Christmas gifts

Good evening everyone! I have spent the afternoon wrapping gifts for mailing. I really wanted to get them in the mail by last Wed. but no such luck! We have had a busy weekend. Fri. nite the kids and I and a friend of my son's and my friend and her daughter who is about Em's age went to the botanical gardens here. They have thousands of luminaries lining the path, lots of great light displays, plus they had a silent auction and several choral groups. The kids saw Santa (the girls sat on his lap, Matt and his friend declined, though they still "believe") and we got fudge and popcorn, etc. It wasn't too cold, and we had a blast! Sat. morning I went to my SU demos group Christmas party. We each brought a hand stamped gift for a gift exchange. My contribution is at left. Instructions may be found HERE. (I have the author's permission to link to this post.) I used
Real Red, Old Olive and Whisper White CS, DP and sticky die cuts from the I Wish Simply Scrappin kit, Winter Post set, the swirly Sizzlits die and small felt flurries. It turned out really cute. All the gifts were amazing; it is a really creative group I have lucked into here.

Here is another view. I put Land 'o Lakes flavored cocoa packets in the cups along with chocolate dipped pretzels from Target and some Ghiardelli chocolates.

This are examples of the gifts I made for my family. I had been wanting for a while to make a video of my parents talking about their lives, and I finally did it! They talked for two hours and barely scratched the surface. I had the tape transferred to DVD and made a bunch of copies for my brothers, sister, and nephews. Then I used some of my massive stash of DP to decorate the boxes I cut it 7-1/4 " by 10-3/4 ", then scored at 5-1/8" and 5-5/8". Fits pretty well, it really needs to be about 1/8 inch longer, but then I would have had to score at sixteenths and I wasn't up for that! I made a label on the computer and done--not fancy, but better than an ugly plastic black box right?

Oh, I forgot to mention--we went caroling with some of my neighbors Sat. nite--again we had a blast! This morning our pastor preached about not letting the holidays make you blue, that you should try to give joy to someone else, then it "boomerangs" back to you! And you know he is right! Even my husband, who is not exactly a Scrooge, but is not as enthusiastic about Christmas as I am, enjoyed the caroling and mentioned how fun it was several times! So I got joy in several ways! Hope you all are enjoying the holidays as much as I am!