My Christmas and Some Awesome Cards

Happy New Year's Eve everyone!  I hope that everyone had a wonderful time celebrating Christmas with family and friends last week.  Mine was pretty good especially because God gave me the opportunity to share God's love with one of Benson's relatives.

It's always an honor and privilege to get to do that.  For brunch my family and I had dim sum with my side of the family

and then opened our presents.  For dinner we spent the evening with my hubby's family.  The food that we enjoyed was ono too. After dinner we took family pictures,

watched a slide show to recap 2013, and played some games. The entire day was lots of fun.  In closing I would like to share one of my favorite Christmas gifts

and some crafty Christmas cards made by some very talented friends.

Have a blessed 2014!

Tags and Decorations to Celebrate Jesus' Birthday

This month has been a busy one.  I am very grateful for some time off from work to spend time with friends, family, and to prep for Christmas.  Each year I come up with two different tags. This year I made three different ones.  I usually put the presents in a gift bag so my personal touch to the gifts is attaching a handmade tag to them. The tags that I choose to make always have a religious meaning to them to honor the reason why Christmas is celebrated.  Here are the tags that I made for this year.

Did you know that a wreath has a religious meaning?  I also made one tag for a friend that loves USC.

Besides making tags, I made some bows

and a gift card holder.

Before I end I wanted to share a few pictures of how I decorated our house this year.  It was a bit of a challenge since for over 10 years I've decorated our house the same way.  This year was different though because we are living in our new place to call home. This is how our house looks outside.

This is my favorite part of how we decorated the inside of our house

and some pictures of my favorite ornaments.

Thanks for taking time out of your busy holiday schedule to see what I have to share today.  I am looking forward to celebrating Jesus' B-day tomorrow and hope that all of you are having a  Happy Christmas Eve and will have a Merry CHRISTmas tomorrow! 

A Christmas Themed Tea Swap

My good friend Fran and I were paired up to be tea swap partners last month. We were asked to make some thing other than a card using Christmas colors.  Fran is super creative and talented so I felt a bit stressed with trying to come up with some thing super creative to make for her.  A bunch of ideas came to mind and I finally settled on making her a banner. 

I also surprised her with some mint chocolate tea mints and made her a bow to attach to the container.

I had lots of fun making the banner and am so happy that she liked it.  Fran surprised me with these super cute frames.  I love them!!!!! 

She also sent me some my favorite ono snacks- smoked aka legs.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart Fran for the goodies, super cute frames, and for being such fab swap partner and friend.  Thanks for stopping by to see what I have to share today. 

Reminders of the True Meaning of Chrismas

I hope that everyone is doing well and that you are having fun getting ready for Christmas.  I feel that Christmas is coming up just a little too fast and off and on I am feeling a bit stressed.  I have been praying that God will help me not get stressed.  Through the candle light processional at Disneyland last Sunday God reminded me of the true reason of why we celebrate Christmas and how I need to keep that reason in mind as I prep for it.  Being able to watch the processional with the area in front of Main Street was such a blessing.

They had a huge choir that walk down Main Street with candles and lead us in several songs, an awesome orchestra, some singers, and Kurt Russel read the Christmas story from the Bible.

 The most touching moment was when the entire audience sang "Silent Night" together.  That moment will forever be in my heart.  I truly feel that being able watch to the processional is my Christmas present from God and I thank Him from the bottom of my heart for it.  God has not only used the processional at Disneyland to remind me of the true meaning of Christmas, but being able to make cards to donate to a friend's grandmother to include with the dolls that she passes out at at a children's hospital each year reminds of the true meaning too.  Here are the cards that I made this year.  I made two of each one.

It's always such a blessing to be able to use what I enjoy (making cards) to bless the lives of others.  Have a blessed time prepping for Christmas.

Christmas Treats and My Time Away

I hope that everyone had a blessed Thanksgiving with family and friends.  Last week was lots of fun with going to San Diego for a few days (One of the places my family and I visited was Legoland), spending time with my siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins for Thanksgiving, and going to Disneyland.  After all the fun, I settled down a bit on the weekend and started prepping for Christmas- all our address labels are done and our newsletters are all printed.  During the week I started making Christmas tags.  Stay tune for a picture of them soon.  Besides making some Christmas tags I also made some goodies for my friends in the stamp club I attend each month.  This is what I made for them. (As you can see I am on a roll with making fun goodies with the chocolate dipped oreos that I purchased.  For Thanksgiving I purchased a package with all of them wrapped in Fall colors.  This time I purchased some that are wrapped in Christmas colors.)

I gave each person two of the chocolate dipped oreos and put them in a cello bag and tied it with a ribbon. Before ending my post for today I want to share four pictures with you from last week.  The first one is of me with a gigantic Hello Kitty bag that I received as a complimentary gift from the Marukai store in San Diego.

Second is a picture of a Christmas tree built out of legos.  I am always amazed at all the awesome creations I see at Legoland.

Next I would like to share one of the pictures that I took at Disneyland.  One of the reasons we went there last week to meet Thor. (My family and I were lucky that we were able to get to the amusement park early and be the first one in line to meet him.  After we took pictures with him, the line was really long.)

Last, but not least is a picture of the ono dinner that we had at Mrs. Knott's Kitchen (located outside of Knott's Berry Farm).  We had stopped for dinner there on the way home from Disneyland.

Thanks for stopping by to see what I have to share.  :)