Merry Christmas

Here is my family's Christmas tree! I know - it is a small one this year.




Joey made some Legos and decorated under the tree. Here is his train and a horse drawn carriage. They even have their Christmas tree on the carriage!




Here is the ice rink. Can you find someone that fell into the snow bank?






And Santa rides on the train! I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!

Snow Day

We had a white-ish Christmas after all! Right at the tail end of the day, it snowed beautiful fluffy flakes and it stuck, too. I thought it would melt by morning, but it did not! So I took a couple of the girls out for a snow day.


Here is Sadie climbing on the jasmine vines in the snow. She has on a pink sweater I knit for her, too!


Isobel has a frog hat that our friend Megumi made from Sweet Honey Complex. It really helps keep her warm in the cold winter weather!


Sadie is making some snow cones!


And finally they made some snow angels in the front yard! What fun! I love snow!

Merry Christmas 2010!

Merry Christmas, everybody! They said it was gonna happen and this evening it finally did...it started SNOWING here in Athens, Georgia, just in time for Christmas! In between games of Wii BOWLING and KATAMARI DAMACY with our friend Gary, I stuck a camera out our mud room door and took a picture of our snow-covered driveway...I'm tempted to move LORD FOCUS, my Ford Focus, out onto the street, in case some tree limbs decide to freeze over, break, and come crashing down...

Holiday Ready

Well, we are ready for the holidays the best we can here at the Ranch. I caught a cold over the weekend that I am still in recovery from. I am hoping Raoul will not get it. This has slowed down our Christmas progress, sad to say. We got our tree up and going, well, Raoul said Oreo put it up herself! Somehow this makes sense in my mind... But we did not get much of our usual decor decking those halls. Maybe tomorrow...

Snuggle Bunny Monday

Sketchbook Sunday: Sneaky

I made this illustration for the Illustration Friday I missed when the word was "sneaky." I thought this was a good word to draw, but I missed the date to enter my link! That's okay. I am back on track now, and was so busy for the last few weeks. I hope you enjoy this drawing of me and Nilla being very sneaky! I imagine this to be us sneaking around peeking at our Christmas pressies that await!

Closed For The Holidays!

My SHOPPE SUGAR COOKIE on ETSY is now closed for the holidays! So is my personal website! I'll be open for business again in the new year. 2011, yeah! I want to take this time to thank everyone who helped make 2010 my best year on ETSY yet! Thank you to all my friends and family, to all you wonderful customers who shopped on-line, to everyone who visited us at the craft sales, to all the great shops that carry my items, and to everyone who blogged about my handmade goodies. THANK YOU all so much! :)

Snuggle Bunny Monday

Baking Gingerbread

After not feeling so hot this weekend, I decided to help us feel better by making some yummy gingerbread from my Babycakes cookbook. This is a great recipe cos it uses pumpkin puree and it is also sugar free. It makes a lot of better, too!




I was able to fill both my dala horse cake pans and another casserole pan! That is a ton of gingerbread!


So it was nice and holiday-ish to have some yummy gingerbread and hot tea for our brekkie this morning. It helped us feel better.

Handmade Holly Day!

Hey! Weather permitting, Missy and I will be participating in the HANDMADE HOLLY DAY craft sale hosted by TREEHOUSE KID & CRAFT, here in Athens, Georgia tomorrow (this Saturday). Come on by and say "hi", buy some handmade goodness to give as presents to your friends and family, treat yourself to some locally-made awesomeness, and check out the brand new Treehouse shop...bring the kids!

Across the street, wonder boutique, OHH, BOY!, will be hosting day-two of their holiday artists market, helping to turn that particular section of Broad St. into a "crafty corridor"...the Treehouse sale starts at 10am and the Ohh, Boy! sale starts at noon. Come downtown, grab some lunch, and get some more of your holiday shopping done!

UPDATE: Missy is not feeling well today, so we're regrettably pulling out of today's sale. Boooo! Still, if you're in Athens or parts close by, you should come to Ohh, Boy! and Treehouse Kid & Craft if you're looking to buy local and handmade stocking stuffers and gifts galore...of course you are, right? There will be lots of great crafters and artists out on Broad St. today, ready to help you out!

Holiday Ornaments

I made some ornaments using my CHRISTMAS CARD DRAWINGS and some iron on transfers.




I printed them out and ironed them on to some soft white felt.


Here I cut out the back of the ornament from plain red felt. I left a margin around the image so I can stitch it together.


I just top stitched the two felt pieces together. There is a ribbon sewn into the top, too. I made sure to go slowly around the curves of the snowman!


Right before I got to the end, I stuffed the ornament with polyfill, then stitched it the rest of the way!


Here it is stuffed and sewn up!






Easy as that - they are ready to hang on the tree!

Order Up, Shanalogic!

Missy's TINY DINOS and SEA LIFE PALS ONE-INCH BUTTON SETS are sold exclusively at SHANALOGIC.COM and they're selling like hotcakes! They're selling faster than we can restock them - we *just* finished pressing a whole batch of badges tonight so that we can send them off tomorrow. Needless to say, we've been crazy busy the past couple of days. Head on over to Shanalogic.com and treat yourself and your loved ones to some unabashed cuteness...your one-stop shop for holiday gifts and stocking stuffers is right HERE!

My New Desk

Missy here... I am reporting from my new desk. We made it from two ALEX drawers from IKEA. The table top I was going to get from IKEA was too short to fit the Alex drawers we purchased, so we had a table top cut to size at HOME DEPOT. I like this lots cos it fits the space exactly how I wanted it. Hooray!


We are doing a major clean up and organize in the craft room. So here is the new desk, ready to go! In the corner are the taller drawers that we got recently. We have enough room for another next to this one, too. I am glad cos I like these and they are great for storing paper and stationery and stickers, an trust me I have a lot of those!


Now I am ready to place lots of cute accessories on my new desk, like this KITTY MUG my aunt gave me for my birthday. I think I got it in fourth grade. I love it so much, but it has a chip. It is perfect for holding all my pens. Now I gotta get to work!

Sketchbook Sunday: Sweater Weather

Today was so very cold and windy here in Athens. We went out to run some errands and I almost blew away! Raoul had to catch me! This windy day reminded me of this comic I drew a long time ago. I was going to do a "sweater" theme zine, but I never finished. This is one of my comics that shows sweaters for every season. Do you have a favorite sweater?

Baby It's Getting Cold Outside

Check out my new pair of adorable owl mittens that our friend LIBBY knitted for me! I love these mittens for a number of reasons, such as they are a beautiful red color that I simply love, and I can wear these in my office when it is frigid and still work on the computer! Libby also does some fabulous pet portraits, too. You might remember the NILLA PORTRAIT that Libby made for us. I love it so much. Libby is so talented! Check out her website HERE.




Speaking of Nilla, here she is letting me hold her for a photograph! She is so good! She looks extra soft and cloud-like in these pictures that Raoul took, doesn't she?