December 2014

It came in a flash and went out just as quickly: now we are on the eve of a new year and new stuff to do!  I really wanted to maximize what little spare time I felt I had in December to do seasonal things, and avoid feeling stressed at what should be a happy time of year.   I think I rather like posting at the end of the month because I get a better feeling of accomplishment.
I started the month with a finished family room!  This project had been in process for a while, and even longer in my head.  Now this is probably my favourite room in the house:

I have to confess I am not so great about sending Christmas cards.  I always want to make my own, yet can't seem to find the time to sit down and make them.  I keep hoping I will do it and then it becomes so late I either send out those ones from the Diabetes association to arrive after the holiday or none at all.  Guilt, guilt, guilt.  This year I was on top of the game:  home made cards for (almost) everybody and mailed before December 12!  My secret?  I made these cards last year, too late to send then, but just waiting for my messages this year.

My only gaffe was in not sending one to our friends in Australia; I miss the international mail deadline every year, so have decided to send one to them at another time of year.  That way I can write a nice long and newsy letter.  Promise!

Eighteen little snowmen were created; most of them as favours for a tea I had for the volunteers I work with:

 I got a fair bit of other crafting done as well, making it a very satisfying month:

An enjoyable little stitching project from a British craft magazine.

Hearts made from the left-overs of my thrifted sweater pillow:

A new bauble wreath to brighten the front door:  this time made with unbreakable baubles:

Two of eight clothes-pin snowflakes made on a craft morning with a neighbour.  I hung these in my front window and they looked really pretty from outside.  I may even keep them up for January.

The only cross stitch ornament I made this holiday:  gifted to friends who had visited Paris this summer. Stitched over one on 28 ct. fabric this nearly did my eyes in!

More pillows made from thrifted fabrics:  this time a navy cabled sweater and wool kilt.

In the lazy afterglow of the big day I have been making away as well.  My Favourite Girl convinced me this fabric would be perfect for my crafting space so I used it to re-cover my swivel chair.  She's a smart girl, that one!

 I made these chubby little bugs from a Tilda book borrowed from the library.  I think it's Tilda's Spring Ideas.  My Favourite Girl said they look like Teletubbies with wings and I think she's right:

And there you have it:  December.  Now the decorations are packed away; the cookies almost eaten; the tree will come down tomorrow ('cause we're a little superstitious in our family about that) and we can embrace a new year.

Wishing you a New Year filled with health, happiness, creativity and all things good!

J'ai Fini

Although a few days ago I could have easily said, "Je suis fini", which still means "I am finished", only it means the ultimate finish!  Yes, I am done preparing for Christmas.  By the skin of my teeth, but I am done shopping, and making.  On Wednesday I had to admit I committed Christmas hubris, where once again I did too much; made too much; bought too much, etc.  Anyway, here is what we have been up to:

 Dipping dried fruit in chocolate for My Favourite Boy's "something to eat" gift.

Dipping licorice sticks in chocolate and sprinkles for gifts, as well as making countless candies!

The kids dipped many, many pretzels in white chocolate and sprinkled them with coloured sugar for teacher gifts.

I found these cute bags at the dollar store and they worked just perfectly for the pretzels.

I stitched up a bag for a Secret Santa gift at a networking group I belong to:

I also made chocolate sugar cookie snowflake cookies for each member and a little tea envelope:

Of course I got the china cabinet varnished and everything put inside it :)

And I foolishly decided that every child in each of the two classes needed to have a felt and candy cane mouse so I made 48.  Yes, that was very, very foolish.

Today I have to deliver some Avon orders and clean the house.  I can't believe in a few days it's all over. I seriously think we need to celebrate Christmas over the 12 days so we can enjoy ourselves a little longer; unwind a little longer.  However, I have a suspicion that I would think of sewing and craft projects that just had to be made as gifts somewhere in those 12 days!

I hope you all have a great Christmas and a wonderful 2012.  As you no doubt noticed by now the one thing I did not do was write up my Christmas cards!  I didn't even get them out of the box this year.  In fact I don't even know if I have any.  Maybe you will get a Valentine card, but then again, who knows?!

Merry Christmas!!!

Christmas-y

We have been decorating.  Once Advent started My Favourite Girl asked everyday if we could put the decorations out; including the tree.  Last week I succumbed and put everything out while the frightful weather outside carried on.  I'll spare you all the details, but here are my favourites this year:

The tree, of course:

As we were decorating I remarked that it was really my tree in a way.  I know where all the ornaments came from because I either made them, bought them, or selected from the kids makes.  That's probably why I love decorating it so much.  We have a Christmas story I just love, called 'Christmas in the Country'.  In the book a little girl describes Christmas in the little house she lives in with her grandparents.  As they pull the decorations out of the closet and she looks at the glittered balls and other things she has made, she says she love the ornaments because each one reminds her of her whole life.  That's exactly how I feel about our ornaments.  There's the ceramic wreath I made in grade 1: one of my first experiences with "real" art. The glass balls filled with rose petals from the three dozen roses A. gave me when he got his Commission;  the blown glass baby shoes commemorating My Favourite Girl's first Christmas; and all of the foam, popsicle stick and tissue paper creations made by my two little elves.  Oh my, I'm getting teary eyed just writing about it!

