Christmas

Christmas Eve 2006

An Irish toast-

The light of the Christmas star to you; The warmth of home and hearth to you; The cheer and good will of friends to you; The hope of a childlike heart to you; The joy of a thousand angels to you; The love of the Son and God’s peace to you.

May your house be warm with the love of family and friends. Merry Chistmas!

Here’s a quick, little happy for you and your kids to make for Christmas Eve…some reindeer food for the kids to sprinkle on the lawn before slipping off to bed.

It's all sparkly!

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Here’s a few of my tried-and-true recipes, and a new one I just saw today on TV.

Photo from Allrecipes.com

I made these for a scrapbooking get together in October, when the fall chill was first in the air. They are called Big Soft Ginger cookies, and I found the recipe on Allrecipes.com, a wonderful site that has great recipes for everything. They smell DIVINE and taste wonderful.

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I don’t know about you, but I have a tendency to hold on to stuff. I particularly like greeting cards, and collect the ones we get all through the year.

I saw some gift tags cut in the shape of initials from cards earlier this year on line or something like that, and thought that would be a great use for my collection. I grabbed up some Christmas cards from my stash for the project, and set out to make some gift tags instead of buying new ones.

Step one

Photo from Jane Avion

I was online searching for ideas when I came across the Dollar Store Crafts blog, from the gal who brings us CraftFail. I was blown away by some of the crafts these people are making from dollar store crap! In particular, this gem: a “feather” tree made from fun fur yarn, 14 gauge wire, and a coffee can! Is it not gorgeous? Put it on the list of projects I might get to in 2011.

I have a friend whose family has made a pact to create at least one homemade gift for each other this Christmas. Inspired, I decided to go out on the search for some very easy and inexpensive gift ideas, using items you might already have on hand.

Photo from Blue Cricket Design

I have told you of my love of Blue Cricket Designs (remember the Halloween Ornaments? FABULOUS!) so I was not surprised to find this fun little item on her site: Holiday Clothes Pins! It is a very easy project and can be done with a few supplies, by you or your kids. As she mentions, you can use them to make a garland of Christmas Cards, or put magnets on the back to use on the fridge. If you do not have scrapbook paper at home, tear out colorful magazine pages instead…Reuse, one of the 3 R’s! 

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I feel like a real blogger now! Katherine Benenati from Hot Mama is my guest blogger for today, here to share her super cute homemade ornament idea, using wine corks. Thanks Katherine!

Wreath o' corks!

Leigh’s agreed to let me post this little craft project on her blog. (Normally, I’m over at Hot Mama talking fitness. I know more things to do with a dumbbell than a glue gun.)

I saw cork ornaments in a winery years ago in Southern California, yes there are wineries in SoCal. While reindeer were the most popular ornament, some wineries used their leftover corks to make sheep, teddy bears, manger scenes, stars. My skills are more limited and my forays into non-reindeer territory haven’t gone so well. The failed ornaments, a moose, a dog and a teddy bear are in the back of our tree. My husband thinks they’re “cute” and won’t throw them away or let me refashion them.

Over the years, I’ve made dozens, sold a few, gave away lots more. My favorites are ones that reuse ribbon or things I’ve found in a yard sale grab bag, old ornaments, antique bells. The ornaments are great to slip around the neck of a bottle of wine. They also make for pretty wreath decorations. You crafty types can probably look at them and tell how they’re made but here’s a step-by-step anyway.

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Photo from elsiemarley.com

I ran across this hysterical handmade ornament on a link from the How about Orange? blog. Click here to go to Elsie Marley’s site for a pattern and tutorial for making this easy and hysterical twist on your typical gingerbread man ornament. Reminds me of Gingy from Shrek.

Did you know they are making a fourth Shrek movie? It’s good times, but dang, really…do we need to drag it out?

First off, let me share a very yummy picture with you-

yummy goodness.........

No, I did not jack up the soup with dog medicine; it just happened to be sitting right there. Along with a toy from a Kinder egg. Anyway, this is the fabulous Corn Chowder Arkie Mama shared a while ago, a recipe she got from Mom on a Wire. People, this stuff was GOOD! Make some soon.

A couple of years ago, I decided I wanted to make some sort of Advent calendar for the kiddo. I wanted to be super thrifty about it and tried to think of how I could create something with what I had already. I thought about making one of those wall calendars (like this or this) but let’s face it, that is a ton of sewing and I’d need to buy more things than I wanted to for it.

Then I saw something on a random blog where the mom used plain socks on a garland for an advent calendar (similar to this) and decided this was the way to go.

I had some red felt left over from making our stockings, and the green sweater from my Professor Trelawneycostume I wore to a friend’s Halloween party was dying to be reporposed. I drew a simple sock shape and set out cutting 48 little stockings, half red and half green.

I forgot the sweater was made of wool. Oops. I got a sore throat from breathing in all the little wool fibers floating around as I cut and sewed the green stockings. I was cursing them, actually, as I finished that last one. But yes, I did cut about 12 stockings from one sweater. Pretty good, if I say so myself!

I sewed a little loop into the stockings, so I could hang them from the garland over our front room window. I cut 24 pieces of muslin and stamped each one with the date, using my foam numbers and brown craft paint.

They turned out pretty darn cute:

Adorable

I love the raw edges of the number patches.

I had a small bit of this fabric that I LOVE, so I made the last one with it.

So there’s no real tutorial on this one, it’s pretty straight forward if you can sew. If not, get out the glue gun, even though you will probably not want to use the sweater idea with if you do that. Hot glue + sweater with tons of tiny holes = a hot mess.