They are bangin' down my door!

Hey all!

I know it's been awhile, I apologize! I've been feverishly working on a couple books and preparing for a speaking engagement - yeah, ME, SPEAKING! Like a bumbling idiot, probably! I may grace a post with some video of it after it's over - heck, if I can figure it out, maybe I will SKYPE it - we will see!

I love y'all for subscribing and it will pay off in the VERY near future. Listen why.

My inbox has been INUNDATED with companies asking me to review products and some are offering extra items for giveaways! JUST IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS!

PBS, TinyPrints, VTech Toys, Simon&Schuster and MORE!!

Can you say FREE CHRISTMAS SHOPPING? Enter a contest and win a toy or discount that will help to complete your holiday shopping list!

SO...if you haven't already...SUBSCRIBE, SUBSCRIBE, SUBSCRIBE!

Peace.

NAMESAKE Christmas Gift EXTRAVAGANZA

Original, hand painted NAMESAKES on 9 x 12" bristol board: $50.00 each

I sold about 30 of these last year right before Christmas and I am opening my "ORDER PAD" once again but for a SHORT amount of time.

My ORDER PAD will be open until November 1st.

Orders will be verified once payment has been received.

I will contact you via email to discuss design options

and special requests for your child's artwork.

Peace.

Last minute gifts...

So, it's December 23rd and you have had your fill of grumpy shoppers at the mall. Your credit card has spontaneously combusted because of all the online shopping. Now what? You're not done. You have a couple more people who will be anxiously awaiting their gift at the family/company/neighborhood Christmas party.

This is the resource that will have you singing, "JOY TO THE WORLD!" These gifts that you can practically pull out of mid air. No lie. Keep reading!

The lint-ball sculpture.

We all have enough lint in our dryer trap to make a couple of these and if you start saving at Halloween, you could make a stuffed animal the size of your niece or nephew. Use the darker lint for facial features and body detail and string for hair or fur.

Heck, these weird stuffed guys sell for $40 in a major catalog... Trendy Jeans Head out to your hubby's workbench and grab the grimiest torn jeans you can find. Fill the bathtub with some stanky cologne and soak until Christmas morning. Don't rinse. Throw them in the dryer when he heads for the coffee pot. Apparently jeans are all the rage and without even leaving your house, you can give these...

without paying the $150 ticket price you'll pay in the store!

Fine Art

As an artist, I love making things to beautify someone's home. Something that is one-of-a-kind is always a no-brainer. However REAL art is quite expensive so I have a quick little trick that any mom can do...creative or not!

Preheat your oven to 275 degrees. Head to your craft cabinet or art supply bucket and fish out all the crayons...set enough aside to have one ROYGBV set. Place crayons in a large plastic bag and crush. Head the the garage and grab the least cheese-crusted pizza box. Spread the crayons in the bottom of the box. Place in oven and watch the artwork start and finish right before your eyes in mere minutes.

It's either that or you could buy this for $8000.

Is Aunt Ethel really going to live long enough to appreciate an $8000 gift?

Pancake Press

We've all seen the cookie mix in a jar kits that you can buy in specialty catalogs. Some people go way way overboard making them to give them out to teachers and hard-to-buy-for family members.

They are cute but way too pricey to buy too many of and way too time consuming to make!

So, here is the answer...Grab all the old empty CD jewel case around the house and throw them in the dishwasher. Tape one to a ziploc bag of filled with flour and cinnamon...VOILA you have yourself a pancake press.

I hope these gift ideas will ease your Holiday stress! If you have any links to wacky Christmas gifts leave them below. If nothing else, we can all get a good giggle while we are procrastinating and NOT wrapping gifts!

Communal germs, lots of snow and a FAT welcome home...

