So this year we decided to make Christmas presents for our families.  My husband and I hand-carved stamps and then decided on three colours to use for our layers, and came up with layouts for each of them.  It was a really fun process…  we were clearly feeling inspired by Native-American patterns.   This is the design we ended up with:

And here’s a glimpse of our process…

Here are a couple of photos from our trip so far… more to come.

1. Me decorating some gingerbread cookies  2. Llamas at a farm where we went sledding   3. Vintage pipe and humidor set found at an antique store by my husband… $20 for the whole thing!  4. Aero, my in-laws 12 year old dog, after eating some snow (a favourite pastime).

Hi everyone! I’m in a remote part of Colorado until the 29th visiting the in-laws for the holidays, so I may not be able to post until I get back.  I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas.

I love this Flickr pool.  Just photos of people’s collections- organized and photographed.  Some are rather insane, but some are very sweet and serene like these.

These are tiny compared to what the photos look like here.  I have been enjoying the photos posted by the Big Picture (one of my favourite journalistic photo blogs) of images taken by the Hubble Telescope.  They really are breathtaking, and you should definitely check it out if you haven’t already.   There’s one every day until Christmas.

I love this totem print from this Etsy shop.

I love mobiles.  Perhaps this will be my next project.  Here are a few that I’ve been inspired by lately:

Joanna Bean

Jen Seifert

Here are a few photos I’ve managed to take recently…

1. This is a peek of how my garden is looking this month… covered in leaves, but still happy.   2. From a recent trip to the Huntington Gardens  3. A vintage topper for our Christmas tree found at the Goodwill yesterday  4. My cat Milo rolling around on the warm sidewalk