More wonderful Christmas raks!

Here's a couple more Christmas raks that I received. This cute snowman card was made by Jen. I love the snowman by TAC (snowmen are my favorite!). I especially like this card because it's a "non-traditional" christmas color. For me, using non traditional colors for christmas cards is so interesting! Jen also made for me this cool bucket. I was so excited when I opened my gift because when Jen came by my office to exchange gifts, I made a comment to her about her posting of these buckets. Boy, was I surprised to receive my very own! Thank you sister! Look inside - goodies! I got a glitter mat stack and a TAC stamp set - Wowee!
I love this card! This beauty was made by my BFF Wini. See!, another snowman card. These guys know my weakness. I love the color combo on this card too! Thank you Wini!! I think this year, I'll be putting up these cards on my wall to admire all year long. Thanks for stopping by today! It's Aloha Friday!! Have a great day everyone! Come back again to see more of these wonderful Christmas cards that I received!

Wrapping up 2007

We can relax, Christmas 2007 came and went and we can soon move on to getting ready for the new year. We had house guests on Christmas eve. My cousin and his daughter spent the night as they were enroute to Austrailia. They had a 24 hour stop over here in Honolulu. It was so nice to see them and spend a part of Christmas with them too. Mom was a wild woman a few days before Jeff & Kelly arrived. She made us clean every nook & cranny the house for our guests, boy was I pooped! The good news out of all of this cleaning madness is that I don't have to work as hard trying to clean up the house next week to welcome the new year!

I know Chistmas is all done, but wanted to share some Christmas raks I received from my stamping sisters and also from some blog sisters too! Thank you ladies! You've made my holiday special! I'll be posting a few at a time unless I find the time to do a slide show so you can see them all in one post! Can you believe that I'm still working on finishing my stamped cards - hey, they're holiday cards and we ARE still celebrating the holidays!

Here's a card I received from cousin Pam in California. OMG!! so much work! I know you used your cricut didn't you!! Absolutely fabulous card!! Thanks Pam!

This other fabulous card and gift tag came from Pam's friend, Ingrid. Thanks Ingrid!! I love these - thank you so much for thinking of me! Stay tuned for more card posts. I'm still gathering up goodies to give away. Be patient with me, I'm only now starting to return to being a "normal" person...(is that possible? you ask???) Hope I can post more tomorrow - TGIF!!!

Enjoy the holidays! Take a break.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! I took a break from the holiday madness finally and this was for a short lunch break. I had lunch last week Friday with my friend Cheryl. We went to our usual Ala Moana Center and we were in luck! Found a parking stall even though there were which seem like a million mad shoppers and went to eat fried saimin at Zippys - yumm!! Browsed around after lunch and then back to work for me! Couldn't leave without taking a picture. Here's our photo that was taken by one of Santa's helpers from the train ride.

Holiday card swaps

Here are the cards we all made for the holiday card swap:

This card was made by Becky







This party favor was made by Pearl

by Lynn









by Alyson








by Joyce

by Gina

by Darcie

by wini

Here's my card. I made 30 of these cards for my boss as her gift. Every year, I help her with her cards. so this year, I decided to make and give them to her as her gift. You can't see the bling in the middle of the snowflake, but IRL, it really adds to the card.

Only two more days til Christmas! Hope you all are finally enjoying what's left of the holidays! I'm baking today and delivering gifts. Oh, and I'm still addressing my cards!! Thank goodness it doesn't say Merry Christmas. I used Happy Holidays! OMG, I just saw on my counter that I went over the 10k mark! Yipee!! That means some candy coming up soon!! Have a great Sunday!

Socks for Seniors update!

I want to say THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! to all of you who made donations to my socks for seniors project this holiday season. I managed to collect 200 pairs of socks!! Wowee!!!! I am so excited! I never expected such a huge amount of socks. Your generousity makes me grin from ear to ear! You all have big hearts and sharing to make someone's Christmas merry makes me have goose bumps!

We decided to go to two places to share the warmth. The first place is Pohai Nani - a senior home, care home and nursing home. When Nolan was a member of the Keiki Palaka Band, they performed there a few times and the residents there just loved the kids. The gal I spoke to there said there were a total of 60 seniors who sometimes are forgotten especially during this time of the year. Made me feel a little teary eyed when she said that. We actually wanted to personally go in and give out the socks, but as luck would have it, Nolan got sick (doctor told us it was walking pnemonia) and he also ended up with bronchitis! Sleepless nights for mom here!

