Merry Chritmas

That's it... just Merry Christmas - perhaps I'll see you next year (well, unless something interesting comes a long, such as a pure white light (Ott light) to retake some of my photos and you'll hear from me sooner!)

Handmade Holiday con't, con't...

So the whole family is getting into a handmade holiday which is great!
A (age 9) is making scarves for her friends -

E (age 6 1/2) has just learned to sew and made this neck pillow cover (I made the muslin bag inside - no way was I trusting a 6 year old with sewing a bag that will be holding 5 cups of rice) -


M (age 3 3/4) is making paper diapers for his sister's stuffed animals (so that's where the spare roll of paper towels and bag of safety pins that I had set aside for pinning dance costumes went!)

I finished and delivered the chalkboard placemats for E's teacher and rice neck wraps and Coconut Body Scrub (Aunt Katie's Body Scrub recipe with coconut oil instead of honey) for A's teacher and both girl's RE teachers and my book club/knitting night friends. And I was cold so I made a neck pillow for our family as well and added flax filled eye pillows too! On both, one side is fleece and the other side is VSSS (shh! Victoria's Secret stretch satin - that's right, underwear!) that I purchased as a group buy from Kathy's Lace and Elastic Outlet



Hubby C, well, he was out of character this weekend and got all of our butts in gear as we, the unwilling, led by he, the uncharacteristicly tidy, did the impossible and now have an unmessy (although not yet clean, ie vacuumed, scrubbed and disinfected - well, except for the laundry room where I was...) that is nearly ready for Christmas! And tomorrow, 2 out of 3 kids go to school for several hours and C is home with me to continue the trend!

Nutcracker on Tuesday night and then the non-stressful holiday festivities can begin!

Handmade Christmas continues...

So, I'm well on my way to a balance of a handmade and a store-bought Christmas. We replaced (purchased commercially) most of our outdoor decorations that were destroyed in last year's snow (December 20th's Snowpocolypse I) and our fake tree had fallen apart. We put the broken tree topper on as we've been too busy to make a new one but I did make a new felt tree skirt while waiting for kids at their activities and school/bus.





Presents were going to be the most difficult handmade part of Handmade Christmas until I realized that it doesn't have to be handmade by ME! I bought handmade items for my mom and sisters on Etsy and Chris bought a handmade item for his sister as well as a commercially available game we thought she'd enjoy. In the spirit of handmade, we bought something to help my MIL make her handmade items. The Dads were too difficult - they don't use the handmade stuff (well, my FIL may use handmade golf tees but...) so we bought their gifts at traditional stores. Teacher's aren't a problem - I made bath scrub and soaks for Anna's classroom teacher and Emily's religion teacher (my co-teacher), a flax seed neck wrap for Anna's religion teachers (no picture since it's not quite done yet...) and chalkboard fabric placemats for Emily' classroom teacher (current project). I made marshmallow snowmen with a candy cane and hot chocolate for my religious ed kids too.





I wrapped most of the presents in black burlap and used handmade gift tags from Grace Graphics. So far it's been fun but I've got to get back to work! 10 days until Christmas and I'm not done with my handmade Christmas presents!!

The Christmas Season

So the Daisy bow continues to be my most popular seller rounding out to 100 sold since September. I can't say that I'm all that surprised as Daisies tend to be the girly-girl, bow-wearing crowd (it rounds out in Brownies and Juniors).


So I did my first Vendor Fair at the local elementary and I consider it a success as I made back my booth fee and then some. I did forget to take pictures while I was there - probably would have been a good idea but oh well, here's a pic of when I was arranging my table the night before in my living room (excuse the mess surrounding it - I've been one track this past week!)


We made it a REALLY busy weekend by adding in ballet class and gymnastics class to Saturday morning, a sick child to Saturday afternoon, religious ed and sick child getting worse and needing to go to the clinic on Sunday morning at the same time as Nutcracker ballet rehearsal and finishing it off with a fun evening of free holiday carols at Wolftrap. See us freeze our noses off in a favorite holiday tradition!

charitable buying

Just a quickie FYI - I don't sell on ebay that often but seasonal items do fantastic so I'm taking advantage of ebay's free insertion fee and eBay Giving charitable listings and listing some bows there. 30% goes towards Heifer International. With any luck, I can buy someone a chicken... with lots of luck, I can buy a cow! HaHa - a cow from a Hambuger!! total knee slapper!

Pictures

I take a lot of pictures - mostly really bad pictures of the kids, hubby, my bows, my house decorated for a holiday (eek! that 31 picture photo of the tree fiasco is haunting me at the mere mention!!) that have to be tossed to get that one decent shot but I'm actually talking about portraits right now...

Today was picture day for my preschooler. I forgot completely and let him pick his clothing out. Normally I don't mind him doin' his thing and not matching at the slightest but I got to preschool today and realized what was happening and sank... he's in a Redskins jersey that's on the small side for him and Clemson U sweats and has on crocs and poorly tie-dyed socks from summer 2009 that just look dirty/dingy... ugh! Well, at least I'll get to see the pictures before I buy them unlike my girls pictures - $25+ each for an 8x10, 2 3-5's and 8 wallets and I don't like them... E looks like she's afraid of the photographer (probably not that far off) but she's trying to put on a brave face - it's most certainly NOT a happy face. A looks smug. M is mismatched...plus he didn't want have his picture taken - his teacher called me so that I could come a bit early and see if he would do it for me (he did).

Ugh! is all I can say and if you have coupons to Picture People or Portrait Innovations, send them my way!!

Pie

So I BAKED the pie...

or perhaps am in the process of baking the pie...

Enjoy! and those looking for Christmas gift ideas, it'd be great to have one of those reusable metal don't-burn-your-pie-crust thingies... My SIL has 2 different sizes for 8 and 9 inch pie plates...