Full of Grace!

Happy first day of December my crafty friends!! Gosh, I am just getting chills thinking of that!! LOL How did it get here so fast? My girls, of course, are ecstatic! I, on the other hand, NEED a little more time! LOL All I can say about that is THANK GOODNESS for God's grace!!! LOL

As the holidays approach, I am more excited about all the wonderful art projects on my table!!  I have been like a "mad woman" just crafting away for many of these project!  So much so, that I am ahead of the game and have had a lot of my December projects well done in advance and have been chomping at the bit to get them in the mail!! So yippee for me cause it's FINALLY December! LOL

All that said, I want to share a tag I did for one of my crafty buddies Becky Wentworth, who like me, can't get enough of crafty happiness and we, aside from our other "swap" projects, just decided to swap together, like ALL THE TIME!! LOL  How's that for giddiness for you?  We are just having stinking fun and wanted to share with one another!   I know she shared this over on Google+ but I will give a little detail!

I had sooooo much fun doing this tag, because I already had in my mind what I wanted to do for Becky!  And it was simple because of it being November and the Thanksgiving holiday was approaching!  It immediately brought "warm" thoughts of God's beautiful glory in His autumn season and the thoughts of "home" and "family!"

This tag was really very simple as I just took and covered the tag in Distress ink in Antique Linen, Spiced Marmalade (probably my most favorite color EVER) and Vintage Photo.  I, of course, distressed the edges with Walnut Stain.  I took my favorite script stamp and applied with Vintage Photo and then I had some really great pieces of emphemera that I distressed.

I made the leaves from old book page that I distressed and stamped lightly and then added veins with Distress Stickles in Vintage Photo and then I had drawn and cut out quite a few of the acorns from another project knowing I could use them in this project as well.  I also just simply distressed them and then I added some ribbon and voila, off in the mail it went! How simple was that right?  I loved doing this one, it got me ready for Thanksgiving! :)

I pray you ALL had a blessed Thanksgiving filled with lots of family and friends, love and togetherness and, of course, got a "belly FULL!" LOL I was so blessed to be surrounded with a ton of my family members as we were invited into my brothers' home for the day!  We enjoyed laughter and catching up and then as always, we round out the day with family games!  I have  mentioned before that I come from a big family and growing up, it was tradition to sit around and play games of all sorts.  Anything from board games to card games to even games in the yard!  So we have carried those traditions with us and to this day when we congregate, we pull out the games for lots of loud conversation, love and laughter!  It is a sight to behold! LOL  I CONTINUE to be THANKFUL!

Going back to God's grace that I mentioned earlier......did you know that it NEVER ends!!? In Lamentations of God's Word it says "Because of the Lord's GREAT love, we are NOT consumed for His compassions NEVER FAIL!" (Lamentations 3:22)  Can anyone say THANK YOU LORD? I pray you understand the magnitude of that promise for you and I!

Returning to my statement of needing more time before Christmas, I'm sure we have all felt like that at one point or another!  We need to stay in a constant state of KNOWING that because of Christ, we can rise above ANY of that!  Now, I know what you may be saying....needing more time before Christmas is a small thing when you consider what I am saying. But what you  have to realize is the enemy of this world is CONSTANTLY at work trying to deceive you and keep you from the promises of our Father in Heaven and how they apply to ALL circumstances of your life. He wants to steel and rob from you any place of joy and peace you may have. And around the holidays is good place to do that!

We all scurry around at holiday time trying to get something for this person and that person, trying to figure out where we are going to get more money, trying to make everyone happy, trying to have the perfect holiday decoration scenario, etc....the list goes on and on and on! It goes on until we are one big ball of stress and the only good thing about the holiday, is seeing it GO!! Wow! How horrible! Not only did you not enjoy the holiday, but the whole meaning of Christmas went right out the window!  And....the enemy did exactly what he set out to do in you!

But God!!  God's grace is sufficient for you and I in ALLLLL things!  We can't do any of the things I described above with any semblance of order, but for the grace of God!  Because of Jesus, we can rise above doing ANYTHING in and of ourselves and do ALL things through Him!

As you start preparing for Christmas, keep Christ at the center!  As you do, you will have the proper order and balance and enough grace to handle your tasks, with enough to extend to another!

Be blessed today!