Christmas Distress

Here are some Christmas tags that I tried to do Tim Holtz style.  I first cut the tags out of manilla file folders.   I used glimmer mist, a mask, TH Tea Dye distress ink (on the edges of the vintage music and the words December). Stamped green swirlies and black Noels. I distressed the edges with my scissors since I don't have the neat TH distressing tool... yet.  Then I inked the edges of the tags with TH Vintage Photo distress ink. I folded the wreaths using this tutorial, attached them and added tiny green bows, along with bows at the top of the tags.  I really like how they turned out!

Holiday Craftiness

It's time for my annual fantasy post about what I'm making for the holidays! Every year I get so excited about making homemade gifts for Christmas, especially when Sew Mama Sew begins the Handmade Holidays series. I make a huge list and then start surfing the net for ideas, tutorials, patterns. It is at this point that I usually run into a problem. I see so many fabulous handmade things on the internet, I can never decide what to make! My list gets so impossibly huge that I don't even finish a fraction of the projects.

This year will be even harder. In January I joined a wonderful scrapbooking site called Scraps of Color. I have always loved scrapping and making cards, but since meeting these crafty folks, it's all I want to do! I've been a card making fool this year! When October rolled around, the time I usually begin thinking about sewing gifts, I felt strangely conflicted. My neglected sewing machine was calling me, but my stamps, punches, markers, papers, ribbons and all things scrappy had a hold on me already! What's a creative girl to do?! What I always do of course, pack it all in!

So for 2010 I am making Christmas cards for friends and family as usual. I am involved in a couple of holiday card and tag swaps with the SOC group. I am making a few paper gifts - bookmarks, note card sets, gift card sets. I am also making several handsewn gifts. For the kids there are snuggies, tic tac toe sets, doll clothes, doll changing sets (diapers, changing pads, wipes), fabric food, superhero capes, tents and mail carrier sets. For the adults there are aprons, coasters and place mats so far.

How am I getting this all done you ask? It is time to reveal my secret identity....

I AM Supermom!!!

No seriously, I've been getting together with a few friends once a week after the kids are in bed. We all bring our sewing machines and have been encouraging each other to get it done. During the rest of the week, I do the papercrafting late at night, after finishing the housework and work for my job. I'm not sure that the entire list will be accomplished, but I believe that exactly what needs to get done will get done.

How about you? Are you making anything for the holidays?

Happy Mother's Day!

Today has been a wonderfully blessed day. I woke up to healthy children, a loving husband and Christ in the center of our family.

I am spending the afternoon organizing my craft room. When it is all done I'll try to post some before and after pics... or maybe just the after pictures!

In the meantime, here are some Mother's Day cards I made.

My mother took a picture of the one I made for her.

I took these next two pictures with my cell phone so they are a bit blurry.

Here is the one I made for my grandma. And here is the one my mother made for me. How are you spending your day today?

Handmade Holidays III

I can hardly contain myself! Handmade Holidays is here again! This is the third year that Sew Mama Sew is doing this and it's just beyond wonderful. Every day for the month of November there are tutorials of great things you can make as gifts for the holidays. There are projects for every kind of gift recipient - kids, adults, crafters, students, you name it. In addition, there is a giveaway each day, which you can enter just by leaving a comment!

Last year I made several Christmas gifts using ideas I got from Handmade Holidays II. This year my list is hopelessly long. I'm hoping to make things for my nephews, godchildren and my own children, as well as gifts for my parents, grandparents and of course, hubby! However, I don't think I'll ever get started actually making anything because I've been spending so much time looking at all of the fantastic handmade tutorials!

I do hope you get to check it out and add some handmade items to your gift giving this year!

Recovery

I am slowly getting my footing back from all of the holiday madness. Not madness really, but just lots of work that I suppose I created for myself. It really wouldn't be Christmas to me without all of the baking and cooking and sewing and crafting and company and visiting and giving of handmade gifts! I made a few things that I am quite proud of. I don't know how they'll look online in these photos, but I am sharing anyway!

