Drum roll please...

I am so happy to have woken early on this beautiful Saturday. Cory and I are downtown right now grabbing breakfast at our favorite spot, Cafe Nola. It's a perfect place for us: coffee shop, great place for meals (mostly organic), and transforms into a pretty fun bar at night. Cory is usually up pretty early on Saturday mornings, and while I am a morning person, I try to take my time leaving the sheets. This morning, however, our kitties (who we have renamed as Thing 1 and Thing 2) decided that 6:30 was far too late to sleep in. Alas, Cory and I got ready and headed down to Nola to split a delicious portobello benedict breakast.

Now on to the important stuff: giveaway winners!

Thank you so much for your kind words and entries for this past week's holiday giveaways. It was great to hear from you! Donna's will be hosting many more giveaways as we head through winter (just to spread a little cheer), so make sure you keep an eye out :)

Drum roll please..

The winner of the Winter Wonderland Giveaway:

Leslie Clark!

The winner of the Magical Holiday giveaway:

Carrie Lynn!

Congratulations!

If you're a winner, please email me your mailing address at donnasdecembers[at]gmail[dot]com! I will have these lovely packages to you asap!

 

Happy Saturday! :)

 

xo,

Liz

Hey you

Good morning!

I just wanted to pop in to say hello! I have been away from the blog this week preparing for tomorrow's Holiday show. St. John's has done a great job advertising in the Frederick area, so I had a teeny tiny panic attack that I wouldn't have enough inventory to get me through the show (let alone take me into next weekend's show). However... it's okay. I'm happy to dedicate my evenings to crocheting!

If you're in the Frederick/Baltimore/D.C. area, drop by St. John's Catholic Prep School for their annual Holiday festival tomorrow from 6-9 pm. There will be 25-30 great vendors that have been hand selected, plus food and a family friendly atomosphere! I'm excited to see St. John's new campus, as they have just opened the doors to their brand new school.

In other news, you have until SATURDAY morning to enter the Winter Wonderland and Magical Holiday giveaways (scroll down). I'm planning on throwing in a little Donna's Decembers treat with both packages, so you'll get even more. Don't you just love the holiday spirit?!

Anyway... I'm off to work. I hope you have a great Thursday. I'm pretty sleepy today, so I need to go scrounge up a cup of coffee :)

xo,
Liz

Winter Wonderland Giveaway!

Greetings! There is a lovely chill in the air in Maryland today. It's so lovely that Cory and I have spent our day cleaning, cooking two different kinds of soup for the week, and crafting (well...I have been, not Cory). With that being said, I have been in a fabulous state of mind all day long, which brings me to some awesome news. There will be TWO giveaways today!

 

As I was compiling the goodies for this week's giveaway, I realized that I wanted to reach out to two groups of people: Red & Green Holiday people and Winter Wonderland people. Some people like to go all out and deck the halls with shades of cranberry and pine, while others like to keep the decorations winter friendly and add a bit more glitz and gleam with silver and blue. I'm hoping that you belong to one of these two camps. I like to decorate with both schemes, but in different rooms. There is something really special about those colors, yeah?

 

So here we go... the giveaways will be two different, side by side, blog posts (scroll down for the second one). You can enter BOTH giveaways if you want!

What you need to do to enter the giveaway:

(1) be a follower of this blog.
(2) leave your name, email, and url address for your blog (if you have one) in the comments.

AND you can get EXTRA entries if you blog about this giveaway and post a link to the blog post in the comments of this post!

 

Drum roll please...

This Winter Wonderland Giveaway includes:

*A blank Moleskine notebook perfect for holiday art journaling.
* 6 handmade pom poms in silver, royal blue, and white/gold

* a vintage (1979) copy of Southern Living's Creative Crafts periodical.
*a vintage silver tassle necklace that is the perfect amount of sparkle for ANY holiday outfit!

*Donna's Decembers knitted garland in a creamy white.

*10 different pattern sets of 10 strips of paper perfect for paper chains around your home

*two rounds of winter-blue ribbon that will be perfect for dressing up presents

The winner will be announced this Saturday!

Good luck!

xo,

Liz

Magical Holiday Giveaway!

Magical Holiday Giveaway

What you need to do to enter the giveaway:

(1) be a follower of this blog.

(2) leave your name, email, and url address for your blog (if you have one) in the comments.

AND you can get EXTRA entries if you blog about this giveaway and post a link to the blog post in the comments of this post!

Drum roll please...

This lovely Magical Holiday Giveaway includes:

*A blank Moleskine notebook perfect for holiday art journaling

*handmade pom poms in cranberry, pine, and white/gold

*brand new DVD of my favorite Christmas movie, One Magical Christmas

*2 pop-up books that are perfect for children and your coffee table:

The Three Wise Men and How Santa's Elves Saved Christmas

*a vintage pointsettia saucer that is perfect for candles

*Donna's Decembers knitted garland in a soft cranberry

*10 different pattern sets of 10 strips of paper perfect for paper chains around your home

 The winner will be announced next Saturday!

Good luck!

xo,

Liz

Today

Come visit at Current Space Gallery today 2-8! Donna's will be there with bells on :)

Amazing...

Hey there! I only have a second... but HAD to tell you:

I was checking out The Purl Bee and saw their most recent post and wanted to share it with you immediately! It's all about crocheted and embroidered gifts to start making for the holidays!

Perfect!

Go check it out here. In the meantime, I wanted to update you a little...

1) Next week will have a DIY focus for the holiday season, plus a few yummy recipes thrown in for good measure :). Make sure you check back every day for those updates! I don't know about you, but I am getting so, so excited for the holidays!

2) Our Giveaway will be posted on Sunday! Between now and then you need to make sure that you have become a follower of our blog, because the giveaway will only be open for a few days! A little planning head never hurt anyone :)

Other than that, I hope you have a marvelous Friday!

xo,

Liz

Knowing Your Limits

(source)

So, I have to give credit to my insightful husband for this post. He has been talking to me a lot recently about the seperation between work and home and thought it would be a reasonable conversation to persue in the DIY/blog world. So...here's what I'm pondering (and I would LOVE to start a little conversation in the comments, so please don't be shy; chime in)!

1) Do you ever have trouble reconciling your professional life and your crafty/DIY life? Some of you might be really fortunate and have a profession where craft/DIY is your work. For me, I have made a huge effort to leave work at work and enjoy my personal time at home creating and crocheting. Sometimes, though, I feel frustrated because I enjoy my creative side so thoroughly, I'm always searching for my "million dollar idea" so I can stay at home and craft full time. Do you share the same sentiment?

2) Do you ever find that your craft carries limits? For example, I love to crochet and think I am really gaining skill and speed, but I am restricted from a multitude of patterns because most of the yarn community is focused on knitting. How do you deal with this situation? Do you learn the new craft? How do you reconcile this situation?

Sometimes I'm really torn between keeping a paycheck and feeling like I'm losing my sanity and losing my paycheck but keeping (and improving) my sanity. It's pretty perplexing!

A lot of my crafty friends don't work full-time or their full-time job is in the craft industry. Some of my friends do work full-time. Either way, I am constantly searching out various outlooks and opinions! Do share...