To Do Status Report

Remember that long list of items to get done that I posted before my break? Well, I thought I should report in on how I did - keeping in mind that there were snow days in there! So anything that required being out of the house was scrapped.

But here is the list with updates in italics.

• Finishing the Christmas Tree Decorations (total of 16) Finished!
  
• Finishing the furoshiki (qty 15) and fabric ribbons (as many as needed) added this year The furoshiki are finished and the ribbons are being done as needed....
  
• Finishing the hanging towels for gifts (qty 20) Finished!
  
• Finishing a baby blanket for a church baby shower (along with 2 dozen cinnamon buns, and a dozen for my family because I would never take something without giving them some first). Finished!
  
• Making fabric ribbons and a coffee cake for the Church Ladies Decorating Brunch Finished and I had a great time!
  
• Decorate our home - we put the tree up, the Advent wreath out, and the books out Thanksgiving weekend, the rest follows in the next week or two. Finished!
  
• Finalize my Amazon Christmas order and place it. Finished, delivered, and mostly wrapped.
  
• Make a quick trip to my favorite toy store for Christmas and Birthday gifts. Not done due to bad weather.
  
• Make a quick trip to Target for a couple small Christmas items (and then I am done shopping!) Canceled - I came up with a better idea that will let me just finish up with a quick mall trip that my husband has to make anyways, but we did not make it to the mall due to the bad weather.
  
• Christmas cards and newsletter done (which will be a feat because I have not started), but this can linger into mid December if need be. Oops - totally forgot about this with all the snow to play in.
  
• Start wrapping and preparing to ship stuff! In progress and will be done in earnest once I make those last two trips and finish 2 more hand knit dish cloths...which I did not mention in the original list...., but I think I am making around 10ish with 2 more to go.
  

Keeping in mind that I like to be done as much as possible before December 1, in a perfect and ideal world where nothing mucks with my plans! Actually, I like to be done the mall, but can deal with little boutique stores and online if needed.

Oh, and I have most of my Christmas baking to still do, including 2 dozen cinnamon buns for gifts.

How are your Christmas preparations going?

Happy Thanksgiving Break

Happy Thanksgiving a little early!

For most families, the holiday season crunch happens in December. For us it happens now! We try to have the bulk of our shopping and all our crafting done before Thanksgiving, and everything ready to ship and mail the first weekend of December. While that may seem ambitious, much of what we mail and ship is international, so it requires being a little bit earlier, plus, it allows for a much quieter Advent season where we really do look forward to the Lord's birthday.

So the next week and a half will be spent thusly:

• Finishing the Christmas Tree Decorations (total of 16)
  
• Finishing the furoshiki (qty 15) and fabric ribbons (as many as needed) added this year
• Finishing the hanging towels for gifts (qty 20)
• Finishing a baby blanket for a church baby shower (along with 2 dozen cinnamon buns, and a dozen for my family because I would never take something without giving them some first).
  
• Making fabric ribbons and a coffee cake for the Church Ladies Decorating Brunch
• Decorate our home - we put the tree up, the Advent wreath out, and the books out Thanksgiving weekend, the rest follows in the next week or two.
• Finalize my Amazon Christmas order and place it.
• Make a quick trip to my favorite toy store for Christmas and Birthday gifts.
  
• Make a quick trip to Target for a couple small Christmas items (and then I am done shopping!)
  
• Christmas cards and newsletter done (which will be a feat because I have not started), but this can linger into mid December if need be.
• Start wrapping and preparing to ship stuff!

On top of this we plan on going to the local Children's Museum and Art Gallery next week. I am so excited. And celebrate Thanksgiving part 2.

Therefore, I will see you after Thanksgiving.

Have I mentioned I LOVE having 2 Thanksgivings?

Have a blessed and gratitude filled Thanksgiving!

Preparing

It seems like I am always preparing for something:

• the next meal
• the pantry for winter
• presents for Christmas
• baking for a baby shower
• baking for Christmas
• Oh, yes, Thanksgiving
• Advent - our family celebrates it!
• Did I mention Christmas and all the crafting we planned this year - fun but lots of work.

In the midst of this preparing, it is easy to miss some important preparing:

• One's heart with Thankfulness for the Lord's Provision
• One's heart to celebrate the Lord's Birthday

There is only one way I really do well at this, and that is to have the bulk of the outside the house stuff done before Advent so that Advent really is a time of preparing our hearts and looking forward to the joy of our Saviour's Birth!

Much is done, much more needs to be done.

Tomorrow morning we are heading to a book store to find some new Christmas reading. Each year we add a book for each girl and so does my husband's mom who is so dear to us - she also supplies the Advent Calendars each year!

So what books would you recommend we add to our library this year?

I will share my list next week....