Oh! back to the socks! We also shared the warmth with the seniors at Aloha Care nursing home. It was surely a "chicken skin" moment (goosebumps) when Eric and I went in to drop off the socks. Volunteers were smiling and hugged us for sharing. I had to tell them that it wasn't all from me but from all of my wonderful and caring friends!

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for making this happen! You all have shown the true meaning of giving this holiday!!

Let's party with the Stamping with Friends ladies!

Finally have a few minutes to post photos from our "Stamping With Friends" holiday party that we had last weekend. Stamping with Friends is my downline group. Here's a pic of us with either a project that we made one of the goodies which I gave to them. Lunch was made by Eric which was hamburger curry (yum!) and rice and each gal brought a dessert for our dessert bar. Holy smokes! Did we have tons of desserts or what? Some of the ladies ate dessert before lunch. We had to try each one and I think most of us did by the time we were ready to clean up and go home. Talk about having a sugar rush after all of that dessert!!

What's a gathering with stamping ladies with projects?? Before enjoying lunch and desserts, we did a bunch of projects - this holiday card using the Blizzard wrapping paper and chocolate chip satin ribbon, simple and elegant!
We also made an ornament using a cap from the Starbuck's Frappuccino mocha bottles. I saved up a stash from my morning "gotta have mocha when I get up" habit {wink!}. Have you all tried the holiday mocha? It's Chocolate Peppermint - oh yummy!! Here's the finished ornament on my tree. I used the deer from the Moose You stamp set and the famous circle scalloped punch. Got the idea from Susan to use one of the punched red dots for the deer's nose - so is this Rudolph??

Each gal that came received a stack of monogram cards with envelopes from me. I tied them up using the largest size from the twill tape pack.

We also did a card swap, so I will be posting those beautiful cards sometime soon. Oh! I have another project that we also did kind of a last minute decision to do this, but I will save that for another day. I won't promise tomorrow because I'm supposed to be wrapping gifts right now! I just HAD to post because I feel so bad that I didn't have the time to share this wonderful event with you! I do need to get the wrapping done today! I just finished making candied pecans (thanks Crystal for the family secret recipe!!!!) I gotta bake my brownies by this weekend too! Let's turn the clock back a couple of weeks. Who could use more time?? Anyway, thanks for stopping in today!

Show up at the Whitney

My Cerberus piece is on display at the Whitney, its in a group show that will be up until February 17th. Here is their little blurb for the show on their site:

Two Years
on view October 17, 2007 - February 17, 2008

Acquisitions for the permanent collection are at the heart of the Museum's mission to present the work of American artists in the contexts of the present and the past, and in anticipation of the future. Two Years brings on view important gifts and purchases from 2006 and 2007.

I always wondered if the Whitney fucked up, assuming I was American, but I'm sure they do their research and it turns out there is another Canadian in the show as well. I'm going to be in NYC at the end of January, and I'm pretty excited to check out the show...

You can check out the Whitney's website here, and my piece got mentioned in a review, here.

Also, Andrew Wilson started a blog as well, and it is WAY better than mine...

Before and after

Maria has a challenge over on her blog. She said that it was okay if your area is messy because that means you are creating. How true! Although her area wasn't anything like mine, I decided to take some pics to post. Jen and I were talking about it and she said, "you know how my area looks like right? I'm gonna post it for Maria's challenge" - you go girl! Well, although I won't be doing Maria's challenge, (just because I couldn't commit to posting to her challenge daily) I thought I'd give you guys a scare (or laugh) and post a picture of what my table looked like before I cleaned it. I don't even have space for anything comforting on my table!! No wonder I get frustrated doing projects! I have such a small space to actually work in because there's too much stuff in the way!

Here's what it looks like today, a little more organized but I still have to clear it off as this is where our tree goes! We bought a small tree today and I can't wait to decorate it! This year, I've decided to change the decorations and color! We are having a red theme (a first for us with this color!) and I can't wait to decorate and show you all.
Do you ever have problems finding a home for those straggler items that just don't have a permanent home yet?? I'm struggling with that now. Wish me luck!

trip

I just finished my new Road of Knives page...


Shawn gave these little mole guys some pretty sexy underwear...

I'm hanging out at home today...

