Merry Christmas!

From my family to yours, I hope you have a blessed Christmas. 

 

"For today in the city of David, there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord."
Luke 2:11

 

This is what Christmas looks like in the Saenz household!
 

 

 

 

 

My mom's cookies.  I made some 16 dozen of my own too!  We

have SO many cookies.  Who'd like to come over and partake?  :)

 

 

 

 

And now..... introducing the newest
addition to our family:  Autumn Skye. 

 

Here's our little beauty with her great-grandparents. 

 

 

This right here is four generations of Saenz.  Oh my gosh how I LOVE this photo!

 

 

Here's Autumn with her Dad (my nephew Aaron) and both of her

great grandmothers, my mom and Carmen (AKA Grandma Honey).  :)

 

 

We all got to ooh and ahh over the baby!

 

 

And a few other pictures.  Here I am (on the left) with both

of my sisters.  Great close up shot thanks to Nick!

 

 

Nick got me a Christmas present.  Look out how he labeled it.  Too funny.  It's

a little ceramic cup, like for espresso shots, that says "I love you Mom."  Best.Gift.EVER!!! 

He bought it with his own money and I am SO proud!

 

 

 

Christmas at home, with my own family, is the place to be.  My heart is bursting with joy at getting to be here with my family once again, instead of off doing my own thing.  There is nothing, I repeat NOTHING, that will ever convince me to be away from my favorite people during the best time of the year.  Merry Christmas to all of you, from my heart to yours. 

How to make a king's costume in one day when your kid forgets to tell you that he needs a king's costume for that night's Christmas program.

Yes, my son is a tad irresponsible (COUGH), just a TAD (cough cough!).  Ugh.  The ONLY reason I knew he needed to be a king for that very night's Christmas program is because I went in to scrapbook with the class and directly asked the teacher what Nick was supposed to wear that night.

 

Imagine my surprise to learn that Nick had known for two weeks. 

Now I had eight hours to come up with something. 

 

THANK GOD for my Cricut and scrap crap!!!  LOLOL

 

I cut the crowns from A Child's Year cartridge.  The brown felt, gold

burlap, and ribbon are all from Wal-Mart! 

 

 

The burlap had seriously uneven edges; it is VERY hard to cut straight

lines on burlap, so I just sewed to make it even.  This is KIND OF a big deal

because I do NOT know how to sew!  I want to learn and am sure I'll be

taking classes in the new year, but for now I stink at sewing!  I sure try, though.  ;)

 

 

Here everything is getting all attached and blinged up.  I wish I had just used the

burlap and avoided the felt but I wanted it to be a big, sturdy thing, hence all the layers. 

 

 

My sister was amazed at my newly acquired sewing prowess so she felt the need to take pictures.  LOLOL  Welcome to my little corner of the dining room, my tiny table where I create.  ;)  It's a huge mess what with all the Christmas goodness going on!!!

 

 

 

Yes I can, yes I can!  This is what I was chanting inwardly to myself

while I attempted a straight, even line on that old crown.  :D

 

I was going to let Nick wear his fairly new bathrobe as his costume, but one of

the other moms who knew of my predicament had an old graduation gown that

she threw together for us.  Here is Nick's final costume (though next time he

pulls this on me I SWEAR I am going to make him perform in his underwear!  GRR!!!  :) ):

 

 

 

In retrospect, I should have gotten gold metallic paper for the crown part,

instead of using brown textured paper... Oh well! 

 

Here's Nick's class of kings after their sang their hearts

out (and quite beautifully, I might add!):

 

 

 

My baby and I after the show.  Love, love, love, this irresponsible little king (prince) of mine. :)

 

 

Thank you for stopping by and leaving love!  And quit

laughing at how much I suck at sewing.  Ha ha. 

 

Blessings,

 

Martha

 

 

The sweetest thank you EVER!!!

As I've mentioned before, I "teach" Nick's class scrapbooking.  Monthly, I head over to work with the kids on their personal yearbooks using pictures I take of them in their various school activities.  Of course, I also chaperone dances and field trips and volunteer at their class parties, etc.  This all gives me ample opportunity to take lots and lots of pictures!

Nick's teacher did such a wonderful, wonderful thing.  I scrapbook with the kids because I *love* it and I want them to love memory-keeping, too.  I also want to be included in all of their activities and I want to know the children and teacher/admin that my son spends eight hours a day with.  Nobody asked me to do this; I WANT to do this.  So it really took me by surprise that Nick's teacher, Mrs. Nelson, had the kids write me thank-you notes for both helping at their party and for the scrapbooking.  I cried when Nick handed them to me...

 

I thanked Mrs. Nelson for the sweetness of it all and told her that of course I'd be scrapbooking these notes, to which she nodded and said "I know!"  :D 

 

Check out the thank you from Nick.  He always addresses it with my full name instead

of Mom.  This cracks me up!!!

 

 

This is one of my favorites, from the "other" Nicholas in the class.  He drew a ghost saying cheese-- because I am ALWAYS taking pictures.  How cute is that!!!

 

So here's the scrapbook page I made!  I used an old set of CTMH papers and made a pocket.  I used my sewing machine (gasp!) to attach the pattered paper onto my background cardstock.  I used my Cricut to cut the heart and "Happy" and I placed that white piece of paper down to show where I want to add a photo of me teaching the class.  The 3D flowers are also old CTMH embellies.

