Another year has passed. A wonderful year. A peaceful year. A year filled with so much more calm and simplicity, continuing to fill my heart.

Last year I came across the greatest year-end quote that was so fitting for me. Although I included the author of the quote, I had never heard of that person. Upon looking back on my year end posts a few days ago, I was astounded to find that the author of that quote is someone amazing who I have come across this year through social media! This author finds the most appealing, fulfilling, and beautiful way to make her words feel like they are speaking directly to you. Her words are full of wisdom, optimism, and hope. Here is another Morgan Harper Nichols quote to finish off this year:

January - You Are Pretty Amazing Getting back into the craftroom and finding time to be creative became an important goal and challenge for me. Learning how to make more simple, but satisfying cards became my mission!

February - Winter Wonderland Ink blending continued to be a big theme throughout my cards this year. The Distress Oxide inks were especially fun to play with and watch the fun water effects.

March - Green Latte Inspiration I am still loving to create coffee cards - my husband seems to think these are the only stamps I use - ha! This card was highlighted on the Verve blog and was fun to play around with more ink blending. I also practiced painting the cup using different ink shades to achieve a more 3D look.

April - Onesie Extenders I was able to fit in some sewing projects throughout the year and was excited to create some onesie extenders for my son and for some friends too. I learned about the differences between organic fabrics and fabrics using environmentally friendly dyes versus fabrics that do not.

May - Coffee Lovers in Ontario I was SO happy to be able to take a trip with Harvey and my Mom out to Ontario to see my Auntie Karen and her family this spring. We even found some time to craft together and it just so happened to be the Coffee Lovers Blog Hop! I loved visiting The Workshop in Stouffville and found these awesome blueprint coffee stamps. They have been fun to learn how to colour with markers to achieve a 3D look.

June - Mandala When I first saw this beautiful mandala stencil from Studio Katia I couldn't stop imagining all of the gorgeous designs that could be done with it. Distress inks lend themselves so well to stencils like these and make an intricate design easy to accomplish!

July - Waterfront Thank You This stamp set makes me think of my favourite pace on Earth - Kootenay Lake! Layering the images and using second generation stamping helped create this beautiful watercolour look.

August - Keep Calm and Drink This card was one of a set of four that I made using the blueprint coffee stamps. They were fun to colour up with my Tombow markers.

September - I Heart Mountain Ranges There is just something about those mountain ranges glistening as the sun hits those beautiful snowcaps. I love how this card came together, especially with the distress ink pops for the sun and the die cut sentiment.

October - Forest Friends Birthday I had an idea this summer that I wanted to celebrate Harvey's 1st birthday with a forest friends theme. I sought out these cute woodland creatures from Lawn Fawn and love how the creation of this invitation came together. I also decided to better utilize my time (and cut down on waste) by only making one of these invitations and sending a picture out electronically instead.

November - Winter Wishes These tags were the first that I created during the fabulous inspiration from the 25 Days of Christmas Tags during November. This really sparked the creation of my tag stash this year and provided so much creative inspiration! Here, I learned to first stamp and emboss snowflakes onto a strip of cardstock, ink it up with some oxide inks, and then punch out some tags.

December - Mountain Snowfall These cards were apart of a custom collection of Christmas cards that I created especially for my friend. I enjoy tailoring cards to certain qualities and loves of close friends. I had not thought of adding white acrylic paint splatters for snow on my cards before and love how it turned out.

'Perfect Princess' Shout Outs on Freshly Made Sketches I was so honoured and flattered this year to make some of the top picks with a few cards using Freshly Made Sketches. This card, along with the Birthday Wishes card pictured above and a fun pumpkin spice card, were celebrated!

Shop Local, Eat Local, Eat Seasonally I have started to really watch my shopping, not only on cutting out plastic and being less wasteful, but by learning what is made locally, too. This coming year a goal of mine includes learning to cook more seasonally through buying local produce. This asparagus recipe using Creston asparagus was a good start this year!

#ShopSmall #ShopLocal #ShopLocallyMade I love a good quality handmade product and have enjoyed searching for and finding many Canadian makers this year, especially for baby clothes and toys. I have also made it a goal to focus on quality versus quantity in the hopes of downsizing and limiting mess and waste.

