So Long 2016......

I realized when starting my Christmas post that I never posted pictures from October and November (accept for my new Skechers purchases) so I'm doing a little catching up!

October 11th was my dad's birthday!  Since David and Erica's wedding fell a couple days prior - we celebrated the following weekend with a "tailgate" party!

I created some pumpkins out of mason jar lids.  Each lid is covered with a strip of scrapbook paper - The turned out adorable!

 They turned out sooooo cute, that I created a bunch to give as a "treat" for Halloween at school!

Gotta love Pinterest!

I attached this gift tag to each pumpkin!

These cute little buckets were created by using my pumpkin face punch and a printed tag for the lid.

Each bucket had different types of 100 calorie candy bars!

I have always wanted a glass block scarecrow. So, I gave it a try.

SOOOO cute!

I also saw these "cupcakes" on pinterest.  It's made from a 1/2 Styrofoam ball, a TON of flower diecut punches stuck on with white balled straight pins and topped with an adorable little plastic cherry!

The bottom is a paper cup cut in 1/2 and a scored piece of cardstock. 

You attach the top by hinging it to the cup, so you can place a "surprise" inside!

Each Friday, Erica, Dave, Bill and I try to go out to dinner.  We've been trying some new places and ended up at Uncle Julio's!  Check out this dessert!

It's a Chocolate Pinata filled with Churros and Fruit! YUM!

Now that I'm caught up - Here's our Christmas 2016!

This year I made two different Christmas Cards.

In the past, I've made several designs and find that I always have a bunch left over.

Family picture from this year (Thanksgiving)

I mailed out about 40 cards. Each year we receive less and less

so I may rethink Christmas Cards next year!

I started wrapping in early November at my brother, Dave's house where he lets me store my "stash".

It's hard to tell from this picture, but this was about 40 gifts or so wrapped the first week.

In the end, I wrapped well over 120 gifts!

Each year Ryan receives an ornament or two that coincide with something that occurred or something he was interested in that year.

This year we recognized his Associate's Degree!

This is a two sided metal ornament - allowing for an actual picture of the degree on the reverse side.

Ryan and Ashley put up the tree this year! They did an awesome job!

These are my Lightboxes the night before Christmas!

Before.....

After.....

And now that the holiday has past - here a a couple of gifts I created for friends and family.

 Julie's Metal ornament from Shutterfly

Dave and Erica's Ornament 

A new ornament for our tree 

And an ornament for Ashley

These are the new desk calendars from Shutterfly.  They sit in a wooden block and you change out the picture/calendar each month.

Here's Ashley's Calendar

and I made one for Erica with wedding pictures

This one was ordered a little late and should arrive any day - It is for my friend, Julie!

As you can see from my summer posts - I began sculpting books for Christmas presents.  I needed to make a few more "name" books to give to teachers I work with (that I didn't know I would be working with during the summer).

Bennefield

Blessing

Wegrzyn 

and then I created one from my chiropractor: Dr. Tronolone!

I wrapped each book in cellophane so they would be able to see the book, but also protect it during transportation.  It did take two people a day to figure out the book was actually folded to their name!

Here are some of the books I had to transport to school.  There were actually more, but I had to give one early and some were for neighbors and relatives.

Here are some of my Christmas gifts!

Of course, my number one gift(s) were my favorite GIFT CARDS from some of my favorite places!

Last but not least - Here is my newest pair of Skechers! 

New Year's Eve / Day is sneaking up quickly - hoping 2017 is a little bit better of a year for us!  Hoping Bill's knee is fixed soon (we have a doctor's appointment coming up on the fifth) - it is looking more and more like a total knee replacement.   

I still have about 1 1/2 weeks of Winter Break and hope to continue cleaning out closets, purging and organizing.....and maybe using some of those gift cards!

Summer Happenings!

I forgot to mention in my previous post that Bill and I celebrated our anniversary on June 4th!

 

  TWENTY YEARS

 

 He knows me so well! He gave me a bunch of gift cards and cash so I can enjoy shopping this summer!

 

 

Ryan and I went to the zoo with my friend and her kids!  It was a beautiful day, until I received a phone call from my mom saying that my dad needed to go into the hopsital immediately.

He had a test done and the doctor called saying he needed to go to the hospital

because his heart rate was more than double what it should be!  So we

loaded up the car and headed back home to wait to see what

the plan was going to be.

 

 

 

A "simple" procedure of shocking his heart to try to get it back into sinus rhythm, took a turn for the worse, as he had difficulty waking from sedation - which was a sign that his heart was weaker than they had anticipated.  He was taken to CCU and ended up needing to stay for 4 days.

 

This is all he wanted - TO GO HOME!

A week later, my brother was working and attacked by a Pit Bull.  He needed 16 stitches!  Thankfully he was wearing a glove - because this could have been a lot worse without a glove on! 

 

 

Here's a picture of my parent's backyard.  My dad asked me to take some pictures while all the flowers are in bloom!

 

 

Ryan leaves for vacation with my brother, David this weekend!  Hoping they get good weather!

 

 

 

Employee of the Month and Random Updates

Just stopping by to share some exciting news and a quick update! Ryan was chosen/voted as Employee of the Month at work for the month of August. Technically he only worked two full months prior to August - so it didn't take them very long to recognize his hard work! Here's a picture of him sporting his "reward"! He was able to chose any 50.00 gift card from the gift card mall. We weren't surprised he chose Game Stop!

For my birthday, Ryan and Bill surprised me with a bouquet of flowers.  Attached to the vase were many gift cards to my favorite stores!  How Fun!!!!

My brother, David, received a gift to drive a race car at the Chicagoland Speedway.  He asked if I'd take pictures of the event - Here he is looking like an official race car driver!

 I'm still taking LOTS of football photos of Ryan's team.  Now that he dresses for both Varsity and Jr. Varsity, I'm averaging 1000 photos each week!  It's keeping me very busy editing, uploading, and sharing phots!

Jacob and Dan came to a JV game this week - Jacob ran down to the field and I snapped a quick "cousins" photo!