Season's Greetings

Wishing you all a Very Happy Holiday

I hope you all enjoyed spending time with your family and friends.
Here I am reading "Twas the Night Before Christmas" to Sawyer like I did for my daughters so many years ago.

Season's Greetings from my grandson Sawyer and I :)
As my daughter was taping this message I saw my son in law walking up the walk...so I had to make it quick as I didn't want to have an audience, lol.


Tracy :)

And here is Sawyer

Sawyer made his video debut on my YouTube channel :)

Here's Sawyer
If you would rather watch the video on my YouTube channel, just click the link :)
"Tracy's Treasures24"

I hope you all have a very creative day :)

Tracy :)

My Walk About

It snowed the other day and I wanted to take in all of the beauty around me.
I am lucky enough to live in such a beautiful country.
I am also lucky to live in an area that has the conveniences of the city but close enough to the country to be able to see and have nature all around me.

I took out my "Big Boy" camera....he has been in my camera bag far to long.
Just a side note, I still shoot in auto mode as I am to lazy to learn how to use it in manual, lol.
Also these photos look like they are in black and white....nope, it was an over cast day, but still was beautiful.

This is a shot through our back fence to the bush behind our yard....which I have found a family of deer a time or two.

I think the birdbath is a bit frozen over.
As my daughter joked...the birds can skate on it, teehee.

Here is a trail behind our house.
Where does it lead to?
The park...in which our (not to smart) city took down the play structure BEFORE summer and didn't put up any other play structure for the kids in the neighbourhood.

More trees behind our yard.

Oh look some colour, teehee.
Yard decor I haven't yet put away for the winter.

I keep my garden angel up all year round.
I like the aged look it has taken on.

Looking at my yard pictures, I noticed I didn't put any of my yard decor away, lol.

One last photo of the trees.
So beautiful.

As much as I love the look of snow, I don't like the cold weather that comes with it.
Can you believe that it rained the next day and all the snow melted...except for the huge snowbank beside our driveway.
But don't worry, after the rain, the snow came again.

I hope you all have a very creative day :)

Tracy :)

I See a Wish...art journal page

I made a new friend.....I love making friends who also love to create :)
I met my new friend, Stephanie, at the Crop & Create event.
Another friend Caroline, who I had met a couple years earlier through our blogs and met for the first time in person at a Crop & Create event, pointed out that Stephanie did art journaling.
Being the shy person that I am, I went up to her (with my other friend Debbie) and started chatting about art journaling.
She wanted to see our journals, so Debbie and I brought them the next day.

Fast forward to last month when Stephanie contacted me to see if I wanted to do an art journal challenge with her.
Of course I am always game, so that is what we did.
Our theme was a Fall (or what we like about Fall)
Here is my page.

I adhered  printed tissue paper to the background.
I then added dylusions paints to the background.
Stamped and then heat embossed (with white embossing poweder) the dandelions and their fluff.
I am a bit anal on how my words come out, so I first stamped it on white tissue paper.
I then added some white dylusions paint and then adhered the tissue paper with the sentiment on it, to the white part of the background.
Lastly I inked the edges of the pages with distress ink in black soot and doodled around the pages with a white gel pen.

Here is Stephanie's page
I have noticed in Stephanies books, she likes to add lots of dimension to her pages.
Here she painted the background and added lots of beautiful leaves to her page like a border.
She also used some embossing paste here and there.
Then she coloured up some cute Crazy birds and stamped her sentiment.
I really wish I could be as freeing as she is with her stamping.

Here are both Stephanie's and my pages together.

Here are our journals together.
If you are wondering mine is the thin skinny journal, lol.
I am looking forward to the day that my journal is as chunky as Stephanie's.

We have a new challenged lined up for this month.
Looking forward to our Tim Horton's meet up to share our next pages :)

I hope you all have a very creative day :)

Tracy :)

Who doesn't love a creative party

Stampin' Up fun.

I hosted a Stampin' Up party last Sunday and we got to make 2 beautiful cards.

I love the copper and how it pops off of the black cradstock.

The top panel of the card is embossed and shimmer is sprinkled on top.

Isn't this embellishment just so pretty.
I love the look of embossing and really love the copper embossing powder on this one.

And our second card has a totally different look than our first one, but equally as beautiful.
The dry embossing on here is very pretty.

We used the copper foil paper again and I love the look of it.
Isn't that mini pinecone charm adorable!!!

And here we all are busy at work.

And then we have this little guy.
I had his parents over for dinner tonight and didn't want him to go home.
Looks like he is saying "Go home!?!...really...but I want to stay and Grandma Tracy's house".
At least thats what I think he is saying with this expression, teehee.

