TUSAL and BAP, how about that?

Yup, it's time for my monthly TUSAL update:

That Prima jar is filling up nicely!  If you want to learn more about the TUSAL, follow this link to Daffycat's blog.  I've started thinking about what I'll do with all these orts at the end of the year.  I believe I've seen a couple of fellow TUSALers stuff theirs into clear glass Christmas ornaments.  Given my adoration of Christmas ornaments of all kinds, I'm thinking that might be the way for me to go too.

I've spent most of last week and all of this week working on my Giraffa sampler for BeckySC's BAP challenge, which you can read about here.  I'm quite pleased with my progress.  However, I'm about 4 lengths of thread shy of being completely out of the pale yellow thread, and I've got yellow all the way around the border.  Guess I'll be making an emergency stash run of some sort here in the near future!  Which is bad because emergency stash runs often involve the purchasing of non-emergency patterns.  Anyway, here's where I am on Giraffa as of this morning:

Look, there's a man leading a giraffe in this sampler!  And even though it's kind of hard to tell from this photo, there's another robe floating behind the giraffe, waiting to be filled in with a head and body.  Then it's palm trees and the borders.  Lots of palm trees and lots of border.  I will probably set this sampler aside at some point over the weekend and pick up Soleil again for at least another week.  

Lest you think that the scrapping bug has left me, let me share the two layouts I punched out yesterday afternoon and early this morning.  This first one is a layout about my many trips to Biltmore Estates for their Christmas candlelight tours.  That house is gorgeous on an average day, but in the evenings at Christmas, there's something magical about it.  I caught this picture of the guardhouse at dusk, and it's one of my favorites of the estates.

And finally, I made a multi-photo layout inspired by Lisa Andrew's layout.  Among the many CHA-related scrapbooking challenges going on at Two Peas in a Bucket, was a challenge to create a layout based on her lovely work.  And here's what I made:

Look at all the pretty little fishies!  Of course, I realized this morning that the song I'd been humming while I made this layout (and slapped that lovely little title on the page) was actually "Under the Sea" instead of DOWN by the sea.  Which makes a lot more sense given the subject of both the songs and these photos.  Sigh.  I can be such a dingdong sometimes.  Regardless, I'm excited to have made the first of many layouts documenting our honeymoon in Hawaii.

I guess that's it for today.  I'm off to put some more stitches in Giraffa.  Til next time, I hope everyone has a happy, crafty day!