Baby Shower Invitations - Ahoy! It's a Boy!

I can't believe it's already the second week of December! Christmas is only 13 days away, and I'm so excited to spend some quality time with my family, and eat my fill of Turkey and other foods I only get around Christmas time. Unfortunately I haven't been working on too many Christmas-y things lately. I'm slowly getting into the later weeks of my Project Life, last week I finished up some baby shower invitations (which I'm sharing below), and I've been working a bunch, trying to get the house slowly decorated for Christmas. Last week we put up the tree and a few decorations, I'm still trying to decide what I want to put up and where I want everything. I'm so indecisive, but since we don't have anyone coming over for Christmas, it doesn't really matter.

Here's the adorable baby shower invite. They went for a whale/nautical theme. I'm so pleased with how it turned out, and not to toot my own horn, but it turned out amazing! Considering I don't have photoshop, or any other editing type program, I made the text portion in Word using a bunch of text boxes so I could position the text exactly where I wanted it. It was time consuming, but totally worth it!

A close up of the little whales. I cut them using my cricut (which I haven't used in what feels like forever). I was originally going to do one, but it was too empty, so I put two.

A close up of the anchor, and wheel strung on twine across the top half. Originally I wasn't going to use the eyelets, but I felt they were important to help the twine from pulling too much on the hole.

A close up of the paper texture mostly. I love the dots embossed on the blue paper. It adds to the nautical/whale theme!Thanks for coming by to check out these invites! I imagine there will be more of them coming in the future!

Have a great day!
-Alexandria

Project Life: Week Forty-Five

Good afternoon. I'm a little bit late with this post. Yesterday was a busy day, and I had meant to photograph this spread yesterday morning before my niece came over, and then work on the post after she left. Long story short, I didn't do either of those things. Instead I slept in, showered and played the new Captain Toad game for Wii U. It's so much fun, but also a huge time suck. So this morning I skipped Captain Toad and photographed this spread. But then I played a bit of Captain Toad while the photos were uploading, and let's just say I forgot to work on the post. But I'm doing it now, so that's what counts right?

This week I used Studio Calico, Midnight, and Dear Lizzy. I'm not sure yellow was the right choice for this week, given that it snowed, but I wanted to use that november card, and it tied in the yellow from the popcorn, and the antlers.

Here's the left side. My weeks start on Sunday, so this was the trip home after the funeral. It rained until about half way home, then it turned immediately into winter. We came over a hill, and suddenly snow, and lots of it!

Here's the right side. This was mostly about the middle of the week and our trip to Edmonton for my birthday. We shopped at Ikea, saw a movie (I included the tickets and giftcard we used), got stuck in typical city traffic, and stayed at a hotel (kept the room key). We came home early-ish the next day and I assembled my new craftroom furniture. It's much prettier than what I had in there before.

Thanks for coming by to see this spread. Sorry it's later than usual, the holidays are a busy time of year! Hope you all have a great day!

-Alexandria

Where Did All The Good Online Craft Stores Go?

Good morning! Today I want to rant a little bit about buying supplies, mostly online, because I live in a small town, but also a little about Michael's. Don't get me wrong, I love that Michael's exists, and it's possibly my favorite store in the entire world, but I always feel like I can never find what I want. They don't always have the latest lines, or when they do, I never make it to the store (3 hours away) before they sell out of it. I can't "wait for a sale" to get things cheaper, or even wait for a good coupon. It's not worth it for me to plan a trip around their sales and coupons, so I usually overpay for a lot of things. I wish they had more variety of products in their online store, but since they don't, I settle for shopping elsewhere, or in store when I make it to the city.

With the help of Jon's credit card, I do plenty of online shopping. That doesn't mean that I use his card and he buys me all the supplies I want with his money. What I mean is that I give him cash, and he puts it on the card for me to buy things online. I know it'd be simpler to just get my own credit card, however I'm terrible with money, and I know that if I had a card, it would always be full, and I'd never get it paid off. At least this way, I give him cash for the amount I want to spend, and he pays it off immediately. His credit score is probably amazing thanks to me.

I never used to do much online shopping, but since I started buying online last year, I've found very few sites that I would buy from again. And yet, I feel like every time I find a website that I want to order from again, they close shortly after I find them. This happened with Two Peas in a Bucket, and now Scrapbooker's Inner Circle. I'm really hoping this doesn't happen with a couple of sites I recently started ordering from! I'll be so sad if I keep making sites close down. (I know it's not my fault, but still).

Some sites I've been ordering from lately:

• A Cherry On Top
• Freckled Fawn
• Studio Calico

Here's a few that some crafty friends have recommended:

• Simon Says Stamp
• Paper Issues
• JoAnn
• Scrappin Great Deals 
• Scrapbook.com

I'd love to know of any online shops you recommend. I'm trying to find some Canadian stores, but they're nearly impossible to find. A lot of them have a nearly impossible time getting any product in, and end up closing down. It's such a shame, but most scrapbooking companies are based in the US and don't want to pay a little extra to ship their product to slightly smaller Canadian stores.

