Are you ready?

For Christmas, that is.... All the boxes that needed to be sent to far away places are either on their way, or have arrived at their destinations. No tree this year for us, no decorating, no baking, nothing big going on. None of the kids are coming to the house this year, and we'll be over in Madison the 29th for baptism/Christmas, so we just didn't see the sense in hauling everything down. My sister and dad will come for dinner on the day, but they don't care if we've decorated or not. I actually have a "tree" of sorts. It's a rosemary bush trimmed to the shape of a tree, and it has a fancy ribbon stuck in it. Smells really nice in the living room! I'm looking forward to the Children's Christmas Eve Service at church too. Small church full of love. This Saturday is our "dress rehearsal" and I always order pizza for the kids with the 'threat' that if they don't sing out or don't know their parts, there'd be no pizza for them. Naturally I wouldn't carry through on that ever, and the funny thing is...they know it! Great group of kids. I teach the youngest kids age 3-kindergarten, and direct the children's choir. It's great fun.

So while our Christmas will be relatively quiet, it will be good. I talked to my dear friend Val in Florida yesterday. Her holiday will be somewhat quiet as well, hmmmm....maybe she and her DH should come up here for Christmas! What do you think, Val??!!! We'd have so much fun!

And now I suppose you'd like to know what this post contains besides my ruminations. Well sweet little Anna's 11th birthday is Friday, and I made a card for her. Rather cute, if I might say so.

It's going into the Lawnscaping Challenge with its lovely "Artic Color" palette.

I love these stamps. They're the Winter Sparrows set, and I used the coordinating dies, both from Lawn Fawn. I stamped the sentiment using two different LF sentiments; Year Three and Winter Sparrows. The two white panels are die cut using MME dies, and MFT flags for the sentiment panel. A bit of MS glitter, a smattering of Copic markers for the birds, a bit of random twine, one white sequin on the bow, but it's not showing well...All the papers are scraps, including the light gray base!!!! And that's about it. I'll shut up now before I bore you all to sleep! Happy dances everyone.