Christmas, Mini-Camp Style

My husband and I took a quick trip up north Friday night after we went to see the Trans Siberian Orchestra in Grand Rapids.  Sometimes it's nice just to escape overnight, and it truly was.  We had a nice dinner in Cadillac where we spent the night.  The next morning as we were driving around the area I spotted just tons of beautiful red berries, most often in swampy areas.  Certainly I just couldn't keep driving past these as they would make a wonderful addition to my large outdoor pot that I fill each year with cedar, holly, blue spruce and white pine.  Although my sweet husband was in tennis shoes he trudged through the snow and muck to cut me about a dozen stems.  Today I placed them in my outdoor pot, right next to the pansies that still think it's fall.  Two bold yellow blossoms are holding out, for what I have no idea.  It's a beautiful day in Michigan.  The sun is shining, and it's a chilly 40 degrees.  Will we have a white Christmas?  Not much snow in the forecast this week, but we'll see. 

This past Thursday I held my final stamping event of the year.  The afternoon group was surprised yet again with a power outage.  This only lasted about 5 minutes, but I'm telling you that my heart stopped and didn't start beating again until that ever lovin' power popped back on.  It was really dark in my craft room, the sky was dark and threatening, and the wind was blowing fiercely.  But everyone just rolled with it, laughed and then cheered as power was restored.  I neglected to get a picture of the afternoon group, guess I just wasn't thinking straight.

The evening group missed all the excitement, but at least my husband was home to take a picture of us. 

Theresa Mezo, Jean Harvey-Clark, Sara Miller

Chris Chick, Carol Stofer

Here are the projects that we completed, our last Christmas themed projects for the year.  We'll still do plenty of winter themed cards in the next couple of months so we can utilize all the awesome holiday stamp sets we have at our finger tips. 

This first card uses a whole bunch of different punches.  Right now Stampin' UP! has an awesome sale on all the old styled punches as well as many other retired products.  A great time to pick up those round and oval punches which made this project a breeze.  Check out my website and go to the Clearance Rack! Items discounted up to 80%!

Here's Nelson, having a chat with Peep and Cheep!

The girls just loved the glitz on this card.  The sparkly Silver Glimmer Paper is such a big hit and makes for a huge bling on this project.  Isn't it beautiful!!!!  We also used the Pewter Embossing Powder which looks just awesome with the silver.  The Blossom Petals Builder punch was used for the leaves.



Isn't it fun to find different used for the punches that we buy?  We used the Bird Builder punch to make the flame for this cool candle as well as the leaves around the base.  The candle itself is the Modern Label punch. I think it's amazing there are creative gals out there that think all this stuff up.  And I'm most appreciative! 

 All of the above projects were found on the Stampin' UP! Demonstrators website. 

Don't forget to check out the Clearance Rack

carolstofer.stampinup.net

Thanks for looking at today's post!!!