Next: the kid's tree.  This little tree was Mr. Crafty World's and my tree before we bought the big one in our first house.  It came with us through many moves and now we use it in the basement for the kids to decorate.  They have a lot of fun decorating it each year and adding new things to it.  My favourites this year are the paper chains and button wreaths:

I love the new little hand made decorations like this sweet elf:

...and these snowman pots:

Another project the kids made are these snowball votive holders.  I was amazed at how well these turned out and created our mantle display around them.

I bought round glass votive holders from the dollar store and we coated the outside with white glue and rolled them in epsom salts.  I put a few coats of clear acrylic spray on the outside after they dried to keep the salts from falling off.  They look so sweet when they're lit.  I'm using the battery operated tea lights in them; that's why the light is so yellow.  

It finally started to look festive outside as well this week.  We had our first "real" snowfall and it was so beautiful.  

The kids had a blast at the bus stop making a fort and growing big plans to make it enormous when more snow fell.  Alas, most of it has gone now, but it will come again I'm sure.

Have a blissful day :)

Seasonal Makes

The weather has taken a turn for the better here the last few days.  Yesterday was so nice we could be outside without our jackets on. I bought a bunch of mixed greens and figured I had better change our garage window planters while the soil was still soft.  Last year I was too late and had to pour boiling water over the dirt to get my greens in!

I used one bunch of mixed greenery from the store and supplemented with a bit of my own cedar and some of the neighbour's - shh! don't tell!  I made two like this:

I bought a tree shaped ice cube tray for a dollar with the idea of making more crayons or bath fizzers or something.  Last night My Favourite Boy and I made bath fizzers to test it out.  We used balsam fir, sweet orange and a little bit of pine essential oil to scent them.  They smell like Christmas to me!  

  

The recipe we used was 1 part citric acid; 1 part epsom salts; 2 parts baking soda; witch hazel to mist them and about 1 tsp of our essential oil blend.  We colored the epsom salts to get the speckled look.  The outer trees are green by the way; it's not showing up so much in this picture.

Since Advent begins tomorrow I decided I had better finish off a cross stitch project I started last year during Advent.  I finished my cross stitch as a flat fold as best I could.  I messed it up a bit, but I think I'm the only one who can tell :)

This is what a flat-fold finish is like:

Sort of like a little easel is the best way of explaining it.  I bought this fabric this year and I love it.  I think it's the perfect fabric for this so I'm glad I waited.

Here it is next to the Advent centerpiece My Favourite Girl made in Sunday school last year.  Each week you pull a tissue paper 'flame' out of the candles.  As far as kids crafts go I think this one is spectacular, and plan on keeping it for as long as I can!  Isn't it just the cutest?

I heard back from the church about the wedding coordinator job:  they can't decide between myself and another applicant so we have to respond to some scenarios they are creating for us next week.  All this will take place via email - thank heavens.  It makes me feel good that I'm the top two; of course I don't know how many applicants there were.  Maybe only two!

I also just applied for a job with a company that makes school lunches.  Not cafeteria style: parents order the lunches and they are made in a commercial kitchen and delivered to the schools.  This would be a great one because it's from 9-1:30 during the week and whenever school is out you don't work.  Fingers crossed I get called for an interview next week.  Prayers please!  One of our cars needs a replacement transmission so the sooner I can get working the better! 

Thanks for stopping by :)

This Week

...or maybe I should say Last Week, since it's Sunday.  I have never gotten that figured out: I consider Monday the first day of the week, not the second.  Anyway, assuming Sunday is the last day of the week, this is what has been going on:

My Favourite Boy finally lost one of his upper front teeth!  This one has been loose for months and months.  He was so excited, and I would love to show you the picture of his glowing face right after he yanked it out, but there was quite a bit of blood involved :O.  So here he is the next day, still fairly excited because the Tooth Fairy had been to visit already.  He insists there are no such thing as fairies, except the Tooth Fairy!

  

I will miss those little front teeth; mostly because when the adult ones come in they are so big and look goofy until the kids grow into them.

We had our first snowfall this week!  It wasn't much and it was gone pretty quickly, but it did put me in the holiday spirit enough to buy a winter urn filler and fresh wreath for the door. We also saw this weird cloud in the morning:  look in the center for the spiral.

