A few more friend gifts. . .

I just haven't been able to find time for blogging lately, but I thought I'd quickly post a few more of my latest crochet projects.

A neck warmer, made with the crocodile stitch.

Another Chunky Circle Scarf (in 'Bone').

A hat. I semi-made up the pattern and semi-followed this one.

I've also been working on some adorable sock monkey hats for a friend, and a baby cardigan, for a group I joined on Ravelry (an online community for knitters and crocheters). I'll get around to posting them eventually.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year's celebration! In true New Year fashion, we're trying to get our lives in order. We're working on getting this blog organized and to define our real purpose in continuing. We hope you'll like our changes. Stay tuned!

Handmade Gift 2 and 3

For my two boys, I felt like I should give the SAME gift. For one thing, they can play with them TOGETHER, but aside from that, no matter how hard you try to get them both something unique, it will always turn into a competition for who's gift is better.

When I saw these tiny little bows and arrows on Pinterest, they just SCREAMED 'little boy adventure', so I knew I wanted to make some for my boysies. I can't wait to see their little faces when they open these. Instructions HERE.

I also made little pouches to put them in. I'm kind of a funny sewer. Sewing is not one of my strengths. I'm a little too impatient to take my time and do it right, so I always just jump right in without any instructions. Which is ironic because it ends up taking much LONGER, trying to re-do all of my mistakes. But, alas, they eventually turned out! {I stuck half of a toilet paper roll inside of them, to give them shape.}

(see handmade gift 1 here)

Another bow headband

Christmastime brings out my crafty side. I can't stop making things. I made another bow headband for a friend. I used Caron Simply Soft yarn in Autumn Red. I discovered this yarn when I started reading People Webs and I LOVE it. It really is so soft. Perfect for scarves, headbands, and blankets. It's my new fave.

I linked up to Small Things.

Handmade Gift 1

As I mentioned before, in my family each one of us is making something for the other family members. For my little Penelope, I decided to make a hat that my friend, Kim, told me about. It's an Anthropologie-inspired hat. (There's a flower on there, but it kind of blends in with the hat. Can you see it?)

I love how it turned out! I already tried in on her (because she doesn't know the difference between being surprised on Christmas morning or not) and it's a little big, but it still looks adorable! I used Caron Simply Soft yarn in Light Country peach. For the scalloped edge, because I like the 'daintiness' of the anthro hat, I used 'America's Best' size 10 crochet thread in Light Peach, and a 3.25 mm hook. You can find the pattern HERE.

Sneak Peak

Christmas is sneaking up on us WAY too fast! I wish I could freeze time.

Each one of us is making something by hand for each one of the other members in the family. Here's a little sneak peak of my gift for the boys.

It doesn't look like much right now, but I think they're going to like it and I'm a bit excited about it. I'll post pictures when it's complete.

Teacher gift

Griff's Christmas gift to his preschool teacher this year, was this adorable snowman. I got the idea from the talented Sarah, of Sarahndipities.

My husband is the one who ended up making it all. Which is good, because he's more artistic than I am. We used a small rolled oats container. He made the top hat out of black paper (the brim is just the lid from the oats). He covered the can in white printer paper, carved a little piece of wood to resemble a carrot, let Griffy paint it orange, drew the basic shape of coal with a black sharpie and had Griff scribble them in. Then he made some holly out of paper and attached a note with some of my yarn that read (like Sarah, of Sarahndipities),

'We 'tissue' a Merry Christmas and a 'Handy' New Year!'

On the inside, we put tissues and hand sanitizer (things she can use in the classroom). When we were buying them at the store, Griffy did NOT like our idea. We finally got him to agree by telling him he could also pick out a candy bar for his teacher. So he picked out the Twix. (We cut a slit in the bottom of the lid, and stuck the Twix bar inside. So there's a little surprise for her in the hat!)

And I actually tested a pattern for Sarah a few days ago, so I had the brimmed hat that I made for that, and stuck it in along with everything else.

When she opens the lid:

After making the snowman with daddy, I think Griff finally understood where we were going with all of this and he LOVES it. He was just a little worried in the store. He wasn't sure we knew what we were doing.

I love how it turned out. Check out Sarahndipities for more inspiration and click on my link (#106)!

Paper Snowflakes

I love the whimsical touch it can add to a home, to have lots of homemade paper snowflakes hanging from the ceiling, but sometimes it's hard to know just how to make them.

I thought I'd share my FAVORITE tutorials:

Last year we used this one, from 'Here's Looking at Me Kid', and made garlands strung in rows, from the ceiling. SO easy, and they turn out beautifully. We went right back to the same tutorial again this year, but tried using parchment paper, cut into squares, and hung them over the table, and over the old window on the bookshelf. I love them even more!

This is the first time we used this tutorial, from 'Kerli and Animals' (which I also mentioned in this post), and I thought it was ALSO very user friendly. You don't even have to start with a square. We used regular printer paper for these (haven't hung these ones yet but I'll post a pic when we do).

I've seen a couple of tutorials out there, that I don't understand, so I hope this helps someone searching for something a bit easier.

Homemade Christmas

I really wanted to add more COLOR to our home this Christmas. Our color scheme is usually red, gold, and creme, but I figured, if we were changing the tree, why not change everything?

Some colorful Christmas pictures that inspired me:

via

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The problem is, it's kind of hard to just change it all on a whim, when you have a limited budget and none of your old decorations match, so I did my best. Over the next few years, we'll be able to accumulate more color. (Knowing me though, I'll probably want to switch to an all white color scheme by then.)

So anyway, I brought some color into our home, by making this ornament garland I saw on Pinterest.

Since I was going to need a lot of ornaments, I bought the cheapest ones I could find, from Wal-Mart. They came in sets of 8, for $2.50. AND I used a few of our old red ones, too.

