MPS Holiday Magic Blog Hop

Hello... Hello... and welcome to my stop in the MPS Holiday Magic Blog Hop! We are all so excited to see what everyone has created....  If you're travelling in blog hop order, you will have arrived here from visiting with Lee.  If you want to start from the beginning, take this moonbeam back to Michelle and start from there....the bloghop is runnin on USA time, so you may need to wait a little for all of the participants posts to pop up...

I couldn't decide what my favourite Christmas image was - I love all the Christmas Fairies and Winter Godesses.... so, instead, I created my card using the MPS image "Feel the Magic" ...

Ingredients: Cardstock - Rosies; Paper - Creative Memories; Pearls, Rhinestones - Kaisercraft; Ink - ColorBox, Button; Heart Rhinestones.

I haven't coloured the image at all.  I decorated it entirely with red pearls, diamond, holly green, and pea green rhinestones. The "i's" are dotted with hearts, so I added heart shaped rhinestones in place.  I matted the image on red, then on patterned green, then on red again, and added it all to the white cardbase.  The white layer has been edged in Antique Gold Ink, and the coloured layers have been edged in red. The beautiful red star button was already covered in silver glitter - how cool!  I just added double strands of paper ribbon, and tied a bow and secured it to the topper.  I added some silver glitter glue to the ribbon as well.

My Christmas revolves around my faith, my family, and food... they are always very special times, and we always have fond and teary memories of the friends and family who are no longer with us. We always donate clothes and gift items to local and overseas charities in the the months leading up to Christmas for those in need - this year our overseas items went to Papua New Guinea.  We also place gifts under the community trees that are distributed to those in need locally.  One of our faith tenets is that the best kind of charity is when you give to someone you don't know. 

My holiday magic I share with you is relived by remembering my one and only WHITE CHRISTMAS that I spent in 1994 in Vancouver, Canada.  Most of the world seems to forget that us countries in the southern hemisphere don't see cold or snow at Christmas, ever.... so it negates many Christmas songs about the same, leaving us only able to dream of the so popular snowy white Christmases with lavishings of hot dinners, nogs, and mulled wines.  But, while I was living in Canada, I had a real white Christmas, trimmed with all the classical Christmas sights, songs, suppers and treats of sleigh rides, seeing house lights in snow, skating ponds, the works.  I was travelling alone at the time, and the new friends that I had met a church I'd begun to attend invited me to Christmas with them, and they went all out to make it special for me.  It still rings true to me 16 years later, as if it happened yesterday. T'was quite an exciting season that year.... a Canadian Thanksgiving, a US Thanksgiving, and a Canadian Christmas!)  It was pure magic.

Thank you for visiting my blog .... please continue with the Holiday Magic Blog Hop by visiting with our Marilyn .... she's waiting for you!  Remember the steps you need to follow to have your chance of winning prizes along the way (all the instructions are in the 1st bloghop post here), and should you decide to spoil yourself, you can always pop into Michelle's etsy store and purchase some images (check out the beautiful new Christmas ones!). Enjoy the hop, enjoy the season, and enjoy the celebrations!

Merry Christmas!!