Girlfriends bearing gifts

My next door neighbour and I have become lovely friends. We get together to scrapbook and make cards and attend crops together.
At Christmas we get each other scrappy gifts. It is fun to shop for things the other person would like. I try to watch what lines she buys when we visit the scrapbook stores. I pick up a few things and then get her a gift card to a local huge scrapbook store to add some goodies that she has been secretly craving.

Here is a peek at the lovely bag of goodies she gave me.
2 sets of Tim Holtz texture fades embossing folders.The Collage and Notebook set and the Bingo and Patchwork set.
Some gorgeous doily diecuts...a girl can never have too many of those.
2 Spellbinders Impressabilities  "Snowflake" and "Fleur de Lis"
A gorgeous stamp that says "Family" and a Cosmos Cricket Holiday Type sticker set. This last one is so funny cuz I bought her the exact same sticker set. It has some gorgeous sentiments with no sheen at all, sort of like heavy cardstock stickers and some Type font letters.  And it stinks!!! Really stinks!!! And I gave her the exact same one and now her room will stink too!!! They were a local bargoon and so I bought 4! I have aired them out of the stinky acrylic envelopes and currently have them sealed in a container with a brick of  odor absorbing crystals! We had a good giggle about it!
I have emailed the company and so far no response...perhaps they are closed for the Holiday season.

The finishing touch was a Michaels gift card. I can't wait to spend it.
Thanks so much Lisa!

One of my favourite things to do in the Xmas season is to go and look at the Christmas light displays. The newspaper always publishes the addresses of the fabulous houses and we go for a drive and take in the sights. Usually there are collection boxes for various charities.
This year we celebrated the fact that we could get out and walk through our own neighbourhood. We set out with my poles firmly in use and here is a peek of my neighbourhood. Certainly not one that will make the newspaper, but well loved by us anyway!
Here is the front of my house, taken from the sidewalk. It wasn't quite dark enough yet! We don't have a front lawn...just shrubs and trees and ornamental grasses. it is hard to get a clear shot as the trees block the shot. I walked along the sidewalk and a took a few shots.

Here's one of the front porch...DH got me the branches I was hoping for and I ran the leftover strand of red 

lights from the door all through them. I usually run some garland around the door frame but this was as much stretching and bending as my back could take! 

Here it is a bit closer up...teehee...looks like that large red bauble at the front left rolled out and got tossed back in randomly...teeehee  If you look really closely, you will see some varying sized cardinals clipped to the branches.  There is a wooden birdhouse at the back of the branches with a large cardinal sitting on top as well.

Here is the other side of the door...I like to sit with a coffee out here in the mornings. Lots of neighbours walk by with their dogs on a leash...heading up to the park just a few doors down. I had to lean the swoden Santa's up against the house to hide the power cord connections. The people who built the house had the only power plug in installed on the ceiling. Good idea for lights along the roof line but at pushing 60 we don't climb ladders anymore!

The gaudy plastic Santa below is DH's fave Christmas decoration....teeheee...apparently it looks just the one his Mum had when he was a kid.  Now he has added a plastic snowman too!!! Hopefully  he is through adding any more as I prefer to just have the lights!

Here is my next door neighbour, Lisa's house.The urns at her front door are just gorgeous this year!

Here's the neighbour on the other side.

A couple more lovely ones

Wish I was more talented with my camera as my photos are pretty awful... ...