Holly Jolly Towel

This is a sweet towel that I embroidered for my sister-in-law's aunt. She wanted three towels with simple holly patterns and this is what I came up with.

Christmas Snapshots

Here are a few snaphots from our Christmas celebration this year.

Sophia feeling festive

Sophia giving Grammy & Grampy the gift she picked out for them.

The new Star Wars Pajama pants and Lego Shirt from Santa

Sophia & her daddy

The cousins with their new baby cousin(who wasn't in the mood for a group photo)

The Red Velvet cake we made to celebrate Jesus' Birthday. This is the cake that Steve grew up with and is the recipe that his mom made when he was little.

Snowy Trees Towel

We had one side of our family's Christmas celebration yesterday and I wanted to give something to my grandma who just turned 86. She has been cleaning out some of the extra stuff around her house so I wanted to give her something she could actually use and that I made for her.

I came up with this winter tree scene from a vintage pattern I found online. I copied the trees that I liked and moved the deer up to run between them. It just felt cozy to me.
I think she liked it, she said she would put it on display anyway.

Waechtersbach Pattern

My crafty sister-in-law Alyson, has a mother who has commented varies times on my towels recently. I have the feeling that she really wants one, but doesn't know what to get.

I asked Alyson and she thought that a towel made with the tree from the Waechtersbach Dishes she has would look cool. So we found the dishes online, printed one out and then I pinned it to the back of the towel, held it up to a window and traced it. That made my pattern! Really you could do this with anything that you wanted to try to embroider.

The whole point of those dishes are a solid red background with a solid green tree and all of the bulbs, candles and stars are solid white, but this is how I could improvise on a white dish towel. I thought about doing the candles and stars in yellow, but just didn't think that would be true to the pattern.

I like how it turned out & hope it will be a great surprise for Mrs. Bev!

ps. if you know her, don't tell

Here it is up close.

Holiday Botique

These are some of the items I had at the Holiday Boutique I was in last weekend.

My version of Rodolph's Spare noses, I got this idea from Kerry over at Pete and Kerry She has so many great paper crafting ideas and she does a lot of craft sales too.
This year's version of Snowman Soup. I like these much better than last years that I made.
My husband really wanted to make those "Frustration Pencils!" Do you remember them as a kid? I had forgotten all about them until he told my daughter about them. We couldn't find the "fur" at any of our local stores, but when we were in Omaha for Thanksgiving we went to a smaller hobby type shop & bought some there.

This sweet girl around 8 years old(or so) bought most of them to give to her friends for Christmas. My husband was thrilled that he sold so many of them!

A few of the gift card holders that I made this year... More to come...

I have embroidered a bunch of towels for gifts and the holidays so as soon as I get some good photos of them I will get them posted.

Holiday Candy Jars

These are some of the candy jars that I did for the craft sales that I am doing this fall.

I added the little Rhinestones this year & people seemed to like the extra bling!

Gift Tags

I recently participated in a local craft sale. These are the gift tags that I made & sold most of them. They were 12 tags for $3.

I used my scalloped square punch(I think it's the purple one by Marvy Uchida) to punch the Kraft paper and then cut out squares of designer paper and plain white to stamp To & From on.

Christmas Card 2008

I finally found an extra copy of our Christmas Card from this Christmas that I could post. I tried to do it matchbook style for something different. I used Kraft paper for the base of it, Stampin up Baja Breeze and Chocolate Chip, misc for the red and white. I used the house stamp from the "To You & Yours" set by SU and the "Very Merry Christmas to You" was a hostess set by SU. This was the best picture of us this year and the photo I took of it isn't very good but you get the idea. We live in Minnesota, so this year I was feeling warm & cozy when I thought of Christmas. I colored a little bit with colored pencils to try to bring the scene "alive". I should have added some glitter to the snow but I was making 80 of them while driving to my in-laws and didn't think that would work so well! Thanks for looking.

Santa

Here is the picture of my daughter when we went to go see Santa at the mall. They let you use your own camera if you want too. It worked out OK I guess, I'm not sure why they had that doll in the photo though.

Punch Art

Here are the Snowmen and Santas that we made with my niece & nephew last week. In the middle is Peppermint Patties. We used punches, tape and glue. I found a lot of ideas in Splitcoast Stampers gallery but just made it work with what we had. I think I like the way the snowmen turned out a little better...

Yard Gnome or Tree Topper?