I am back! I survived! I am on my OWN couch, on my OWN laptop! and I am smiling from ear-to-ear! Although, I love my in-laws dearly, their house was a Petri dish of gargantuan germs this week. After the first day of our visit, my sister-in-law took her family home so they could hack up a lung on their own turf. My poor niece and nephew were heart-broken that they had to leave their cousins at Grandma's but I heard my nephew say to my s-i-l, "Wait, if we go home then I can play Webkinz, right?" See, even a 4-year old misses high speed when he's at Grandma's! Last night, my mother-in-law came down with the nasties. Fever, snot-filled sinuses, he whole she-bang! But, she was quite the trooper and played scrabble with my daughter until the ball dropped! This morning, one look into my daughter's big hazel eyes told me she was next in line for the IFEELLIKECRAP train! And she had a morning of crazed packing up and a 3 1/2 hour drive home with two loud brothers and a big black dog riding home next to her to look forward to. She slept some of the way and as my favorite girl always does, she kept her sweet smile the whole way. Precious! To expand on Dina's comment from my "help" post... Yes, I do live in PO-DUNK central (a.k.a. Amish Country) (Dina can call my town PO-DUNK because I could walk to her house from mine! haha!) but my in-laws live in PO-DUNKIER upstate New York. It is quite beautiful. They own/live on a tree farm, have a huge pond, an organic garden and lots of wildlife; and this holiday weekend, apparently ALL of the snow in the free world. Sheesh! My three kidlets were thrilled when they woke up yesterday morning to almost a foot of snow! For those of you who have more than one child, you know how ridiculous it is to get multiple children into snow clothes. Boots filled with crumpled socks, pant legs uncomfortably folded inside thick snow pants, untucked shirts twisted around sweaty torsos and gloves that don't quite reach the too-short sleeves of last year's winter coat. Then the mad search for a hat that actually covers their ears...by then kid 1 and kid 2 have disrobed and are on their way to the bathroom. Have you ever seen those queer hats that have the beer cans on them and the long straws that reach the drinker's mouth? Yeah, I would like one of those with a tall Mojito on either side JUST for getting them out the door and into the snow. Call it my Mama-Cap! This time, though, my hubby was tag-teaming and we got the three of them and the dog out the door in record time. That's when I realized I had not packed my boots, gloves, scarf, coat OR snow pants! Some of these items I refuse to even own because I pretty much HATE HATE HATE cold weather. I only pretend to like snow for my kids. We make snowmen, forts, and the like and I do it all with a smile (except for the getting dressed part). But I hate it! Really. So, I went sledding in 12+ inches of snow with a pair of too-small, ripped gloves that I found in the mudroom, the only pair of boots that came close to fitting...probably too low for the depth of Binghamton snow, some kind of fuzzy hulahoop for your ears, my mother-in-law's coat and NO FRIPPIN' SNOW PANTS! Somebody give me that dang Mama-Cap! We walked and sledded and walked and climbed and sledded and threw our share of fat snowballs... and my snowpantsless BEHIND was FROZEN!! Freezing to the point of causing me severe pain. I had visions of having to have my butt cheeks amputated due to frost bite...although that thought made me pause and contemplate that beauty...I needed to get inside. Quick. My Mama-Cap was no where to be found and I was grumpy! So, as I sit on my warm leather couch in my clean house (hubby helped get everything back in order after my minivan PUKED its contents upon our arrival home) in my snowless town, I realize... EVERYONE had a good trip. So, thanks for asking. Thanks for reading. Thanks for validating my pain. :) (of course I have at least 3 other posts in my head but fear I will lose you if I ramble too long...need to space 'em out)

It's far better to give...

I love Christmas! I love the mission of finding exactly what someone wants and getting it for them. I am not a fan of giving gift cards - I love receiving them! - but I like putting thought into what I give. I did give a gift card this year, though, to my dad. He is tirelessly finishing the basement in their new house all by himself. For this reason, the gecko level and a Lowe's gift card seemed to be perfect for Daddy! And of course, he played with his level like a little kid!

For my mom, I did a portrait of my Pop-Pop, her dad. Pop-Pop died in 2003 after being very sick for a long time. She has been missing him ever since.

This is Pop-Pop...

This was my Mom's gift...

My mom, my dad and my sister cried when they saw the portrait. I don't necessarily like to make people cry on Christmas but I think their tears were shed for the "gift" of seeing Pop-Pop again.

The Lord has given me the gift of artistic talent and I was happy to use it to bless someone else this Holiday Season.

This is the first photo-realistic portrait I have ever done. A nice barista at Barnes & Noble (while I was sipping and sketching) asked, "Do you do that for commission?"

I said, "This is for my mom, for Christmas."

He said, "You need to start charging, not your mom, but you need to charge for that!'

I chuckled. It is satisfying to do "a good job" and as a mom it is hard to guage the job you are doing.

With my pencil, I create, I can bless others and that is what Christmas is all about.

I told my husband that I was considering taking the barista's advice and offering portraits as gifts for people and charging a decent fee for the 20-25 hours of work they take.

He rolled his eyes and said, "You would have to give up writing, you don't have time to do both."

Do I? God gave me both gifts, do I give one up for the other or just take a course in time management (which is NOT one of my gifts)?

Would I have any takers?

Now as far as receiving...

My family hit it right on the head this year! I got a snazzy coffee maker (I have been drinking instant for years now), a hair dryer (mine "bit it" this week), and a mother's ring with all three kids' birthstones and names engraved on it (our adoption of our youngest will be final in a couple month so we are celebrating early with the ring). The ring was not in yet so the older two wrote a sweet poem to tell me of my gift....I will have them re-recite it when they get up so I can add it to this post. It was sweet!

Hope you all got what you wanted - we know the Avery's did! And that's what Christmas is all about - Miracles!