My January CC Design Team Project is up on the Crop!

CC-items: Echo Park Winter Wishes Collection Kit (patterned papers [Chilly Stripe, Icy Chevron, Playful Penguins, and Snowy Trees]) and Element stickers), Circle Nesting Dies & Nesting Flower Dies (Lifestyle Crafts), Sizzlits Alpha Bubbles dies, Carta Bella white cardstock, Scrappin’ Supplies rhinestones, AC Zing! Embossing powder (white), Stickles (icicles), adhesive (Snake Tape),

Non-CC-items: Ranger embossing pen, mice tiles (Art Quest), Frantage pearlized mica (Stampendous), adhesive (Aleene’s tacky glue), white cardstock (The Paper Company), snowflake rosette and snowflake dies (Tim Holtz), Sookwang heat-resistant tape

 

My first DT project for CC (the new term) is up on their blog. The finished project is above, but if you want details, the tutorial can be found here. The technique I highlighted was working with mica. If you recall, mica was a "hot" item a few years back, but I never actually used mine! Not until we were challenged with "ICE" for January. I also found another form of mica (Stampendous) at the LSS and used that to top my snowflake rosettes.

Whoosh!

We decided to go innertubing today, since we weren't too terribly sore from skiing yesterday (although Marika did announce this morning: "Mommy, I am having trouble walking!"). The kids were free (yah!) as long as they rode with us. I would have feared for them going by themselves, too... they are so light, they would have whizzed down the hill and beyond any borders!

And in case you were wondering how big these tubes were, relative to an almost 4-year old... here is Marika gallantly trying to carry our tube... (for about 5 seconds!)...

We just LOVED the Magic Carpet. What a godsend! We didn't have to carry a single child! However, the girls did fall off of it, almost every time...

We played there for a couple of hours in the morning and returned in the afternoon again. It was a lot of fun but now we are all rather sunburned and VERY tired...

Between snow play, we visited the Big Bear Discovery Center. It was a beautiful facility, but I'll admit - the real reason I wanted to go was to see all the preserved animals! The girls were able to see a Grizzly bear skin, a black bear, coyotes, bobcats, mountain lions, racoons, etc. Marika even got a picture with Smokey the Bear, still toting his famous message.

We received some exciting news in the evening - that we have two new nieces! I will post pictures when they become available and when they have received their names...

Tomorrow... I think we'll rest!

Nothing like spending quality time with good friends!

Today our good friends H. and B. drove up with C. and S. to spend some time with us. They are among our most favorite people on earth, so we had a lot of fun hanging out - even though it rained the entire day. It's amazing how rain doesn't really bother little kids, especially when there is a big hill of snow to be played with.

We did bring some awesome sleds with us, but... these hills were a little too small and the sleds a wee bit too fast (you don't have much time to climb on!). Maybe tomorrow we can find some bigger and better hills...

The girls power napped while H. and B. shopped for some new snow clothes for C. and S.

Afterwards we strolled down to Big Bear Lake for some snowball fights and pictures by the lake. By 5 pm, the kids were all tuckered out. Not too shabby for a day filled with fun and friends!