HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I am still alive and crafting, just not blogging much.  Hope you all had a wonderful holiday and I wish you nothing but health and happiness in the New Year!

I saw this on a couple of blogs and though it would be cute as a Happy New Year/ thank you card for our Christmas gifts.  You can go to the Lego site and customize it.  It can be sent as an e-card but I save mine and printed it out on photo paper, mounted it on card stock and printed out a thank you for the inside.

This was my Christmas card. Pretty simple and easy to make.  The deer is a Silhouette design from the online store.

I also made some tags/gift card holders from print and cut designs from Silhouette.  I made them 3D by printing a couple of the same design,cutting out the head and popping it up with pop dots.

The exciting thing (for me at least) was my early Christmas present.  An Embroidery/sewing machine.  I was flippin through the channels a few weeks before Christmas and saw it on HSN.  Most good embroidery machines are about $4000 but this one was waaaaay cheaper.  I thought it must be a crappy machine and kept flippin.  But....I kept going back to it to see what the happy HSN ladies were making.  Then they said the magic words, I had till the end of January to return it if I didn't like it. So, the conversation with my husband went something like this -
 me: can I get a new sewing machine as my Christmas present?
husband: didn't you just get one?
me: uh, about 5 years ago and it was an $80 kenmore
silence...
me: so, can I?
husband: sure (he says this for everything i ask for though no matter how outrageous)
me: OK, It costs $800
husband: it better make us breakfast for that price
me: ha. ha.    seriously, can it be my present?
husband: sure
Don't know if  he thought I was serious but I got it.   I was worried about the quality because the Singer brand isn't the same high quality as it used to be. But I thought, what the heck, I have two months to try it out and send it back if I hate it. I usually check out reviews before I buy stuff but this was a brand new type so I couldn't do that.  I was shocked when it came, the box was huge!
Well, I absolutely LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, it!  I made several Christmas gifts for my family and am very happy with the quality of work.  I have no idea how it compares to more expensive machines because I have never done embroidery but for my purposes it is great!  I will be posting some of the gifts I made soon (I promise).
HAPPY NEW YEAR!