Christmas Flashback

We were looking at old pictures and video over the Christmas season and happened across this video. We had forgotten about it, but it's one of our favorites.

These kids are so funny......then and now!

Guess I was good

I must have been a good girl this year because Santa was good to me. Actually, he was VERY GOOD to me.

Just look at what he brought me!!

It also came with an embroidery attachment, and he brought a quilting foot too.

My wonderful husband went and picked it out, bought it, and wrapped it all on his own. Quite frankly, it's far nicer than anything I would have bought for myself even if he told me to go get whatever I wanted.

He may have just earned himself a lifetime of brownie points.

I'm terribly excited to sit down and really play with it. I've done a little bit of playing but with all the family that's been at our house through the holidays I haven't been able to do much. I am so far beyond excited about it!!

Ornaments as gifts

I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas, or other holiday that you may celebrate. I just love the times that family gets together because we have such a good time.

I made these ornaments for my mother-in-law. She loves things that are made with the kids' hand prints on them. I started doing it when they were little and since they just turned 13, I'm starting to run low on ideas that will still work.

When I say I'm running low on ideas on the hand print gifts I am totally serious. We have done everything I could think of on my own....reindeer with hand print antlers, hand print Christmas wreath, footprint fish, footprint ghosts, to name a few. It's been so hard to think of new things that when they were still little I put paint on their little butts and sat them on a t-shirt and turned those prints into butt-erflies. LOL Thank goodness for other crafters out there to keep me going with this. I wonder how much longer I can get my kids to still participate in this madness. HA!

Anyway, thank goodness for pinterest! ....which is where I saw the idea for these.

This is a Rudolph ornament made with a thumb print.

And these are snowmen ornaments made with three fingers. Their hands are too big now to do it any differently -- unless, of course, if I had bought giant ornaments for them to do these on. lol

I also made her a set of coasters but didn't get a picture taken of them before they got wrapped up. Then I forgot to do it after presents were opened. But, picture this: I used tumbled marble tiles from Lowe's that were about 4" X 4". I printed out a variety of pictures of the grand kids (both our kids and Dax's sister's kids). Using mod podge I glued them to the tiles. The pictures didn't take up the whole tile but I mod podge-ed the whole tile so that it would all be sealed good. I think I went over the top of the pictures with the mod podge three times to be sure to get them well attached and well sealed. I hope that putting a drink on them won't mess them up. (fingers crossed). But, my mother-in-law liked them. She couldn't wait to take them to work and show them off!

Just In Time

I had made this wreath weekend before last. However, I was too lazy to go and dig through my ribbon so that I could hang it.


Well, since we had family coming over the weekend I finally got around to finishing it on Saturday morning. I mean, I wouldn't want the Christmas decorations up too early. LOL

I just love these wreaths made with the ornaments but I'm too cheap frugal to buy one. I bought these ornaments a couple of years ago after Christmas when they were on sale for about $1 a box. I've had them just sitting around waiting for me to do this, but the last time I tried, the ornaments kept falling off.

I saw a tutorial somewhere (I can't for the life of me remember where) that showed stringing the ornaments on an old coat hanger that had been made into a circle. Could it get any easier than that?!

I hot glued the tops onto all of the ornaments and let them set before I strung them onto the coat hanger. Seriously, that took longer than anything else.

I wish I had known this two years ago when I bought these things. I could have had this wreath a long time ago!!

Oh, and here's a little lesson that I learned along the way. It might save you some drama. Either do this with your wreath laying flat on some surface or attach one side to something to hold it up if you want it up. My ornaments are the thin, breakable ones. I let one of them drop too quickly and it broke when it hit the other ornaments. One of my daughters was at my feet sweeping up that mess when I dropped one side of the hanger and about 10 ornaments fell on and around her. We have cement floors so you can imagine the shattering of ornaments that was going on around the two of us. 8-) Lesson learned!

Christmas Stocking

I'm so excited!!!

I started a Christmas stocking for my daughter Kirsten this year.

And, I actually finished it THIS YEAR!

AND, in time for Christmas!!

(if you can believe that)

It is a redwork pattern that I ordered from Bird Brain Designs earlier in the year. She's got some really cute stuff. Go check it out.

I finished the back of the stocking with leftover fabric from the sleeve of the Santa Claus sweater that I made into a pillow. (I had to really keep my eye on that pillow on Christmas day because my mother-in-law kept trying to sneak out of the house with it. lol)

Oh my!

Oh my!!! How time does fly when we're busy.


I can't believe how long it's been since I've posted or that I left the picture of my ugly pantry up for so long. What was I thinking?!


Actually, this is the busiest time of the year for us. My babies turned twelve last month. I still can't believe it!! I am a little more than scared at the prospect of teenagers next year.


I have been busy on a big project so you'll have to wait a little longer to see pictures of it. It was a huge undertaking and a totally new undertaking. But, more on that later. (Call me a tease, it won't bother me.)


I did stop into my studio for a few minutes on Saturday and whipped up this Christmas pillow.

I made it from a sweater I bought at Goodwill last year. I think I paid $1.00 for it.

I stitched it up so that I could still unzip the zipper to take the pillow form out to use for a different season. That also helps to save so much room on storage space.

I was absolutely thrilled with how it turned out. And, seriously, it only took a few minutes to make. Just some zig-zag stitching and then cuttin off the excess and I was done.

Now you know to be on the look out for those holiday sweaters. There are bound to be tons of cute things to be made from them.

Pink Christmas

I can't believe that I forgot to post a picture of my Pink Christmas goodies. I love jewelry and got these three bracelets and a necklace with matching earrings. All have already been worn. :0) There was also a wonderful plaque that came with a great easel. And a peppermint candle, which has also already been used.



It was a great experience and I can't wait to do it again next year. If you've never participated before you should really consider doing it. You can click on the link in my sidebar and see some of the gifts that were sent out.

On another note, yesterday I was trying to delete an inactive link from my favorites list and somehow managed to delete my whole craft link folder. GAAH!!!! I'll bet there were 100 links in there and now they're all gone. I'm just sick about it. So I guess now I need to spend hours searching the internet to rebuild my list. Wonder if my clients would mind getting all of there year end stuff a little late. lol