These are tutus I made from this no sew tutu tutorial. You do have to sew just a bit, for the waist, but the rest was easy. I made one for each of my goddaughters and one for Lil' Miss. It's hard to see how cute, colorful and poofy they are from these photos.

I made a little "scrap pocket" for my mother. I saw a woman at a scrapbooking retreat using one and just fell in love with it. It was so cute and adorned with little buttons. It was also bigger than the one I made for my mother.

The top is filled with fish tank gravel encased in a ziplock bag, surrounded by batting for softness. The gravel keeps the top on the table while the pocket part hangs down off the side of the table and mom can just throw paper scraps in it while she's making cards.

I made a "cobbler cozy" for my father. He loves making peach cobblers and will often make them as gifts for people or bring them to events and gatherings. I thought it would be nice to have something to keep it warm and easy to carry. The outside is a black denim material with black and white gingham lining. You place the casserole dish in the center, the sides come up and snap shut, then you pull the other sides up and hold them together by the handles (made out of pvc pipes - didn't have wood dowels on hand).

Now that all the sewing is done, sort of (I still have a couple of little boys I'd like to make something for), I can get down to the business of nesting! We spent a lot of the holiday break working on the nursery - putting the crib together, sorting through old baby clothes, etc. I have quite a bit of washing to do, especially getting all of the cloth diapers in order. I would REALLY like to try my hand at making some cloth diaper covers with my serger, but I haven't figured out how to use it properly yet. I tried it on one of my Christmas gifts and just made a big mess. If anyone has any tips, I'd really appreciate them!

Busy Little Elf

I've been working away, though it seems as if everything that could happen to keep me away from my tasks has happened! My cold has lingered on, making me really exhausted by the time the kiddos go to bed (and it's hard for me to make gifts while I'm sleeping). Friday I was determined to at least get the things that needed to be mailed finished. A big storm was supposed to start Friday around noon, and I was furiously sewing and cooking away while keeping one eye on the skies (looking for snow) and one eye on the kids. Yes, your math is correct, that didn't leave enough eyes to have one on my sewing machine. As I was rushing, I sewed one of my reverse applique letters right to the collar of the t-shirt! It was a nightmare to take out because I used a really close stitch. It was also my first time doing reverse applique, so it took me quite a while to complete the project. I hope the boys like the finished product - I wanted it to have a rough, boyish look and I think I acheived that, though their parents might just think it looks messy. Oh well, messy sure was a lot of work!A bit after 12:30, Lil' Miss announced, "The snow is coming down Mommy!" It came down fast and hard and by the time I finished the shirts, there were several inches on the ground. I ended up waiting for Hubby to get home and he drove us to the post office. So I am happy that I got the t-shirts finished and six bags of chocolate covered roasted pecans made AND they all got in the mail on Friday.

I thought that Saturday I'd be able to get some more things done, but since we got 12 inches of snow on Friday, hubby spent most of the day cleaning up - which meant the kids were with me (they went out for a little bit, but are too small to really stay out very long). Sewing with the Little Guy around just does not work. However, I did go to my neighbor's house for a cake baking lesson. I already know how to bake cakes, but she makes those professional cakes that you pay tons of money for birthday parties and other events. It was great, I learned how to make the cake AND the icing and it was delicious! This is a 12 inch, 3 inch high cake and 24 hours later there is only about a fourth of it left!

Today, church was canceled because it was still snowing - it snowed straight through from Friday until Sunday evening. Though I was looking forward to going to church, not only to worship and fellowship, but I had a few bags of pecans I wanted to give to some folks, I was also happy to have the time to work on some projects. Well, we drove out in the snow to get a few things and wouldn't you know that when we returned, our CO detector was going off again?!! Hubby went down to check out the furnace and the one near the bedrooms began to go off too. We decided that it would be best for the children and I to leave the house, while Hubby tried to figure out the problem. I woke the Little Guy from his nap and bundled everyone up and went to a neighbor's. While it was nice to visit, all I could think of was my sewing! It felt like someone really didn't want me to make any gifts.