Coffee Lovers Blog Hop Designer Picks I was incredibly excited to hear that one of my projects for the Fall/Winter Coffee Lovers Blog Hop was highlighted out of 1113 entries! These wooden tags were an awesome find at our local Farmer's Market this summer and I loved stamping onto them and colouring them up to create Christmas tags this winter.

International Tea Day On a whim I decided to sneak into my craftroom and play around with a tag set I got last year to celebrate my hot drink of choice! I love being able to find time to let my creativity flow :)

What have I learned this year? To have faith that things will work out in one way or another. To breathe. To let it be. Cheers to 2019!

Merry Christmas!

Here are a few holiday sewing projects I managed to get up to this month.

I was so excited to find this NHL fabric this fall and couldn't wait to make some toiletry bags for our hockey-loving niece and nephew! This was the first time I learned how to sew a zipper and it actually wasn't too bad once I learned a few tricks. I found this fantastic tutorial from Melly Sews.

With all of the Christmas tag inspiration floating around the past couple of months, I finally thought to take out this awesome kit I got last year from Papertrey Ink and play around! My sister-in-law needed some tags to go along with some gift bags she was making up and I loved how they turned out :)

What is your favourite kind of tea?

I am a lover of many kids of tea, but my ultimate tea drink is a London Fog! I also like a good cuppa Chai, too. I was inspired to get into my craft room today and create a tea themed tag. I pulled out some digi-stamps from Verve that I had printed awhile ago and played around with this fantastic Holiday Tag Along Kit from Papertrey Ink that I got last year. I even figured out how to elongate the tag die so that it could fit this fun stack of cups. I realized afterwards that these cups were probably intended to be coffee cups, but today they're tea for me!


Favourite Places to Get My Tea Locally:

Purcell Organics - I love their Northstar Chai
Tigz Tea - Lavender Earl Gray is my fave!
KRC - they make a great London Fog
Timber Hitch - excellent iced Chai Lattes
Hot Shots - Chai Mist is my favourite drink there!

This week was a big first for me - I went in my first ever craft fair with my cards + tags! I have been working on a stash for awhile and was stoked to add a few more things with my favourite Christmas sentiment. I used this Freshly Made Sketches awesome layout to create this card and managed to make several. I love playing along with this challenge when I can to use their inspiring clean and simple sketches. They are having a DT call right now with this sketch and so I am entering in this card. I added a sprig of cedar and holly that I picked up from our beautiful local florist shop, MJs Floral, to make my pictures a little extra festive!


I also made up a few more tags.
Here is my table at the craft fair!

Follow me on Instagram @allyouneedisloveinthekootenays

As the snow is softly falling peacefully around my house this card seems to emanate that same feeling. I hadn't thought to splatter acrylic white paint on a card until recently, even though I use it all the time at school with students, and I love the effect it gives! This card came together at a friend's request for some Christmas cards, so I really aimed to tailor it towards her likes. I intended to add a sentiment to the front, but thought once it came together that it might be too busy with one. I am linking this card up with the Lawn Fawnatics winter holiday challenge.

When my friend, Nadine, asked for some Christmas cards I knew just the stamp set I wanted to incorporate. Nadine has an inspiring blog, Zero Waste Living in the Kootenays, that details her zero waste journey. She has been a huge influence in my plastic free journey and my goals to cut down on waste, plus she is an amazing friend that I am happy to have grown up with and now be living in the same town again! While she loves her coffee, and I love my tea, getting together for a walk or a chat indoors with some cozy beverages often leaves me inspired.


I am stoked to have another link up for the Coffee Lovers Blog Hop, too!

Here are some more tags that I made for my friend. She mentioned that she liked the Lawn Fawn raccoon and fox, so I set to incorporate them using the other side of the cozy Sweater Weather papers from My Mind's Eye. I also incorporated these awesome wooden slice tags that I found at the Farmer's Market awhile back. For the extra tag that I made for my stash I added an H to personalize it for my son, Harvey!


Christmas Tag Count: 42 + 1 = 43

One of my friends asked if I could make some tags for her and I have been itching to play with this paper so I thought it would be the perfect fit! It started snowing today, too! I combined a few different tag shapes on these so that I could write names on the front of them and use the cute little sayings, "your name is on the nice list" and "do not open until Dec 25" that came along with the Hero Arts sets.


I managed to make a couple extra of these to add to my own stash, too!

Christmas Tag Count: 40 + 2 = 42