Christmas Wrap

For many November is all about Thanksgiving, but in our house, with so many gifts needing to be in the mail the first week of December, it is also about getting things done for Christmas. Plus, to be truthful, I like having all my shopping, crafting, and shipping done by the end of this month.

The past couple years I have been looking hard at my thoughts and ideas about Christmas. Particularly the gift giving and the wrapping. Accepting the fact that I was raised with impossibly high standards that were sucking the fun out of it I decided to start over. (One credo was that you must never be able to see the tape, and ribbons and bows must be used in a plethora of abundance that overwhelms.)

In starting over I discovered a few things:

1. Costco has the best deal for me on wrap because you get this huge thick roll that is double sided at a very reasonable price. It may not be the cheapest, but it is a great help for me.

2. I like making my own ribbons with that wired ribbon. Costco's price in the past couple years has even beat the after Christmas sale when comparing yard to yard. These ribbons are beautiful, creative, and last wonderfully from one year to the next. They make me very happy so it is worth it to me.

3. I love furoshiki! (The link shows you some different ways to wrap with it). It is basically a square of cloth where you put your present in the middle, fold in 2 opposite corners, then fold in the other opposite corners, tying a neat knot. I always keep my eye out at the quilting store for fabric this time of year and try to add some new ones each year, yes the quilting store, the fabric is thicker so it holds up better and is harder to see through. If you buy a yard and a quarter you have a large square that you can then cut into 4 squares. A quick hem around the edge and you are done. Once your present is wrapped you can always add some ribbon. This is my favorite way to wrap books! It lasts beautifully year to year.

These 3 things compose the bulk of my gift wrap stash. I do have a lot of gift bags that were given to us, or I collected when we traveled at Christmas, but I am not really a fan, and I most often use these to give gifts outside our home.

The thing that has been the biggest learning curve for me has been gift tags. I was raised that you had to have the fanciest ones and that you had to write a LONG message on each one.

Yeah, not so much.

I like the sticker ones a lot, and we do have some fancy ones that we just reuse year to year because they basically just say to and from.

I have made some of my own, but my favorite make it yourself ones are the ones I print and the girls color - they may not be fancy, but they are made with lots of love.

Here are a couple links I will be using this year:

What are your secret weapons in your Christmas wrap stash? Do you have other links for colored tags?

Gingerbread House

Guess what we are making for Christmas tree ornaments this year?

You can find the pattern free to download here.

I may also have to make some of these! Or just save this for next year when the girls can do yet more!

If you cannot tell, the crafting bug has bit me again!

Christmas Crafting

I am fairly sure I will be making these hanging towels for Christmas presents if they still have those nice towels at Costco!

I am thinking for my mom who is impossible to buy for but claims she is not (a 2 pack to go with a 2 pack of dish clothes).

I am also thinking homeschool group tutor and Sunday school teachers....

Are you making any Christmas gifts this year? What is on your to make list? (Help a girl out, I am still looking for ideas!)

Excellent Holy Week Craft!

Sometimes it is hard to find crafts for littles that focus on the time leading up to Good Friday.

This one is great, and we will be making it!

Thanks for the link, Alexandra!

Crochet Lessons

My family gave me a DVD of crochet lessons for my birthday, and I am diligently working to learn. However I often face setbacks when someone little, who shall remain nameless plays with my yarn and practice work, gets tangled up in it, and then crawls away...the end results look kind of like this:


It may not be the most productive work, but it certainly is fun!

Do your children...er...help you with your crafting too?

Baby's Thank-You Notes

After making the invitations, the decorations, the cakes (and here) and the goodie bag cookies it seemed silly to buy thank you notes, so I made those too.

I used the same red paper and ribbon as in the the invitations (as well as a different designer paper from the same package) in addition to a nice matching orange paper. I also used the same stamp for the lady bug as was used for the decorations.

Here is the front of the card - the lady bug is actually peaking out from the inside of the card.


And here is the inside view...


Our company just left on Saturday morning, so writing the thank you notes is a top priority this week!

The Decorations

The decorations for Baby's party were simple because she has a big sister who REALLY wanted to help because this big sister loves her Baby.

The first part I had to sneak in during nap times: Sandwich picks to decorate the homemade rolls for the sandwich bar (at first I was going to make the sandwiches and then decided that because we had picky eaters it would be best to let everyone assemble their own!)



Then Miss Pear helped me make ladybugs to decorate the windows:



We used the foam sheets you can get at the crafting stores for about $1, and each sheet of red was good for 2 bugs with a useful remnant for another project for Christmas, (So 3 sheets of red and 1 sheet of black), some google eyes, some glue, and a sharpie marker for the line.

It was such a bright sunny day that we could not get a good picture of the lady bugs above the two windows, so you might have to squint to see them! And I somehow neglected to take a picture of the buffet to show you how cute the sandwich picks looked in action. Oh well. And the sandwich picks were in action because the children LOVED them!