When we finally came back home to a soot covered Hubby, I let the kids decorate gingerbread cookies while I started on one project. By the end of the night, I was able to finish it and a little something to go with it. It's a tissue pouch holder and a keychain! Hopefully the next few nights will be much more productive!

Time to Panic

I am officially panicking right now. There are only 10 days until Christmas!!!

I have so many things that I wanted to do, but haven't been able to. We've had a rough few weeks with the Little Guy being sick first for a week, then Lil' Miss getting pink eye, and then Hubby and I sick the week after. I avoid medications during pregnancy, thus have had a much harder time with this cold than I normally would. I can't seem to get rid of a very congested cough, I'm stuffy and cannot breathe and my throat is unbelievably sore. In addition, I still have the normal pregnancy symptoms, heartburn being the worst. All of this together has not allowed me to get a good night's rest in quite a while, so I am just beat during the days. Add to this mix a very active 2 and 4 year old and you do NOT have someone who has energy to sew or bake at all!

I keep checking the US Postal Service website to make sure I have time to mail stuff. If I can at least muster up enough energy to make gifts for my out of town family, I'll be happy. If I read the website correctly, the last day to mail stuff and get it to it's destination by Christmas is December 20. This gives me 4 days (or 5 if I can sew and bake a bit on Saturday morning) to get several gifts made, wrapped and packed up. Once they're done, I can pull a few all nighters and get the local family/friends gifts done. This is a pretty tall order, so I'd appreciate any healthy thoughts and prayers you have to send my way! Thanks!!!

Fifty-six Handmade Christmas Cards

Here are my Christmas Cards for this year! I apologize in advance for the quality of the photos. I did not have good lighting where the cards were and my camera is not the best.

The last few years I made a photo card, either taking my own photo or getting a professional photo and using it to create the card. This time however, I wanted to actually scrapbook a card. My mother is quite a gifted card maker and I've become more and more inspired by her handmade cards. I started working on these at the scrapbooking retreat I went to in November.

I started off with 8 & 1/2 x 11 sheets of forest green, cranberry and cream paper. I cut them in half so that they were 8 & 1/2 x 5 & 1/2. I ran them through a Cuttlebug using an embossing folder. That's what made the pretty raised pattern. It's the cutest little machine that you can use to manually cut shapes and emboss paper. Then I cut varous 12X12 sheets of beautiful patterned cream, gold, light green and flowered paper down to fit the cards (now folded in half). I used a Creative Memories decorative trimmer to give them a wavy edge. I adhered these pieces to the center of my cards. I left the flowered paper as squares (no wavy edges) and used some distressing ink to give the paper an antique look, then adhered them to the right side of the card front.

I used a wooden stamp with black ink to make the bible verse on strips of red and green paper, cut them and matted them to brown or red paper. I did the same for the little manger image with an acrylic stamp. I am new to using acrylic stamps, but I really like them. You can see exactly where you are placing your stamp. I adhered these matted stamped images to the card. I also stamped "Handmade by" on the back of each card and wrote my name underneath.

I used EK Success snowflake punches to create about 175 little snowflakes in various patterns. The EK Success snowflake punch line offers six different patterns so that you can layer them and make an endless amount of unique snowflake arrangements. I layered and glued three snowflakes to each card, and put a dot of white glitter glue in the center.

I punched out 240 tiny gold doves, using leftover gold foil label paper. All of the labels had been used, but I saved the empty sheets. I punched the doves from the leftover gold borders of the label paper! I used these to adhere a wallet sized photo of my kids to the inside of the card, over the embossed area.

I bought a couple packs of holiday stationary, and used The Enveloper to make envelopes for all of the cards. Now they are just sitting on the table waiting to be signed and mailed. That part is taking quite a while because I am writing a personalized message in all 56 of them!

