging and then a little wall decorating which brought one side of the wall to look like this...

What do you mean you don't see anything wrong with it?

Let me explain: The play kitchen just does not belong right in the center because now the spots on the wall all seem off-centered, and the circle frame doesn't have as much wall space underneath as it does on top. I only had so much wiggle room to work with because we have a rug underneath and everything had to fit nicely on the rug so it wouldn't look off. See? Now, do you see what's wrong with it?

So, I rearranged once more and it went back to the way it was...
Typical, right?

But then one of the other sides of the room had to go from this...

...to this, so everything could fit!
{I even purged some toys that will be going to Grammy & Papa's for the winter.}

I love how the kitchen sits right underneath the window and covers up the windowsill. My next mission is to find some cute ribbon that I can tie on the curtains to add that extra cuteness factor. {I wonder how long that will be on my "to do" list?}

I'm officially satisfied.

No, really, I am!

I even added some decorations to another part of the wall to fill up some blank space that was in desperate need of filling! I found these cute ALREADY PAINTED POLKA DOTTED -- hello!? -- letters at Babies R Us on clearance.

As we were putting these up, I joked with Ryan that maybe it's meant to be that we only have 2 kids because what if I can't find another polka dotted letter that matches? See? Told you I have a problem. *wink*

Thanks for listening to my late night ramblings! Let's hope you don't see another post about me rearranging the play room anytime soon.

Have a wonderful Thursday!