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Thursday, December 29, 2011

Christmas Has Come and Gone

Ryan and I are enjoying our time away from school - we do not have to go back to school/work until January 9th!! LOVE IT!

Here are some pictures from "the big day".  Santa had just came in the first picture!
 Here's Ryan after we finished opening gifts.  We opened for an hour, took a break and had breakfast and then finished opening. 
I set up the tripod and we snapped a couple family photos - see how excited Ryan looks??? HA! 

 I took the tripod over to my brother and sister-in-law's house and captured some more family photos
Clockwise:
My brother, Dan, me, sister-in-law, Kim, Bill, My Dad, .My brother, David, Ryan, My Mom, Nephew Jacob
Back Row: Me, Bill, David, Dad, Dan, Kim
Front Row: Ryan, Mom, Jacob
This is a majority of my presents!  GIFT CARDS - MY FAVORITE I got 33 of them!!
I purchased a gift for myself.  These black and white fabric posters.  They have adhesive on the back of them, so they "cling" to the wall.  I've designed a decal to place above them - but it hasn't arrived yet.  I'll take a picture after it's all finished! 

Wishing you a HAPPY 2012!!!

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Getting Ready for Christmas

 Thanks for stopping by to check up on us!!!
I've been wrapping Christmas gifts for three Sundays for a total of about 12 hours!  My brother, David has a spare room off of his living room - this is what it looks like right now!!  These are the gifts for school (friends/students) along with my parents, nephew and something small for my brothers/sister-in-law! 
Ryan and Bill's gifts are in Dave's spare bedroom hidden in bags for transport to our house on Christmas Eve! This way no one is tempted to peek!!
 I got an amazing deal on gifts for the Kindergartners.  Jewel sells Gingerbread House kits in their bakery department.  They are normally 10.99 a piece.  Ryan noticed they were ringing up TWENTY-FIVE CENTS!  He did mention to someone - but they never fixed the issue. When shopping at Jewel, I scanned them and they were still ringing up .25 cents! They had 21 of them left, so I was able to buy one for each student!  The entire class cost only 5.00!!!!  I needed a cute, practical way to wrap them, since I need to stack them.  I made a black sash and a snowman gift tag - Didn't they turn out cute???


While shopping at Anderson's Book Store - I saw wreaths made from old book pages - I've made several for gifts, along with decorations for Brookdale School.  I've made several different designs - this one is my favorite!


 Today was a friends birthday.  I placed a Starbucks gift card in an empty glass and placed tissue paper to make it resembled a drink! So adorable!

 The teacher I was with last year had a baby a few weeks ago.  She named him Ryan! I wrapped his gift in polka dotted paper and stamped his name inside each dot!


  You can see, I made a bow from the left over gift wrap!


Ryan received his Junior Varsity letter in Football.  His jacket is currently at the sporting goods store having the letter sewn on!

I designed a poster print of Ryan's pictures throughout the years.  This poster is printed on a fabric-like material that had adhesive on one side! I placed it on the wall of our entry way.  I think it turned out great!





Enjoy the holiday season!!! Looking forward to two weeks off!!!!!

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Long Awaited Update

Today was Thanksgiving, which means Christmas is getting closer and closer!!! I've been wrapping for the past two Sundays and I'm happy to say I've got everything wrapped that has been purchased so far!  I'm done with about 75 percent of the people I buy for!   I found a great deal on personalized memory boxes and have designed A TON of them!  Federal Express Ground has visited our house many times in the past two weeks!  I even designed one for myself:


Most of the ones I designed for my friends/teachers look like this:


My mom and brother have had me design some for them to give as gifts also:



I finished Ryan’s ornament for this Christmas.  Each year he gets a new ornament that coincides with what he was doing that year.  I actually ended up making three different ornaments!  First, I figured I would make something to do with Jewel, since it is his first job.  So I asked him to get an extra name tag and I thought I’d make something out of it.  On the back I put a picture of him and the associate of the month sign.  But I wasn’t really “thrilled” with it.

So, then I found this boy sitting at a desk with a computer when I was looking online - and thought I could make something like a “cashier” out of it:
BEFORE:
I painted the shirt – purchased some doll house groceries, and made a mini name badge – then handmade a paper bag  from scrapbook paper that I printed with the Jewel logo. After hot gluing all the grocery items, this is how it turned out:


After purchasing the groceries off of ebay – I received some that were way too big in comparison to the size of the counter and the boy, so instead of throwing them away, I made another grocery bag – bigger -  and put my “extra” groceries in it. When printing on the paper I was using to make the bag, I but “associate of the month “ .





So, now he has THREE FIRST JOB ornaments to hang on the tree:



I hope Ryan likes them as much as the people who I have shared them with!

We tried taking a family picture today - to throw into our Christmas cards ( since a couple people mentioned we have a family picture ALSO)  – but I’m not too happy with how they turned out:

So I am going with the one we took over the fourth of July:
This is one of our Christmas Cards this year:  (Folding Card)
Front:  


                                 Right Inside                                  
The other version is a flat card:
I’ve been busy making A LOT of gifts for people – I made Ryan his Varsity Football book.


There's a player whose parents are unable to attend any of the games – We give him a ride sometimes and I make sure to take “extra” pictures of him – so I made him a book too.
I made my brother a book of his Racecar Experience:
On Wednesday, Ryan has his football banquet – I was asked by the coach, to create a DVD of the pictures I took throughout the season.  I took 10,000 pictures – so I went through and picked out the best of the best and burned EIGHTY copies for each of the players. There should be over 400 people watching it prior to the presentation!!!!!
I’ve uploaded it to YouTube and Vimeo – but haven’t released it to the players until after the ceremony.  I had to break it up into five parts because it was a huge file to upload! Take a peek and look for number 64!!!!

That's it for now!  Happy Holidays!!!

Lisa

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Fall Fun!

This weekend was "homecoming".  (actually Ryan's school does not have homecoming yet - because there are no alumni due to the fact it is a new school!)  We met up at the Riverwalk to take pictures. 
Look at my handsome boy!
Notice his bootineer!
Ryan and Raymond have been friends for over 8 years! He lives directly across the street from us!  Cassidy is Ryan's "new" girlfriend and Gina is Cassidy's best friend - who went with Raymond as a friend.  After pictures were taken, the four went to Giordano's for dinner, then to school for the dance.
Ryan and Cassidy. We didn't do too bad matching his tie! (We only knew that the dress was green and black!)  Ryan purchased the corsage on his own! There were rhinestones inside the flower arrangement.
This was my weekend project.  These cute little ghost cover a Renuzit Air Freshner! They are so adorabale!  It takes about an hour to make ONE - so it was quite an ordeal making so many!  I will be giving them as a fall gift to friends at school.
CLOSE UP!

Last weekend, we celebrated my Dad's birthday! Happy Birthday Dad!
We are in our last week of Football.  I've been taking over 1000 pictures between the Varsity and Jr. Varsity Teams. It's been fun capturing all the excitement! 

Molly Shannon visted Brookdale last month.  She wrote a book and came to do a presentation for the kids.  She's been in a lot of movies and was on Saturday Night Live for many years! 
Tomorrow we have a field trip in Kindergarten! It's going to be a brisk day at the Pumpkin Farm!

Until Next Time