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!!!!

PART ONE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QzLoaSHjS0

PART TWO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beqtfE-Fi-0

PART THREE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8Ui-21XBcQ

PART FOUR: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZNequWxGZU

PART FIVE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBZjszdETqQ

That's it for now!  Happy Holidays!!!

Lisa