I would have liked to use ribbon to hang them, but I prefer to keep the spending to a minimum, and I didn't have any ribbon on hand, so I used twine. It shows in a couple of places, which bothers me to no end, but I finally had to settle.

We hung it by our table.

(I decided to just leave the balloons up, from Penelope's birthday. That way, we get a little more use out of them.)

I made the wreath from a tutorial on Good Knits

tiny winter scenes

Every Christmas season, I see these cute little winter scenes in mason jars, and I've always want to make some of my own.

I picked up three bottlebrush trees at Wal-Mart. I soaked them in hot water and bleach for half an hour, like I had seen on YouTube. Nothing happened, so I tried again, with more bleach.

Still nothin'.

Oh well. No white trees for me.

I cleaned them, sprayed them with 'Snow' (I got it at Roberts but I'm pretty sure you can get it at Hobby Lobby and probably any other craft store), and sprinkled them with Martha Stewart glitter.

After they dried, I put some sugar in the bottom of some mason jars, and put the trees in the 'snow'.

I wanted to find a tiny little reindeer to put with one of the trees but never found one. Maybe next year.

I love the simplicity of my little winter scenes. They add a nice touch to our table without being 'too much'.

It's {FINALLY} beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I feel like we kind of got a later start on decorating than we usually do. We've just been behind this year. We had family in town for Thanksgiving and everything else took a back seat. It took me awhile to get going again. It's starting to look like we're not even going to get Christmas cards out! : (

But the house is looking festive at last, and that makes me happy! We'll start with the tree.

Usually our tree looks like this:

I LOVE it! It's HUGE, and FULL, and BEAUTIFUL!!

But this year we wanted something different. With a curious little one year old running around, we didn't want the big tree falling on her and we didn't want her to break the ornaments. We came to the conclusion that we needed a smaller, more sparse, simply decorated, Christmas tree! It's funny how you get so used to the 'norm'. I almost felt nervous going to the tree lot to look at SMALL trees! Like I wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing. It's just a tree, I know, but I wanted it to feel like Christmas and it usually DOES. . . .with our BIG tree. So I got a little nervous.

But when we got this gem home, we all fell in love with our humble little tree. It's just cute. Not overbearing.

Hubba built a little table for it to sit on, and I got some new, cheaper ornaments in the next few days, while he was at work.

I used this tutorial for the snowflakes. (If you're going to make these, DON'T FORGET her note in the beginning of the pattern! The dc are actually sc!! I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong at first.)

I also got some tinsel garlands and a few small ornaments from Wal-Mart. I added some candy canes and my 'peace sign', and she was complete.

The boys have told me on numerous occasions, that this is the BEST tree and that it's so much prettier than any we've ever had. You can imagine, from what I told you before, (about my self-esteem hinging on my children's acceptance), that I was beaming after hearing that. They were so excited to show daddy the decorated tree, when he came home from work in the morning.

This cotton ball Christmas window is something I saw on pinterest and LOVED the idea of 'snow' around my tree, so we strung up some cotton balls and craft pom poms from the ceiling with thread. I LOVE!!

tomorrow: tiny Christmas scenes, an ornament garland, and a crocheted wreath

Crystal Snowflakes

My kids thought these were the prettiest snowflakes they've ever seen!

Supplies:

Pipe cleaners

pencils

string

boiling water

Borax (found in the laundry aisle at the supermarket)

wide mouth container

First you take the pipe cleaner and cut it into 3 equal pieces. Then twist them together and spread the ends out to make your desired snowflake shape. We decided also to make a J and A for the kiddies.

Then attach a piece of string (I wouldn't recommend using twine like I did. It was too stiff and kind of made the snowflakes flip into each other) to one end of the snowflake and tie the other end of the string around a pencil (or other object that you can set across the top of the container so that the snowflake dangles).

Now, set the snowflake aside. Fill the container with boiling water (keep track of how much you add). For every cup of water you want to add 3 tablespoons of Borax. Stir to dissolve the borax. If some of it just won't dissolve, that's okay...it will still work.

Dangle your snowflake into the water and let it sit. I've heard you should wait over night, but I never really understood what that means. If I put it in at 1am and let it sit until I get up at 7am, is that long enough? Anyway, I put mine in the water at 10:30pm and at 7:30am they were done!

Its best to use one container per snowflake, but I could only find one so I put all three in at the same time. You don't want your snowflakes to touch each other or they'll get stuck together.

When we took them out to let them dry Addie was so excited to EAT hers! I guess will have to give rock candy a try some time soon! (ps. I did not let her taste it!!)

These little beauties are going make it onto the kids Christmas tree in their room. I wanted to hang them in a window so we could watch them sparkle, but I lost the vote!

lately. . . .

We celebrated one year with our little girly.

working on a crocheted wreath, but I ran out of yarn.

We're changing it up this year with a small, sparse tree, so I'm changing up the ornaments, too. I'm working on some crocheted snowflakes.

more to come. . . .

Its Christmas Time!

I told my kids at Thanksgiving that we would put up the Christmas tree on the first Monday in December for family home evening. I'm kind of regretting that right now. Yesterday was the first day of December and the first day I really started to catch Christmas fever! But I'm still too lazy to bring the boxes of Christmas upstairs so I guess we really will wait til Monday.

However, that doesn't stop us from listening to Christmas music! Harry Connick Jr. has been a long time fave in our house, and anything old such as Bing Crosby. This year we've also added Come Let Us Adore Him by The Lower Lights. We are big fans of The Lower Lights! If you're here on a Sunday you're sure to hear some.

Here's one of my all time favorites from Harry...

What are your go to holiday favorites?

*Oh yeah, don't forget the giveaway!