I can't believe what a night we had! The blustery winds were sooooo blustery that I couldn't sleep listening to all of the loose items flying around last night. Not to mention the electricity that was out for hours and the heavy rains! Holy smokes!! Well, when I woke up at my usual 3 a.m. this morning to get ready for work, let me tell you that the thought crossed my mind about curling up back under my warm blanket! But like a good girl, I got out of bed and carried a lantern to the bathroom to get ready. Can you believe I got ready for work by lantern? At least it wasn't a candle! All the time I'm getting ready, I'm wondering how I was going to go to the bus stop in the strong wind and heavy rains...I'd have to wear something with pockets so I could put big rocks in them to hold me down! Then, I hear my cell phone ring and it was my sister Cara telling me that she was listening to the radio and the Pali Highway was closed in both direction and that there is no bus service because a bus in Kaneohe was struck by lightning! Can you believe that?? OMG! how scary is that!! Well, after that phone call, guess what I did? I got my blankets and went back to nap on the couch listening to the radio. They closed the schools on our side of the island, so Nolan was jumping for joy. So, here it is at 11 a.m. and I last heard that they were still clearing the roads...I called my supervisor and she told me to just stay home today. Not that I object to staying home and having a nice day in my warm house possibly crafting and cleaning my messy room.
First, here's a couple of pics of what it looks like right now...the roads are still wet but the mountains look pretty clear...waiting for the sun!!

Well, here's what's on my list to do today: continue cleaning my room so I can get a Christmas tree, get kits ready for my downline christmas party on December 8th, do my card swap for the party and check my emails and reader. Well, I didn't do these in order...I checked email first and came across Allison Fillo's Stampin' When I Can blog. I just love checking out the tutorials she posts because as you all know, I'm not the greatest tutorial creator! haha!! I came across this tutorial for a cute box made by Danielle Lounds of Fat Cat Stamper - check it out, she used those cute Ezybell stamps, so cute! I decided to give her tutorial a try and here's what I came up with:

My recipe: Bashful blue and chocolate chip cardstock; Hung up on the Holidays and Sweet Sampler stamp sets. I used Close to Cocoa ink for the gingerbread guy and chocolate chip ink for the Sweets. In the tutorial, Danielle didn't put a handle, but I thought it was cute so I added a piece of 5/8" chocolate chip grosgrain ribbon for the handles and filled it with silver and white shred. I think this quick & easy box will be great for holiday treats! Keep warm everyone and thanks to checking in today!!

Here's Mochiko all comfy in one of my baskets! We actually bought her a pet bed but she just hates it! She prefers my dollar basket! haha!

By Special Request

Tonight is a blustery night, strong winds and rain...this is Hawaii's version of winter! I was crossing my fingers because I didn't want to lose my post if the electricity went "blink!" Here we go with my gift card holder tutorial. Bear in mind that this is the amateur version! The measurements were requested by Snowie (don't know who you are!) and Cheryl M. (here's your tutorial, so you better get going and make one of these babies! - haha!) I'm not big into tutorials for a couple of reasons...I'm not good at these things and I don't have alot of time to compose these like others...but here's my amateur attempt:
Here's a pic of the supplies that we will be using (I've noted the measurements as we go along)

Cut a 8 1/2 X 11 old olive CS in half lengthwise so that you have two pieces measuring 4 1/4 X 11. Score one of the pieces 2 3/4 on each end so that it looks like this:

You can score the lines with a ruler and stylus or if you have a Scor-Pal, use the measurements like you're making a gatefold card.

Using a small corner rounder, scallop the edges. Then, to make the scalloped edge "stand out", I used a 1" X 4 1/4" strip of real red cardstock so you can see the scallop. Using your adhesive, apply two rolls (side by side) of adhesive (if you are using a 1/4" adhesive). You want to leave open only the width of the gift card otherwise it will slide around and fall out!

I Embellish the pocket using the mega scalloped oval punch using real red cardstock and the super jumbo oval punch using vanilla cardstock. Stamp your sentiment and add your bling. For the front cover, I cut a piece of DS Dashing paper 4 1/4" X 5 1/2" and a strip 2" X 5 1/2". 5/8" grosgrain ribbon to go around the band and tie a knot.

Embellish with the mega scalloped rectangle punch using real red cardstock and super jumbo rectangle punch using vanilla cardstock and stamp your sentiment (I used Merry Christmas from the All Holidays stamp set).

Here's the assembly of the front cover: the olive CS goes on one side of that flap and the front cover goes on, oh!, the front! You will be sandwiching that little flap in between the front cover and the old olive cardstock. Confused? Email me!

Not too bad huh? I'm planning to make a bunch and put them in the translucent envelopes! Thanks for stopping by and bearing with my simple tutorial. Now you know why I don't do too many!! Oh, the photos were taken courtesy of my son, Nolan. He wanted to be sure I gave him credit - ha! I don't know how you ladies take pictures of your projects while you do the projects, is there a trick?? Let me know how you all like this tutorial and if you decide to give this card a whirl, don't forget to email me a pic of it or comment with your link. I'd love to post them for all to see!!