Baby's Birthday

Baby's birthday and birthday party were wonderful! We still have company all this week so I thought I would just share some of the birthday fun with you. As always the pictures won't actually show you our family...at least no faces...but it will show you some of the fun things we did.

I thought I would start with Baby's Birthday invitations that I made.


The stamp set is Love Bug from the current Stampin' Up catalog (it is one of the hostess sets). The paper is also from there and is Real Red, Whisper White and Summer Picnic Design Paper. (The ribbon is from Michael's)

Here is a close up of the bugs.


The stamp is just the outlines and then I colored them in.

(I cannot find a link to the stamp set because you can only order it if you host a party, but you can see other examples of cards using this stamp set here.)

Blessed Bread Cloth

I pretty much love any craft that is sewing based that I have tried so far. Embroidery, cross stitch, quilting, knitting, all big yeses! Crochet? Well, jury is still out as I am just starting to learn, but it looks promising!

Finding time is always a challenge as crafting gets slotted well after caring for my family in my order of priorities. But now that we are doing the Preschool/Kindergarten homeschooling I am finding that there is time when I am sitting at the table with Miss Pear as she is coloring something or tracing something. So I keep a little bag of hand sewing near the table for those rare spare minutes!

This morning I finished a small but meaningful project, it is a bread cloth for some friends of ours and this verse has a special meaning to them. The pattern is one I bought and then I changed out the words they had for the verse I wanted (I used a page from my husband's old astronomy note book so it is very fine graph paper) and extended the pattern to fill each corner rather than just the one.

All things considered, after adapting the pattern and changing some colors to match their kitchen I am quite pleased with the outcome!



Next up: hemming winter themed napkins

Baby's Afghan

Last summer I began work on baby's afghan. I had trouble with the pattern but finally figured that out. And I got a fair bit done. And then she arrived, and it was not done. And then we had the meningitis and the hip dysplasia, and life in general, and it was not done.

If you remember, I set a goal this year to be a finisher.

So I put this as number one on my list to finish. And last week I did.


I am going to guess that it is about 37 inches by 42 inches, so a good size and in a very light pink.

Baby still likes to be swaddled...at 8 months. We had huge swaddlers (42 x 42 inches) to swaddle around the harness and she still loves them. Actually, she loves to break out of them and then hang on to the end corner while she sucks her thumb. But as soon as she decides she is completely done with swaddling her blanket is ready.

Tissue Flowers

Miss Pear's birthday is coming up, and the theme this year is going to be Fancy Nancy! (In the past she has had Winnie-the-Pooh (her nursery theme), Backyardigans, and Polar Bears)

I have learned my lesson about selecting a birthday theme from a book that is not also a television show. When you do this the result is a lot of do it yourselfing. Which is great with me!

So for one of the decorations for the party I am going to make tissue flowers is Fancy Nancy's colors - pink and purple. These are also Miss Pear's colors, so that works wonderfully well.

If you are wondering how to make these...or like me simply needed a refresher course, click here for a video tutorial!

Although I may have to move on to more sophisticated tissue flowers and try these carnations!

Excellent Easter Craft

Okay, I have a huge confession to make. I love to decorate for holidays...and I don't really like Easter decorations. I love the spring time flower decorations, but as cute as bunnies are, a girl can only take so much...unless it is Peter Rabbit of course!

So in my hunt to find a craft that would double as a decoration for Miss Pear and I, I searched many a site in frustration.

But then I found THE PERFECT Easter Craft! It is simple, used a lot of what I had on hand, Miss Pear could help with the gluing, and the office supply store to get the laminating done was right next to the fish store. But the best part is that we now have the continual reminder of the sacrifice our Lord made for us each day. We hung it in the room we do most of our living, and Miss Pear asks about it a lot, and thinks it is beautiful.

If you are looking for an Easter craft, I cannot recommend this one highly enough!

A Thoughtful Gift

Lately I have been thinking more about really thoughtful gifts.

Recently I made a set of correspondence cards for a friend and thought you might enjoy seeing them. I made sure to stamp the envelopes with her initial too.

Cards for Next Christmas

Next Christmas I would like to make some gift tags, small gift cards, and note cards to accompany gifts that I would like to include an explanation on.

So once again I am working my way through the things I loved to save them to my hard drive so I have them for next year. And I am only looking at things that I already have the stamps for. Also, I am only copying things that tell me everything they used so that it is easier!

I LOVE the Snowman with a Punch from Stampin' Pretty! I think this will be a note card set for presents next year (we live so far from family that we always do a picture Christmas card of the girls).

For the rest of this post I am looking for ways to use my Deer Friends stamp set that was a Stampin' Up Hostess Set in the second half of last year (it might still be available).