It stretched downward for a ways and then it blew eastward and disappeared.  We were wondering if it was the beginning of a tornado that never materialized.  It was weird anyway.

Now back to Christmas:  I joined a cross stitch ornament challenge and finally finished some so I could post it on this blog.  Lots of inspiration there!  Here is what I stitched if you don't see my stuff on the challenge blog:

I was hoping to make some cake pops to put in our church bake sale yesterday, but I burnt my chocolate.  The sugar in the chocolate crystallized, so I couldn't use it to coat the cake pops because there was the odd crunchy bit.  Instead of throwing it out I made these:

I call them Merry Peppermint Crisps.  You spread white chocolate on a Christie's chocolate wafer and sprinkle crushed candy cane on top.  The candy cane bits will conceal any of the crystallized sugar bits.  I did not put these in the church sale!  They're almost gone anyway:)  I think these might go in my cookie boxes this year.

I had my first job interview in ten years this week.  I was not nervous at all before I went because it had been so long I had forgotten what I would probably be asked.  Once I got in there I remembered and then the nervousness kicked in.  I know I was twisting one of my rings around on my finger during the interview.  My hands would have been shaking if I hadn't.  The job is for Wedding Coordinator at our church.  I will know next week if I got the job or not.  I also applied at the library, but not for any specific position so I won't hear anything from them unless something comes up.  Well, hopefully anyway!  With our new car payment and My Favourite Boy in a new after school activity I think some extra income will help.  So wish me luck and put me on your prayer list please!

It's Grey; It's Gloomy

...I need a bit of cheer.  After I dropped the kids off at the bus this morning I headed straight downstairs to do some crafting before the call of dishes/errands/taking a shower took over.  I even put some Christmas music on the get into the spirit of things!

This is a project I have been wanting to do for ages.  I have been collecting the supplies at after Christmas sales for two years, and have almost donated them all in fits of purging!  Last night I did the first, and most time consuming job: glueing all the caps to the glass ornaments.  Thankfully I only broke one :)
I had an assortment of red balls: some are frosted, a few are glittered and the rest are shiny.  All told there are 79 glass balls and I used them all, except one that got glued into the box :(

The only other thing you need is a wire coat hanger.  Mine was fairly thick metal, and I wish I had a flimsier one.  Who would ever think you would wish for a flimsy wire coat hanger?  Anyway, all you have to do is thread the balls onto the hanger that you have bent into a circle shape.  At first it is a little frustrating because they all just hang straight down; but keep going and eventually they bunch together nicely and start to look like something a reasonably capable crafter would make.  I made a bow for the top to hide the metal ring for hanging.  I'm not completely happy with the bow, but that's something that can always be frou-frou-ed with later.

If I did it again (and I just might because I would love one made with silver, pink, lime green and turquoise),I would buy one of those big containers of plastic balls.  It's making me a little nervous on how I am going to store this wreath without any damage for 11 months at a time.  I would also use more ornaments and try to find a coat hanger that's a little easier to manipulate.
If you want a little more inspiration, look here.  You can also find instructions with pictures on the same site on this page.
If you make one send me a picture!

Holiday Beginnings

We informally kicked off the Christmas season this weekend with a visit to a couple of local Christmas bazaars. I missed all of them last year, so this year I was determined to get to a few.

We started at the lovely Trinity Anglican church; I just love the building itself. Their knitting club always has a good selection of things for sale, for extremely good prices. As I was buying some hats for the kids, I asked if anyone taught crochet. The woman behind the table was good enough to give me her number, and said I could sit in on their knitting club in January and someone could teach me. I'm hoping the timing works out, because I have been dying to learn crochet for quite some time now. Actually I have the basics, but I need the odd instruction here and there from a real person.

I picked up the kitschy Christmas brooch from the jewelry table. I decided that I'm going to wear my brooches on my coat, otherwise they're just looking pretty in my closet.

The two knit animals came from a second bazaar held in another town. We went up there and coincidentally happened on their Santa Claus parade. A happy bonus for two little ones not crazy about bazaars just yet!

I picked up these books at the book stall. The one on the top right is exactly what we had for readers when I was in grade one. I have been looking for such a book for a long time. The pictures in it and the animal stories book are fabulous.

When we got home we put up some Christmas decorations. We will probably put the tree up next weekend.

I also got a big item out of my "Inbox": I finished my quilt!

It's not bed sized, and it's bigger than a lap quilt. It's just right for having on the couch to warm up with. I machine quilted this one because I wanted it finished sooner rather than later.

I call it my Rx for Gloomy Days because the colors are so bright.

For the backing I used this floral I found at Value Village. Now I can snuggle underneath a riot of flowers whenever I need to.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!