Sewing with a Sick Kid

Well, it's official. I've got a sick kid in the house. I wouldn't mind so much except that it has completely thrown off my handmade holiday schedule! The Little Guy began coughing and sneezing on Saturday. By Sunday it was pretty bad. Monday he had a fever, couldn't keep his breakfast down, didn't want lunch or dinner, and had a fever again at bedtime. This morning he woke up and whatever was in his tummy overnight (which is a mystery to me because he didn't eat anything on Sunday) came up on daddy and himself, AFTER he was already dressed for the day of course. He managed to eat a bit of very watered down Cream of Wheat for breakfast and then half of a p & j sandwich for lunch. Just before naptime he got warm again, but I in my parental wisdom thought, "He's only a little warm, I'll just let him take a nap and maybe when he wakes up the fever will be gone." Well, he woke up about 45 minutes later BURNING UP. I immediately gave him some Children's Motrin and tried to get him to lay back down. But once the Motrin kicked in and brought the fever down, he had no intentions of sleeping. So he played the rest of the day, ate a muffin - which came up about half an hour later, then played some more.

I suppose I wouldn't have gotten much sewing done until after the kids bedtime anyway, but I am so exhausted from the mental energy that goes into caring for a sick little one, that I think I'd fall asleep at the sewing machine. Instead, I've decided to finish my Christmas cards. I just cut out 200 little gold doves to use as corner anchors for the pictures of the kids I am inserting into each card. Once that's done, it's just addressing the envelopes, sticking stamps on them and putting them in the mail. This just might be the earliest I've ever gotten Christmas cards out!

Hopefully tomorrow I can get some sewing done. I have a prenatal appointment in the morning - only about 9 weeks left until due date - IF I make it to the due date!!! Then Lil' Miss has a violin lesson. After that, we're free for the rest of the day. My little prayer is that we'll head home for some schoolwork, lunch and the Little Guy will go down for a nap. I usually don't do violin practice on the day we have private lesson because I figure she's gotten enough violin in for the day. That would leave two whole hours for sewing!


Here are the things I hope to get done this week...

Play mail bag and letters for some of the little boys

No sew tutus for the little girls

Apron for my auntie in law (a special request)

Fleece scarves and mittens for some of the school aged children

Countdown to Christmas!

Can you believe it's December already??? We have just three and a half weeks until Christmas! I'm feeling a bit of axiety because I have SO MUCH TO DO.

Here is the list of things I need to complete before Christmas:
1. Sew gifts for everyone (hubby, kids, parents, inlaws, siblings, nephews, godchildren, church family, friends)
2. Finish making Christmas cards and mail
3. Send out invitations for Christmas Eve dinner (we always have family and close friends over)
4. Make menu and buy food for Christmas Eve dinner
5. Wrap and mail gifts to out of town family

I also have lots of baby preparation stuff to do, but I'm hoping that can wait until after Christmas. Even if I deliver a bit early, I figuring I'll have at least a couple of weeks after Christmas to prepare the nursery, wash cloth diapers, wash baby clothes, pack a hospital bag and other important things.

One of the biggest problems I'm having is my love of making things. My Christmas cards are handmade from scratch. I actually started from a sheet of blank cardstock, embossed the paper, stamped all of the images, matted them, punched out snowflakes, added glitter, took photos of the kids, cropped all the photos, punched out gold stickers and used them to attach the photos to the inside of the card, signed them all and am now writing a personal message in each one. I could have left out several of those steps, but everytime I looked at the card I thought, "I should add this," or "That punch would look great in gold!" Oh, and did I mention that I made 50 cards?

The second problem I am having may be bigger than the first. There are just SO MANY wonderful things to sew! I think I've got my list together, then I find something else online.
My absolute favorite site is the Sew Mama Sew blog with Handmade Holidays 2008.
There is also 30 days, which has well over 30 days worth of ideas!
Handmade Holidays through the year has some pretty good craft projects and links to tutorials.
And of course, Craftster is always a fabulous resource. There you'll find an endless list of ideas and tutorials submitted by fellow crafty folks.

I hope to post some photos of my finished projects, but at the rate I'm going, they'll be most likely immediately stuffed into a box and rushed to the post office! Are any of you making gifts at home this year?

