Just a glimpse of the Christmas Eve festivities in Lake Louise:











And a final Christmas gift (yep on Christmas Eve) for a friend who just lost his cat:



Merry Christmas Everyone!

The Malackos

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

New Layouts

Christmas is so close! I can't wait! We have a few big weeks ahead of us, trying to visit all of the family, paint a new house and get moved, but it should be fun!

We had Brad's brother and sister-in-law out for the weekend and had lots of fun playing board games, watching movies and catching up.

Today, it's work, then cleaning up, wrapping presents and maybe a little down time before the Christmas rush!

I told you I'd put up some more pictures of layouts, so here are some of my more recent layouts:

This one is of Brad and I in Venice.



and another for the Brad book:



And now, just a few more days of work and then.... Christmas! Happy Holidays!

Lucky, lucky us

So, as if a new house and a big move weren't exciting enough, we have been soooo super lucky lately. I told you all about my great course win from Big Picture Scrapbooking, thanks to Mr. Tim Holtz, well since then, we also found out that we won not one, but two prizes from the Lifestyles Home Lottery!

No, we didn't win a dream home, but we won a Whirlpool steam washer and dryer. Super nice, ours are even a nice sage green (called 'Aspen') and are like top of the line! You can check them out here and here.

... and three Panasonic cordless phones, you can check out here!

What luck we've had, right? Good things come in threes, right? Or is that just bad things? Either way, we're doing pretty good at the moment, now so we don't curse ourselves with bad luck, I'll have to throw some salt over my shoulder or enter a room backwards or something.... I'll work it out.

In the meantime, I've picked out some paint colours for the new place. We're heading up the weekend before everything arrives to put our own touch on the house and so far, I think these are the colours I like:



The background page with all the colours is just to show you the medium brown that I like as well.... Oxford Twill. I love the names of these paint colours. I would like that to be my new job, paint colour namer. Seriously, I half chose these colours for their names. I'm not lying: Calm Sea, Tinder Box, Enchanted Forest and Cocoa Mousse. Great names, right?! I may do some last minute changes depending on what other paint chips I find in the weeks before Paint Day, but so far, that's what I'm leaning towards.

Scrapbooking Weekends

I'm not sure why I'm spending my weekends scrapbooking when I have so many things I should be doing, but lately, I've gotten quite a bit of crafty time in between the work weeks.

When my parents came out a few weekends ago, my mom and I got some scrapbooking in. I started some Christmas cards... I only made a few quick ones, but I have big plans to mail them out soon!



Then, last weekend, we had no plans (wait, you're moving in a few weeks and your house is not clean, your Christmas shopping isn't done, and you've been sick all week) so I spent a good chunk of it scrapbooking.

I started by printing a few of my digi layouts and adding some 3-D elements to them. Kinda fun, but I need to get some 12x12 photo paper so that they print out at a better quality. I was just using white cardstock, and the pictures weren't very high quality.

Here are a few of my new hybrid layouts:





A few flowers, stickers, rub-ons and a vellum word and they're much more fun! I really like playing with digital, but nothing beats a really textured, 3-D layout in my books.

Plus, I got some work done on a few trip layouts and another Brad book layout... a Brad birthday book, alas, it is almost Christmas, and it will not be done. Actually, we're not really exchanging gifts this year, besides giving each other a new house and probably a few home goodies in the new year! Ayway, I'll show them later in the week.

Hope you're all enjoying the freezin' cold!!

Christmas Goodies

Today is all about baking, so I figured I'd start off with a little recipe.

I got this test off of a few friend's blogs, so I thought I'd try it myself.

Here's the recipe For Kelly:

3 parts Laughter
2 parts Sensitivity
1 part Silliness

Splash of Ingenuity

Shake vigorously

Find out your recipe here

Kinda cute, although I noticed that everytime you try it you get something else....hmmmm, maybe not so telling.

So, I'm getting over a cold, all the excitement and rush of buying a home kinda knocked me out of commission, but a few nights of Neo-Citran induced comas and I'm almost good as new. Feeling better, I finally got around to the Christmas baking I've been putting off and I have to show you my new favourite thing.



I got this icing gun awhile ago and have just been too busy to test it out, but it works so well!

Pampered Chef makes these little decorating guns, which are technically called Easy Accent Decorators, but I like making up my own names. They are so simple to use and super easy to clean, in fact, they almost clean themselves! Plus, they come with 6 different decorating tips, so you can make all kinds of cute things!



I made some cupcakes for a Christmas party last night and people thought I bought them at our local bakery! I just tricked them by combining my mom's recipes, and this cool icing gun!


Sorry, if you click on the picture, you get to see all six... I just grabbed these off the web and for some reason, blogger is cutting them off.

Yummy! Now, I'm off to do some scrapbooking, Christmas decorating, baking and present wrapping!

We found a place!

We're one step closer to moving now. After a whirlwind trip to Edmonton, we found a house, made an offer, and have all ready had the home inspection. Whew.

Wanna see some pictures of our new place?? Keep in mind the furniture doesn't come with it, and we'll do some painting to put our stamp on it, but it looks pretty good, right??















Four bedrooms, three bathrooms, hardwood floors and vaulted ceilings... pretty nice, eh? Lucky us that we stumbled into the market when we did.

So now we just arrange the movers and switch the phones and internet and all the fun stuff and we should be in by the middle of January! Hurray!

Good Weekend and off to Edmonton

We just got finished a great weekend, and we're off again.

My parents came out for a few days and we had a great visit. Watched a few World Cup races, played some cards, watched Brad play hockey, and mom and I even got some scrapbooking in!

Now, we're heading up to Edmonton to search for a house. This is the big weekend. We're hoping to make the decision in the next five days. Wish us luck!

Here are a few of the scrappy things I've been working on.

More Europe layouts:

The Pantheon:



Notice the passport page I used for my journaling? I cut it out of Brad's old passport. I kinda like it, too. There may be a lot of them throughout our Europe book.

and the pics under the flap (just too many pictures to scrapbook from this trip!)



St. Peter's Basilica:



which I see I stuck together in the wrong order, oops...

see the cool digital frames on the two focal pictures? I love them. They were a free download, too. Gotta love freebies!

And another for the Brad book:



Can you pick him out in the dirty coveralls? He's right in the middle, holding a sweater. That makes a total of four pages in his album.... slowly getting it ready for Christmas.... or maybe his birthday, we'll see how fast we move.

When I report back, we may be one step closer to being homeowners!