Here is a picture of our Christmas Tree this year. Our star topper broke so I stuck this tall red tree thing on top to be funny & it grew on us! My daughter thought it looked like a goblin hat. It reminded me of a yard gnome and made me chuckle every time I walked past it for the first few days. What do you think?

Countdown to Christmas Calendar

My daughter kept asking how long until she could open her presents. We do our own stocking stuffers, not Santa and we have a lot of fun thinking of things that the others would really like to get to open. So she keeps wondering when, "When can I open my presents, Mom?"

So we(I) decided to make our own countdown to Christmas calendar and use things we already had around the house. I had seen the ones where people used cookie sheets and magnets, but we didn't have any extra cookie sheets around.

I did have this thing I bought at an antique store one time that I used as a tray in our guest room. Our guests wouldn't miss it. It was an old tray that was painted, roughed up and made as a magnetic board that came with wine corks cut in half and glued to magnets. I lost those magnets a long time ago. Really cute just never used it as that.

Anyway, I thought it would make a great calendar for us. I cut all of the letters and numbers out on the Cricut and glued them together and put them on magnets I found here and there. I punched the scalloped circles out of vellum so you could see thru them. The brown and green circles are out of Stampin Up paper. The big Snowflakes were cut on the Cricut and the smaller ones I used a punch. The black ribbon that is on the top was there when I bought it, so we went with it.

It took two days, it's mostly done and I am fairly happy with it. I haven't heard when, when do we open presents mom, because she changes the number everyday :)

Sketch Challenge 203

Here is this weeks Sketch Challenge over at Splitcoast Stampers. Here is my take on it. It was a fun one to try!

I used Chocolate Chip for the base card. The designers papers are from the Ski Slope paper pack by Stampin Up. The blue is Baja Breeze by SU. I inked most of the edges in brown and drew the faux stitched lines with a ruler and a black marker. I punched the snowflakes out of Cottonwood paper and a punch by EK Success. The Rhinestones are misc brands. The Believe stamp is by Stampendous, stamped in Black Versafine. The Dove is part of the "To You & Yours" set by SU. I added Stickles to the tail for some sparkle but it wasn't enough, so I added Diamond Dust Glitter when the Stickles was still wet. Now it sparkles! TFL!

Samartian's Purse

My daughter & I have volunteered at our church collecting shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child for the past 3 years. Operation Christmas Child is part of Samaritan's Purse, started by Franklin Graham, I believe back the 70's. It is so EASY! And so hard to imagine that children around the world may have never received a gift before, this could be the only gift in they see in their childhood. I have been filling shoe boxes for a long time and thought it would be good to get my daughter involved so she could realize that not all kids get gifts like we do in America.

Here is a link to their website and more info: http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/OCC/

I just love the feeling that you get when you help someone else! It usually does more for you than for the other person :)

This is a photo Sophia manning the table.

Christmas Already?

Yep! It is at my house :) I am a Christmas dork. I have been listening to Christmas Music for the past couple months, my daughter & I (and my DH when we couldn't reach something) put up our first tree this weekend. I say "first" because we usually put up two or three of them. I have this cool old silver 50's one that we decorate all funky & fun and we have a traditional one we got from my father-in-law. It seems that every year we decorate the traditional one a little different. Some years we make it red and green, some years we make it bright and funky and some years we put all of the handmade and personalized ornaments on it. This year it looks like a little of everything! My daughter is five now & she kind of took over the decorating. It may not be perfectly balanced out, but it sure was fun to see her get so excited and be so proud of her work!

Do you have any favorite holiday albums that you listen too? One of my favorites has been Mariah Carey's Merry Christmas album from 1994. I don't even know if she has a new one & I don't have any of her other albums, but I really enjoy this one!

I hope you all can find the joy in preparing for the upcoming holidays too.

Second Craft Sale Photos

Here are some photos from the second craft sale that I was in. My mother joined me this time with her awesome photo cards! Thanks for hangin' with me mom :)

I sold the most Paperclip Bookmarks, M & M jars as Thank Yous, Holiday Gift Tags and Gift Card Holders. I found some tips from Kerry somewhere in her blog over at: http://crafts.peteandkerry.com/labels/Altered%20Stuff.html about things that worked at her craft sales. It definitely helped having things at different heights. We bought this card rack and the verdict is still out about it. LOL! It was supposed to fit my mother's cards and it was the wrong size, but we found out after we paid rush shipping to get it here in time for the sale!

This sale was SO much better than the last one! I'm glad I did one more this year. Let me know if you have any questions and TFL!