For gift tags and small gift cards I am thinking the following are good options (of course, so will have to be made smaller!):

• Deer Friends Gingerbread Card
• Deer Friends Christmas Ball (I don't have the big scallop punch so I will just cut rounds)
• Christmas Holiday Notes selection (this could actually be a great gift too)
• Holiday Gift Tags - I plan on making these early for us to use but also as a start of Advent gift for some family members, and I also hope to host a gift tag swap with some friends!
• Gift Tags - I love these simple gift tags too!
• More Gift Tags - these are so pretty with the embossing, and you can actually get embossed looking paper now if the idea of embossing scares you (or you have yet to do it successfully like me!)
• Christmas Tags - and with that I will stop looking at gift tags!
  

And I saw a couple crafts that would be a cute gift/present decoration:

• Candy Cane
• Candy Cane Reindeer

And a lot of our friends drink Martinelli's Sparkling Juice and Cider for Christmas and New Year, so THIS would be a great gift! Then again cookie recipes are always great too!

Plus I can see a variation of this card being our family Christmas thank you card for next year!

There is another Christmas stamp set I got this year that I used this year to decorate our Christmas letters, but when I get a chance I will be looking for some ideas for that set too!

(Plus, if I have a plan, when my friends throw stamping parties and I feel like I should really buy something I can get something small that will go with my plan!)

Christmas Stuff for Next Year

Am I the only one who feels a little bit frustrated each year when all the really great crafting ideas for Christmas come out too late for me to make them?

So one of my goals this year was to sit down in early January and select the crafting ideas I would like to make for next year. And because none of my family (except my husband) know that I blog I can share them with you! (Plus it will make it easier to get all my stuff together if I compile it here!)

The Common Room posted a selection of frugal gifts, and included a picture of a sweet Christmas tree decoration that is a mitt made from craft paper. The simple blanket stitch makes it appear very beautiful. We will be making these next year! I would like to make one for each family we exchange gifts for, and if things are nice and quiet, and the girls schedule allows the time, I would like to make one for each of the kids in those families too for their decoration collections.

I love Shannon's idea for hankies, and would like to make some in flannel. (Although I had to laugh as I was writing this because she blogs at Rocks in my Dryer, and I will have you know that I had rocks in both my washer AND my dryer this weekend....)

Plus then an incredibly creative reader of hers posted an idea (and there were lots of great ideas) about making tea towels out of pictures your kids have made! Basically your kids write out the recipe and draw a picture to go with it, you copy that to transfer paper and iron it on the tea towel. Of course, you can jazz it up if you want too! Yup, we are going to have to make those too....

These are just the three I saw that really stood out for me!

Of course, be sure to print these or save them as pdf files because in the course of a year links often disappear.

Another great idea that we received as a gift is the gift of family recipes from this year written out to share. Our friend wrote them out and clipped them in a clothes pin that had the front and back covered in a pretty paper with magnets on the back - our friend is SO creative!

Were there any crafting ideas around the web that stood out to you? Leave a link or description in the comments if you would not mind sharing as I am always on the hunt for a good craft!

Because I am sentimental

Monday and yesterday I did a job that really hurt. I put away all of Baby Pear's 3-6 month clothing. She had only been in them for about 2 weeks (longer for the sleepers). For a lot of reasons Baby will be the last pear added to our household, so it is time to pass things on. Some of the clothing was new to baby and only worn once or twice, a couple outfits not at all. It was hard to pack it up knowing that when she finally gets out of her harness she may even be out of the 6-9 month clothing.

We have friends due any day, and I am boxing stuff up to ship to them. If they do not have a girl I will pull out all the girl stuff for a neighbor due in February. (We did not know that Miss Pear was a girl until she was born, so we have lots of generic stuff - plus I love baby blue on girls).

But even knowing that these clothes were going to a good home it was hard.

So I am saving all my favorites, all the special ones. The outfits that:

• Miss Pear wore when we filed the final application for my green card
• Baby wore to ER and then home from the hospital
  
• both girls wore and wore and wore
• were special gifts

My plan is to make a blanket for each girl out of them. It is all knit cotton that I am saving so it will just be squares sewn together and then quilted (probably knot quilts). For the back I am going to use their receiving blankets and flannel crib sheets. At the rate I cannot part with stuff they may both end up with queen sized quilts!

I am also saving their dresses for a second quilt for each.

It is definitely making boxing stuff up and passing it on easier.

Baby's Blanket

On Saturday I decided it was time to pull out the measuring tape again and see just how much knitting on baby's blanket I have completed, and how much I have to go.

Well, I will be knitting quite a bit more.

The afghan is 33 inches wide.

It is 28 inches long.

So while I would be happy with a square, meaning another 5 inches to knit, knitting tends to stretch more in the width than in the length, so I have more knitting to do....

On the plus side I am thrilled with the way it is turning out!