Book Review "Brides for Brothers" and "The Marriage Risk"

I have surpassed my reading goal for this year!!!!
My goal was to read a book a month and I have read 14 books this year!!!

I am not one for romance books, give me a good horror book or a personal history book, but romance is not my thing.
With that being said, every year at Christmas time I read a sappy Holiday book.
This was not what I was expecting.
See the cute cottage, and the snow and the fact that it takes place in Alaska......it is not a Holiday book!!!
It took place in June for the one story and one of the summer months in the second!
As disappointing as was my pick for my Holiday book, the stories were sweet.

You know what they say "Don't judge a book by its cover" rings true to this book, lol.

I will go over my other goals that I succeded at or failed in tomorrows post.

Hope you all have a very creative day :)

Tracy :)

Merry Christmas

I thought I would share with you our Christmas and the fun and shenanigans we enjoyed.

Every year my daughter do the baking...a lot of baking.
They go to Ashley's house and bake all day while watching the Resident Evil movies...thats Christmasy isn't it ;)
This year they wanted to make t-shirts.
So they found a design and I made them these shirts...cute right?!!

This year was a bit different for us.
Christmas Eve is usually spent with Wayne's side of the family, but with the passing of Wayne's dad, and the family being so big (there are almost 50 of us now) it was decided that everyone celebrate with their immediate family.
So Christmas Eve was spent at my house this year.

Which meant we got this little cutie all to ourselves :)
Can you tell how much grandma and grandpa love this little guy.

So we decided to start a new tradition.
I used to make these mini gingerbread houses for the young ones that came to our New Years party.
This year I made them for our Gingerbread challenge.

Here are our masterpieces.
Mine is called "Winder Wonderland" and Wayne's "Christmas Wonderland"

Kristy's "Cozy Home" and her boyfriend Blake's "Winter of '96"

Ashley's "At the Lake" and her husband Tyler's is called "The Shitter's full" .... yes its an outhouse, lol.

Last but not least is Heather's "Monster House" and Sawyer's....well he just enjoyed eating it, teehee.











And the winner is....It's a tie.
Ashley and Kristy!!!
They won the trophy for the year and a gift.

And lastly we enjoyed opening some gifts.
Actually we enjoyed watching Sawyer open his gifts more than anything.
Look how happy he is to open his gift.
We got him a play kitchen (which he loves) but honestly, I think he would have been just as happy playing with the box, teehee.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and enjoyed spending time with your family and friends.

Tracy :)

Tags, tags and more tags

I almost forgot to share these awesome tags I received from my friends in our Christmas tag exchange.
These ladies outdid themselves again this year!

If you would like to see them in more detail, I did a video on each one.
I didn't take close up photos and, well.....I used them ion my gifts this year.
To watch the video on my YouTube channel, click on the link "Tracy's Treasures".
And if you do, I would love a thumbs up :)


I hope you all have a very Creative Day :)

Tracy :)

Christmas Cards 2017

My Christmas cards are completed and out in the mail.
I kept it simple again this year..very simple.

If these look familiar to you, its because I made a set of my Christmas tags with this cute image.
Also Sharon from Scrapbook Cottage, made a gift card, card like this at the make N take at Crop & Create.

I love this stamp from Lawn Fawn called "Here we go a Waddling"...so cute right!
I put the cute little Penguins on a tag and coloured them in with my Copic markers.

I used older papers for the background of these cards.
My creative friends can take the tags off of these cards to use in a different project if they choose to.

To even make things easier this year, I stamped 8 images on my Copic colouring paper.
I made sure that I had room to cut them into tags.
I then coloured the sheet of stamped images.
Lastly....I photocopied these stamped images on the high quality setting on my printer and on a good quality paper.
Voila, I have coloured images I just needed to cut into tags!
I have done this before and loved how they had turned out.
But putting your printer on the highest quality setting is the key, I can't tell the difference in the ones I colour to the ones I printed!!

The second time I went to print out my set of coloured images, I forgot and pushed blank and white copy, lol.
They are still usable as I can add colour to the book and the trip of their hats..I can also add some sparkle to their hats.

The second mistake I made was I stamped the inside sentiment incorrectly.
I was using my Tim Holtz stamp press (which I have to say I love!)
I think I put this card in upside down, lol.
So I cut the front pannel off and adhered it to a new card base and re-stamped the inside of this card...correctly ;)

Those are my cards for this year :)
I hope they put a smile on the faces of those receive them :)
Here is a video I made on these cards.
If you would rather watch it on my YouTube channel, just click on the link "Tracy's Treasures24"



Have a very Creative day!

Tracy :)

Christmas Gift Tag Swap 2017

Last year my friend Lesli from Vintage Scraps suggested that we do a tag swap.
10 of us signed up for it again this year...looks like a new tradition :)
These tags are to be used on gifts, not the fancy decorative tags....but use being hard core crafters, anything creative we go hard core on, teehee.

Here are the Christmas tags I made for my friends :)
The first one may look similar as we did a card at Crop & Create make and take with this image.
So cute right!!
I coloured these cute Lawn Fawn images called "Here we go a-waddling" with my Copic markers
I did a little trick with these cuties so I didn't have to colour them over and over...but that will be in another post...or you can watch the video below where I explain it.

My next tag has more of a vintage look.
I made the tag with my Stampin' Up tag punch and the bird punch out is also from Stampin' Up.
The branch is from a Martha Steward punch and I stamped the background with a Stampendous stamp.
I used my paper scraps for the punch outs.

My last tag is totally made with my scraps!!
I keep my paper scraps in file folders, each folder is dedicated to a colour and I have one file with holiday papers.
I used pattern paper behind the cardstock and just free hand cut the triangles for the trees.
This was hard for me for the fact that the trees weren't perfect, but even though, I think they turned out so cute.

Here is the video I made with more info on these tags.
If you would rather watch it on my YouTube channel, click on the link "Tracy's Treasures24".

I hope you all have a very creative day :)

Tracy :)

Christmas Party Decor

Last Friday I had a scrapbooking crop with my friends.
We did a Christmas tag swap.
I love to host Parties and love to decorate for them.
Here is some of the decor, and I had a blast decorating.

I made these felt gingerbread girl and snowman out of felt so many years ago, I can't even remember how long ago it was.

I picked up these pretty poinsettia plants and placed them in this plant stand.
The red skis I made out of wood again...many years ago.

 I didn't put up a Christmas Tree downstairs, even though my daughter thought I should.
So instead, I decorated the pillar like a Christmas tree ;)
I added all hand made ornaments to it.

Here is my Christmas village.
The skating rink plays music as the skaters spin around the rink.

I painted all of the houses in this village (except for the gingerbread house).
Some of the houses I purchased were already painted, but I painted them anyway as I didn't like the colours or how they were painted, lol.

I did a little video sharing more of my decorating.
If you would like to watch it on my YouTube channel, just clink on the link "Tracy's Treasures24"



So there you have it, my decorations for my Christmas Scrapbooking Crop.
I will be sharing the tags that I had made and that my friends had made soon :)

Hope you all have a very Creative Day.
Tracy :)