Weekend Update

I'm sitting on the couch next to a snoring Hubby watching an SNL rerun. It's been such a long weekend - but long in a good way. I think Thanksgiving may be one of my favorite holidays because it falls on a Thursday. Almost everyone has the following Friday off and then the weekend. It's wonderful to know you don't have to rush back to the daily routine the next day. Even on the normal weekend, we really only have Saturday, and then Sunday we get up early to get everyone dressed and off to church.

Thursday, I spent the morning cooking. I ended up making two pumpkin pies, pumpkin bread, pumpking muffins (my pumpkin made more pulp than I anticipated, thus all of the pumpkin dishes), a pound cake, and a strawberry rhubarb pie. Then we all went over to my parents for dinner. My brother and his family were up visiting, and my husband's brother joined us. My parents put out a fantastic spread of food - I wish I could have ate more, but I needed to save room for desert. Afteward, the ladies played Scategories (eventually the rest of the family joined in), the guys watched a movie, and the kids played with toys.

Friday we all got together again and went to a shopping center - NOT a mall. I absolutely stay away from malls from Thanksgiving until New Years. I can't stand the traffic and inconsideration drivers have for each other around those places. We went to a smaller town with a series of little shops nicely spread out. After checking out a couple of stores, and buying our Christmas tree, we all went to dinner together, which my dad paid for! Later that night four of our good college friends came over and we watched a movie together after the kids went to bed. It was nice for the three couples to hang out and not worry about the kids.

Saturday we ran a couple of errands, Hubby put up Christmas lights around the house and I printed pictures to send out with Christmas cards I made. I ran over to my parents' house to pick up some Thanksgiving leftovers so that I didn't have to cook. After dinner the kids trimmed the tree, had their baths, books and went to bed. The only drawback to today is that I've had terrible heartburn all day. Another pregancy symptom. I know of a few natural remedies, but I'll have to do a bit more research.

Sunday we'll be off to church. A friend of ours is preaching at our church tomorrow. It will be nice to hear him for the first time, and see my girlfriend and their kids. Afterward, Hubby will be focused on football for the rest of the day and I hopefully will be sewing - at least during the Little Guy's nap.

Well, I hope you all had a wonderful weekend too!

'Tis the season...

The holiday season always makes me want to bake. Pies, breads, cookies, cakes... Our home is toasty warm and smelling of sugar and spices from November through January! While everyone else is excited preparing their famous mac n cheese or award winning turkey for Thanksgiving, I get charged up slicing up fresh fruit and rolling out pie crusts. That is going to be my contribution for Thanksgiving dinner at my parents this year. I plan on making an apple pie, a strawberry rhubarb pie, pumpkin bread (from pumpkins, not from the can) and a pound cake.

We usually spend the holidays out of town with my inlaws and I don't get to contribute much. My mil is one of those who has her holiday menu perfectly timed from start to finish. Another cook in the kitchen throws the whole plan off! This year we moved our visit up to this past summer so that we could avoid traveling so close to the due date. Not that people don't travel at 7 months pregnant, I'd just rather be close to the comfort of my own home at this stage. We've done the airport traveling with two small children when I'm NOT pregnant, and it's just not fun.

Anyway, yesterday I tried out a new cookie recipe. A friend gave me the recipe but I made a few changes. After the regular base for many cookies (flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, creamed butter, sugar, brown sugar, eggs, vanilla), it called for lots of coconut, pecans, old fashioned rolled oats and chocolate chips. I decreased the amount of pecans by a fourth because Hubby has convinced himself he's allergic to them. He's SO not, it's just that the first time he had a fresh pecan, he happened to eat the very bitter red part in between the meat. I also decreased the amount of chocolate chips by a third because I'm trying to cut down on my chocolate intake. And then I added fresh cranberries to half of the batch. They turned out great. However, this morning, they were pretty crunchy. I think next time I'll also decrease the amount of rolled oats.

I guess the crunchiness didn't bother everyone. I sent some to work with my husband and he said everyone liked them. I'll bring some to church with me this evening and over to my parents. For Christmas I'll be baking cookies and making chocolate covered pecans to give along with my handmade gifts. What are you baking this holiday season?