When it comes to online shopping, I wish I lived a little closer to the border so we could have a box number there, and get things shipped to it and save a little money once in a while. I've also considered opening a scrapbook store, but given how many have been closing throughout the province lately, I'm afraid to. It also doesn't help that I live in a small town, and I don't actually know that many crafty ladies in the area. A lot of them buy from Stampin Up because it's almost the only thing available to them.

I'll end this rant about buying supplies. Where do you go to shop, both online and in-store?

Have a great day!
-Alexandria

Project Life: Week Forty-Four

Good morning! Today I'm sharing my spread for Week 45. I'm slowly getting caught up to where we're at week wise. So excited to be getting closer to December and being able to start making some pretty Christmas pages. I've been watching Nicole Jones' December Daily videos on Youtube (here), and it's making me excited, and inspired to do some December pages in my regular album. She usually does traditional pages, so I'm pretty excited to see her using Project Life!

Here's the first half of the spread. I'm trying to use cards from my stash a little more, and I didn't have any blue/green cards in my collection of Studio Calico cards, so instead I've used Strawberry for this week.

Here's the left side. We started the week with some terrible news about one of Jon's Warhammer friends. I journaled a little about it on the card next to "The Happiness Pursuit" (which was really good), but I didn't do too much detail about it since I didn't know him well. On the next half of this week I have a spot that I want Jon to journal a bit about his friend, and I'll hide it for him to look at later on. I'm well over half done my reading challenge, so I included that because I didn't think there was any way that I'd get past 20 books, but I made it past 20, and I'm so proud of myself. The bottom right photo is Gracie sleeping on Jon's back. It was so cute, and they both looked so comfortable.

Here's the right side. My messy desk, quiet time with Tori because she asked me "Auntie, can we go have quiet time in your room?" of course I said yes, and so we watched half of an episode of Mia & Me, and downloaded a couple of games for her.

Here's the second half of this spread. This half of the week was some happy mail, sympathy cards, and a trip to the city for the funeral. We caught a pretty sunset on the way up, got our hotel room upgraded for free, had amazing room service, and saw some friends we haven't seen in a while.

Here's the left side. I used more strawberry because I wanted it to be cohesive from one week into the next. I included a photo of the sympathy cards I made, my happy mail from Freckled Fawn. That beautiful sunset, and the wonderful hotel bed! This week we got some complimentary chocolates from a local business that did a lot of work for us, they made two signs, and a 5 piece mural for the restaurant. Not to mention all the other work we asked them to do, and to thank us for our business, they had custom chocolates made for us. It was wonderful, and they were delicious!

A couple more photos of the hotel, one of the Warhammer portion of the memorial, our room service, and the little book from the funeral. Behind it is where I want to put a journaling card for Jon to write some things down.

Thanks for coming by to see this weeks spread.
Have a great day!
-Alexandria

DIY Cinnamon Apple Sauce Ornaments

I made these after making some sugar cookies with my niece. Now I wish I'd done these with her. It's something that she could stir (which she loves to do). They're also super simple to make, and although they say that it may stain your hands, mine didn't. I smelt like I rolled around in cinnamon for the rest of the day, but my pasty white hands remained pasty and white.

I love these so much. They made my house smell delicious for a couple days after I made them. I put them in a bag once they'd cooled to keep my house from smelling too strongly of cinnamon.
The recipe for these comes from Completely Delicious. I added double the cinnamon because my apple sauce was really wet, and so my dough came out being pretty wet after the recommended amount was added and mixed. It was still a little sticky when I rolled them out, but if you roll them out on some extra cinnamon, they're usually okay. Don't use flour because it moulds over time, even after it's baked.

Ingredients

• 1 cup applesauce
• 1-1 1/4 cup (130 grams) ground cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon ground cloves (optional)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees F. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, combine the applesauce, cinnamon, and cloves (if using). It may take a few minutes for the mixture to come together. You want the dough to be able to form a ball without being too sticky. Add additional applesauce or cinnamon if needed. You can mix the dough by hand, it may just take longer.
3. Sprinkle a clean surface with cinnamon (like you would with flour while rolling out pie dough). Place the dough on the surface and sprinkle with more cinnamon. Use a rolling pin to roll the dough to 1/4 inch thick, sprinkling with more cinnamon to keep from sticking.
4. Cut out into desired shapes and place on the prepared sheet pan so that they aren't touching. Use a skewer to poke a hole into each ornament (to attach string). Bake in the preheated oven for 1 1/2 - 2 hours or until rock hard.
5. Loop a decorative string through the ornament and hang on your tree.

Notes: Ornaments may also be dried at room temperature over several days.

Ornaments are not extremely fragile, but they can break. Handle with care.

DO NOT EAT they're made with edible ingredients, but are not edible.

Thanks for coming by to check out this recipe. I give full credit for the recipe to Completely Delicious. This is not my recipe, but the comments above it, are mine. All photos in this post are mine, and I am not being endorsed to share this recipe.

Have a great day!

-Alexandria