Happy New Year!!!

I wish you all a very happy, healthy 2012, full of love, creativity and courage (especially for my Greek friends!)!!! As long as we are healthy and surrounded by our family and friends, we can deal with everything...

These days I thought I would take a few days off from the blog... We celebrated the New Year's Eve with friends in my house and I had the New Year family lunch at my place as well. It was a bit crazy, but I managed to cope since I didn't really cook anything, hehehe. That might sound crazy, but it is known to everyone that my kitchen is my least favourite room in my house (as shocking as it may sound to most of you!). Plus, there are 5 ladies in my family more than willing to cook - mother, aunts and cousins. I still have food for the next week!

I also had to prepare my handmade presents - not many (only three), but quite time-consuming. But I made them for people I love very, very much and I really enjoyed it. I finished them the very last minute, but was able to take some quick photos.

For my two aunts I prepared a "book/album" for their favourite recipes. They liked it very, very much and I was really pleased. As it is supposed to be used in the kitchen, I avoided the embellishments (after all, we don't want glitter in our food, right?) and went for practical:

Each page has three pockets for tags-recipes, front, back and on the top:

Also each page has two more pockets (front and back) to use temporarily for recipes found in magazines or that have hastily written in papers (as they usually do):

Now, for my mother, just like last year (and every year it seems like!) I made a wall calendar. She uses them to take notes of payments, doctor appointments and the like.

This year I decided to have a theme - and the theme chosen was happiness. I chose some of my favourite quotes and this is the calendar I made:

So that's all for today...

Happy 2012!!!

Hugs,
Anastasia

Experience is what you do with what happens to you...

Another card for today, this time for the Get Creative - July 5th card challenge. This time we have to use a very happy and playful colour combo!

...that I found a bit hard at the beginning, but gave me the opportunity to try the watercolour background technique. The result is the following:

I couldn't agree more with what our friend Tim Holtz says... If only I had realised that earlier in my life! But it's better late than never ;o)

I hope you like it!

Supplies:

Green organza ribbon and yellow diamond stickers from my stash, plus:

2011 Calendar and Christmas presents

Oh yes... it's already February 8th, but I can finally share with you some of the Christmas presents that we prepared this year! Better late than never, right? ;o)

Sooo...

You can find the decoupage items my cousin Emilia and myself prepared for friends and family here.

Other than that, I also gave Christmas cards that I have already posted on this site... and a calendar for my mother!

Now, my mother uses this type of wall calendars where one can take notes about appointments, bills to be paid etc. So I thought that this year I would prepare her a calendar myself. My idea was to make it in a way I would describe "really big cards" - after all, the size of each page would be 30x30. And it started like this.

Then... I got ill with the flu, miss the targets I had for finishing it... and at the end I had to prepare the last 6 months in one day in order to have it ready for the 1st of January. So, as you will see, some of the pages have stamps that I coloured with ProMarkers and proper layouts and everything... while others were put together a bit hastily.... sorry mum!

Below are the pictures - once again, my thanks to Petros, the photographer, who was asked to take the pictures hastily after an amazing Jan 1 family lunch ! (and yes, July's photo is missing... but it's my mistake!)

January:

February:

March:

April:

May:

June:

August:

September:

October:

November:

December: