Gifting Challenges

The biggest Christmas challenge for our family is figuring out what to get my parents.  My mother is pretty good at telling me what she wants though she often waits to the last minute or asks for something seasonal - and not the winter season.  She did both this year.  Daddy refuses to make a list and continually says "I don't need anything."  He has figured out though that if he doesn't come up with something Lenny will buy what HE really wants to borrow.  Although the photos don't show it, Daddy did get a nice leather jacket from me and some shirts he wanted.  He just needed to have at least one more thing on his list to avoid that chain saw that I know he will never use ...which probably a good thing.

The most important gift this year was that we were all together.  You can't put love in a box anyway.

To capture this little bit of Christmas cheer and angst, I scrapbooked.  To create the letters, I used the SCAL software for my Cricut.  In this case, it would have been better to use a cartridge with a shadow feature.  After cutting and stamping the letters in Real Red ink on white cardstock, I realized they needed a white shadow to help them show up on the background paper.  Unfortunately, I'd accidentally resized them in my SCAL file and saved the wrong size. It took a few tries to get shadows that are somewhat OK looking. 

Finally, I'm beginning to stop 'saving up' my good stuff for some unknown future occasion and used quite a bit of this Stampin' Up! ribbon and a special piece of designer paper that is part of a kit.   

Ingredients:  Stamps:  Impression Obsession
Ink:  Real Red, Whisper White
DSP:  Basic Grey Periphery collection; kraft by Creative Memories
Ribbon:  Stampin' Up; baker's twine by Martha Stewart
Chipboard:  Stampin' Up!