I hope you all have a very creative day and I will try to reply to my messages and emails tonight :)

Tracy :)

A day trip to Minneapolis and a haul

On the second day of our weekend trip, Wayne and I left really early from Duluth to drive to Minneapolis :)
1st stop was Cabalas...which is one of Wayne's favourite stores.
I used to love it until they stopped selling their Bear Claw chocolate bars :(
But I did pick up a warm red plaid throw blanket :)

When we left it had stopped snowing, but the roads weren't clear...but he is used to driving on these type of road conditions, so he drove while I crocheted another baby afghan :)

Our next stop was one of my stores....Blicks.
I picked up some Gamsol as I am almost out and some art journal mediums to play with :)

We then went to Mall of America for some yummy banana caramel crepes and cinibon sticks...soooo yummy.
Yes, we only stopped in at MOA for food, lol.
Then we headed to Joann's and I picked up some more art journaling supplies ;)
They let me use so many coupons...I really did good :)

Our last stop on our way back to our hotel in Duluth was Pine City Scrapbooking.

I love this store, so much to look at and I like how they have their products displayed.

Sadly we didn't have a lot of time to browse in that store as we had a bit of a drive still ahead of us.

We went to 5 Guys for supper....oh I wish I had one of their burgers and order of fries right now!!

I hope you all have a very creative day :)

Tracy :)

Shopping Trip Haul

Sorry I have been absent...but I've been cuddling the cutest baby boy I have ever seen ;)

So with that, I will share with you my crafty purchases from the 1st day on my little snowy trip.
1st stop Hobby Lobby (well first fun stop as I don't consider Gander Mnt or Menards my top crafty shops ;)
Wayne convinced me I needed a brayer...even though he didn't know what it was used for.
He just liked the name as my maiden name is Bray, lol.

Then Barnes and Nobel...I love books and note books.
I have these ones already....but one can not have to many cute inspiring note books ;)

Then we were off to Michaels...where by the way I lost the heel of my boot, lol.
Lots of planner goodies for my new planners :)
One planner I ordered at Crop & Create from Scrapbook & Cards Today.
The second planner I picked up from Michaels a couple of weeks ago with a 50% off coupon...it is the new Recollections planner they hacked from Erin Condren.
Not only did I give Wayne a 50% off coupon, but the teller at Michaels and I were talking and she had been to my city before, so she let me use a second 50% off coupon :)

I always stop off at the Dollar Tree when we go over the border to the US.
Here are my purchases from there.

Last stop of the evening was to Target.
No more Targets here in Canada, so it is always fun to shop there.
Here are the dollar spot items I picked up.
I love the plaid washi and the Do Not Open washi to cute :)

I may have gone a bit crazy on baby clothes and items.
How cute is that plaid hat!!!
It will match the plaid bush jacket I bought him when I went with Sharon.

Are you surprised as I am that I didn't purchase any paper!!!
I will share with you Day 2 of my crafty goodies in another post :)

I hope you all have a very creative day :)
Tracy :)

Shopping Hazards

You know you are having a good shopping day when you lose the heal of your boot, lol.
I was walking in Michaels and thought I had snow packed onto the bottom of my boots...which I did...but when taking a closer look, I had lost my heal, lol.

Wayne and I are on a weekend trip which involves plenty of shopping ;)
So I had to purchase a new pair of boots as walking with one foot being shorter than the other (as my boot heal is missing) I had to purchase a new pair.
As pretty as they are....I could have spent that money on more craft supplies, lol.

The weather is not good.
The drive down here wasn't too bad, just rain...but now it is snowing, slushy, icy and blowing winds.

Looks a little ominous doesn't it.
This is the view of Lake Superior on our drive to Red Lobster ;)

I started working on this baby afghan on our drive up here.
It is a new pattern.
I will be working on it tonight as we sit in the hotel room as the weather is so yucky.
Hoping the weather improves overnight as we plan on driving to Minneapolis tomorrow morning for a day visit.

I did some damage shopping today, not only on these boots, but a lot of crafty goodies...which I will share with you on a later post :)

I hope you all have a very creative day :)

Tracy :)

Scrapbook Cottage Haul at Crop & Create.

I was planning on doing a week of Crop & Create...then my daughter had her son...my first grandbaby, so that went out the window, lol.
I had did the videos, but never got around to editing and uploading them to my Youtube channel.
I was a bit busy loving my adorable 1st grand baby :)

Well last night I made time to do the editing and uploading.
This is the goodies I purchased from the vender Scrapbook Cottage that was at the Crop & Create event put on by Scrapbook & Cards Today.
I love those wood veneer hearts <3 p="">

Here are the papers I picked up.
Look at that beautiful 6x6 paper pad...I wonder how long I will hoard it before I use it, lol.
When my friend (who also is a new grandma) saw this grandma and grandpa paper packs, we HAD to pick them up ;)

Here is the video I finally put up with closer details on what I purchased :)
To watch it on my YouTube channel, just click on my name :)  "Tracy's Treasures24"

This is the little cutie that has been taking up my time....I just can't get enough of him!!!!

But seriously who wouldn't want to hold this little cutie every second you can :)

I hope you all have a very creative day :)

Tracy :)

Back to the Organizing Grind.

Will it ever end!!
I know I take the summers off from organizing...but seriously....
If you go in my room, you would think I was soooo organized...but it is all an illusion, lol.
I used to have dividers in these drawers to keep my raw chipboard and wood veneer pieces separated. I ran out of room, so decided to just put them in ziplock type bags to keep them separated and I can store them all in this one drawer now.

I started to clean last night....then got distracted and started to move my supplies around.

So today I thought enough is enough and went down in my room and started resumed my organizing from last spring...yup, you read that right, last spring.

Actually....I started to fine tune my organizing last year!!!!

Ok, so time to stop beating myself up about this and get to work :)

Hope you all have a very creative day :)

Tracy :)

More Baby Afghans

Between snuggling with my new grandbaby, I have been working on a couple of baby afghans.
There are babies everywhere here :)
I have crocheted 3 baby afghans so far.
For all of them I have followed the same pattern, but changed up the colour order.

I have 9 rows of white left to do and hope I have enough yard to finish this one.
I donated my wool/yarn a couple of years ago.
Every crafter knows that we love our supplies and keep lots of them around us, just in case creative inspiration comes to us at 1:00am...we need the supplies on hand....right?!
Well I was trying to be realistic and came to the conclusion that I don't knit or crochet often enough to have a stash or wool/yarn. So I am only going to purchase wool/yarn when I am actually working on a project.
So far so good ;)

This is the original pattern and where I found it "Baby Afghan".
As you can see (from the photo above) I changed up the colours on my newest afghan.
I didn't feel like changing colours as much this time, so went with majority of the afghan being white with some strips of sea glass (green) as well as the shell border...which I haven't done the border yet.

I am thinking I am going to change up my last baby afghan.
As much as I love this pattern....I am a bit tired of it, lol.

Hope you all have a very creative day :)

Tracy :)

Crop & Create Freebe's, Give Aways and my Winnings

I am still over the moon with happiness and enjoying my grand-baby as much as I can without being a bug to my daughter and son-in-law :)
As I have been busy, I haven't had a chance to craft.
So I thought I would show you my freebe's and my winnings from the Crop & Create event I went to a few weekends ago....has it been that long already?

Everyone at the event received these pretty papers (this whole pack!), letters, word phrases and pocket cards from Pink Fresh Studios.
Can you believe Everyone received this!!!!
Lets just say, we were all a bit excited and showed it, lol.

We all also received full 6x6 paper packs from Simple Stories and Lawn Fawn.
As well as this stamp set from Paper Smooches and these enamel dots from YNS Gumdrops!!!
So exciting!!!

Last but certainly not least, I won this from Echo Park!!!
It is jammed packed full of this paper collection "I love Family"
There is a 12x12 paper pack with stickers, 6x6 paper pack, chipboard pieces, 2 packs of ephemera, enamel dots and these adorable brads.
Seriously love this :)

If you would like to see the goodies in more detail, I did a video :)
If you would rather watch it on my YouTube channel, just click on my name "Tracy's Treasures"

I hope you all have a very creative day :)
Now excuse me while I go and hug my adorable grandson :)

Tracy :)

I'm a Grandma!!!

I can not tell you how happy and excited I am to not only be a grandma for the first time, but that my daughter Ashley and her handsome little guy is healthy and happy.
Baby Sawyer was born on Oct 27 weighing 8 lbs 7 ozs.
And he is perfect!!!

Isn't he the cutest!!
I don't need you to answer I know its a YES ;)

This is the first time I got to hold him.
He had my heart before I even saw him..now he has my heart for ever.
That is Tyler, his daddy, Ashley's husband standing behind me.

Here he is again...Oh there is nothing sweeter than holding a baby and taking in their baby scent.

Today being that is Halloween, we had to dress him up.
Well actually he had a few costumes...thats what happens when you are born into a family full of girls...lots of changing of outfits, teehee.
Aunty Heather designed and came up with this one.
Harry Potter never looked so cute :)
He was also dressed up as Spiderman (baby) and Superman (baby) :)

We are just over the moon happy to have this little guy in our lives and can't snuggle him enough.

I hope you all have a very creative day...now excuse me while I go and cuddle my grandson <3 p="">
Tracy :)