Every Christmas I look forward to our annual ornament exchange.   This year I had zero time to hand make my ornaments as I have always done.  Plus I have been lacking in the Christmas spirit a bit so I really needed to force myself on this one.  I decided to take a Mixed Media approach to my ornaments this year and used plain wood ones.  I had planned on doing step-by-step photos but as time was not on my side I just snapped a few in the process…(I literally varnished them 15 minutes before I left!)

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This particular ornament means a lot as we lost one of the members of our village this year and I thought it important to have that on one of the ornaments..

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All three were a message to my friends….(and truthfully each year I love watching them trade them around!)….

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What a night it was of laughter and being so grateful…..

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Thankful to this group of ladies who got me in the holiday spirit with laughs and drinks…….cheers to you all!

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It is very special seeing this hang on my friend’s tree…

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Merry Christmas my friends and thank you for a most awesome night!  Bring on 2016 and being mindful of our motto to “Be Happy”.  There are so many challenges in life but they are made better by those you love…..

Every experience makes us know just a little more than we knew before…and sometimes our wisdom comes from living through things we wish we didn’t have to live through. Even more often, we get to live through big and little experiences that blow our minds with their beauty and awesomeness as long as we keep our eyes open for it. Those things leave us changed too. When life takes us down unexpected roads, roads that we probably never would have chosen had we been given the chance…the best thing to do is to is look around and learn as much as we can, take in all the goodness we can, strengthen ourselves where we can and just know that life is always moving and whatever season we are in right now…a new one is just around the corner. So enjoy it when it’s wonderful and learn from it when it is difficult. Tomorrow you will know even more than you did today because of it…and that is what life is all about.” ~ Brave Girls