 

I went in just last week for our scrapbooking class and forgot to ask someone to take a picture of me.  LOL!  Here's a shot of some of the pictures I took of the kids to include in their personal yearbooks: 

 

 

Instead of treat bags full of candy and toys (junk toys-LOL) I bought each kid a Santa hat

and had the kids glitter-glue their names onto them.

 

Nick got a chess set from his Secret Santa at school.  Here, he's teaching the other

boys some of his strategies. Wink, wink!

 

Maybe next time I'll get a picture of myself for that scrapbook page... LOL

 

I hope everyone is having a blessed Christmas season!

 

Much love and many blessings to all of you,

 

Martha

 

Use it up!

I have a bunch of these older CTMH kits that seriously need to be used up.  I found an OLD, and I mean oooolllddddddddd, picture that was suitable for this paper. 

 

Yep, the 17-year-old me who used to tuck her T-shirt into her jean shorts.  Ha ha.  And I was teased for being fat.  (Eye roll! I'd give just about anything to look like that again!) 

 

 

Anywho! I had just a few pieces of patterned paper and some CS left so I went ahead and made up another page.  One day I'll have the right pictures for it and I'm sure I'll add a few embellies too.

 

 

And this is all I have left over.  A bunch of stickers....

 

 

....and just a few pieces of cardstock and patterned paper.  I *love* using stuff up and calling it done. 

 

 

It's so wonderful to use up the stash!

 

Have a blessed day!

 

Martha

playing catch up

I finally got some recent pix printed.  That is to say, I had a bunch of printed pictures at Walgreens that I needed to pick up but couldn't afford and I finally could and did... :)

 

Once again, I used embellish it! kits to complete these in no time at all.  This is the October 2013 four-page kit. 

 

 

 

 

And this is the November kit: 

 

 

Now, I don't really have any pictures for any of the four pages in this kit... thankfully our front yard was full of leaves that needed to be raked.  So I took that opportunity to go ahead and get myself enough pictures for that top two-pager.  :)

 

I made that dumb face on purpose.  For real.  LOL  (P.S.  Do not EVER, ever ever ever ever, EVER move back to your parents house unless you *want* to gain 20-30 pounds.  Seriously.)

 

 

 

All because I needed pix for that layout, I raked up all the leaves and let Nick jump in them. 

 

 

He's pretending to be exhausted in this next picture, and even told me what my journaling
should say on the scrapbook page. LOL :D

 

 

Then Nick kicked the leaves all around so my Dad could mow the lawn and leave them as mulch.

 

 

 

My kid the nice little helper, sweeping up the mess for his Grandma. 

 

 

Now to get the pictures printed and onto those pre-designed pages....

 

Thanks for stopping by and leaving love!

 

Blessings,

Martha

 

December!

This is the CTMH Stamp Of The Month for December:

This stamp set costs $17.95 UNLESS you make a $50 purchase, in which case it would only cost $5.  Yep, five little dollars.

I do not have any samples with this set as I do not own it-- YET.  :)  I just thought it might strike your fancy and you might want to get your hands on a set.  Order here:  marthasaenz.ctmh.com

Thanks for stopping by!

some play time

I had some play time earlier this week and I dug into some more embellish it! kits, and I am still working through summer 1997 pictures that I found. 

 

Now, the backside of the page immediately above had these beautifully subtle butterflies on it and I had a ton of supplies left over in my kit... so I made the below layout on the backside of the above layout.  And I used up a bunch of those extra embellies.  :)

 

That is all for now. Thank you for stopping by and leaving love!

 

Blessings,

Martha

Another 8x10 to share

... and it's of me.  Yes, I'm the weirdo who scraps super-sized photos of herself.  Maybe I'm conceited... and full of myself... or maybe I just want to make sure I get some of my own personal stories down and not just those of my kiddo and family.  ;-)

I have some hidden journaling on this one (see the red twine off the left side of the picture?) and I actually feel compelled to share it, just so I don't ever have to think about it anymore.  It's out there, it's done, all that good stuff.  :-)  Except for the twine and journaling cards (CTMH & Project Life), everything is Webster's Pages.

12/25/10
Danny took this picture on Christmas morning.  I had no makeup, dirty hair, too little sleep... Anyway, as I write this on 12/6/13 we have finally broken up for the very last time.  I just realized that God answered my prayers-- He let me have Danny, let me give him my all.  It had to happen so I could see who Danny really is.  Six years later and you think you know someone.  But I never would have guessed that he would slap me, break my things, keep my things, tell lies, call me a whore (in Sunday morning church no less!); the list is endless.  I stayed anyway but now, I'm already 37, and I realized he's never going to marry me, never going to give me the baby I so desire, never going to be good to Nick, never really going to be good to ME... and I deserve better.  Much much better.  I thank God for His patience with me... for loving me and showing me that Danny just plain isn't for me.  He never was and never will be.  But my hard head had to keep trying and finally see it for myself.  God is SO GOOD for letting me go through and figure it out.  Because otherwise I'd still be begging Him to give me Danny and I'd be wasting my life away even longer than I already have.  GOD IS SO GOOD.  ALL THE TIME!  So as I sit and reflect on this picture of me and all the memories it invokes, I'm finding myself grateful for the good times with Danny, mournful for the bad times and over the fact that we just aren't compatible or meant to be, and, above all, grateful to God for the trial.  For making me stronger.  For His promise to prosper me and give me a future full of purpose.  For letting me do it my way even though it was wrong so I'd finally learn... and so I would finally move on.  It's taken me a long time and it still hurts but I'm going to be ok.  I know everything will work out according to His plan.  And I am ever so grateful for that.