A homemade Christmas

Ok now that Christmas is over I can post all the homemade Christmas presents I made this year.  I love making homemade gifts and pinterest has made collecting ideas for projects so much more fun.  Above is the Cross stitch of the Seattle Temple.  This is for my sister in law and her husband, they were married there in 2009.  I covered up the part below the temple, becasue it has their full name and marriage date.

                     

                   

This butterfly mobile is to go in my nieces room.

These cute little shoes, are for my soon to be new nephew :)

This Heads and tails  game is to go in the girls busy bag.

Pillow case nightgowns made from pillow cases I got at goodwill.

Make your own Monsters, for my little monsters

Old McDonald Puppets for the girls

Button snake for the busy bag

Busy bags with all the gear.  If you are looking for busy bag ideas click HERE for my previous post with links to all the ideas. 

Fat Quarter dresses for the girls.  Blue and pink for Claire, and Pink and Brown for Violet

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Glittery letters

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Hers are covered in scrapbook paper, I wanted mine to be sparkly.  I just painted and sprinkled glitter on top while the paint was still wet...you can spray a sealer on if you like but mine didn't really need it (I'll probably need to "re glitter" them next year because of that though).

                                                                  The ruffle tree skirt

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Dried oranges for tree ornaments

I love the way these look on the tree.  The light shines through and it sparkles a pretty golden color.

dried cinnamon and apple sauce ornaments.  These smell heavenly and look cute on the tree.  Mine are made with mini cookie cutters, so the recipe made like 30 or 40 of them, plus a small blob of dough the girls could play with till it hardened.

 A ruffle scarf for my mom. Next time I make this I won't dye the fabric.  The process was messy and I wasn't happy with how it made the fabric feel in the end.

 2 little mermaids for the girls....they love them by the way :)

 Bread and Butter as a Christmas treat for my family and friends.

 Overall I had a lot of fun doing a homemade christmas this year.  If you don't enjoy doing homemade crafts I suggest going a different route because it is a lot of work and a lot of pre-planning.  I like to plan way ahead and I usually start seriously planning Christmas in september when all our summer traveling is wrapped up, and I started making stuff in September and I was busy with some stage of the crafting process all the way up until December 17th!

 Oh and last but not least my ultra secret project for Peter.  A Padded headboard!  Here is another Link on making your own headboard.  I'll do a more detailed post on the Saga of the headboard later but let me just say this is not a project for sissies...It involves lots of physical labor, table saws, power drills, giant needles, and lots of hammering!  It was fun.

 Now we've just got to get it out of my parents storage room and into my apartment.

 Thanks to my Dad for helping me for the last 2 months to put this thing together!

So if you are thinking of doing a homemade Christmas (in 2012 or beyond) my tips would be to:

1. Plan WAY ahead!- make a list of who you want to do gifts for or what decorations you want to make (I plan to start thinking about next year no later than March)

2. Sign up to get coupons from your local craft store- this stuff can all get pretty pricey!

3. Read through your instructions before you go shopping for supplies, you may find you need more than you planned

4. Shop for your materials before the Holiday rush...there is nothing worse than being stuck at the fabric counter at any point in the months of October, November, or Heaven help you if you try to go in December.  Crafters start crafting early so think ahead and get there even earlier! (the early bird gets to shop in peace)

5. Prioritize-What's going to take the longest? for me it was the headboard so I set aside time to work on it each week at my parents house, it took about 8 weeks of slow and steady work.

6. If you don't like to do this kind of stuff....don't do it.  It saves a little bit of money but not so much that it is worth torturing yourself.  I happen to enjoy making the things I did so it worked great for me, but if you would rather just hit the mall...go...do it...It's supposed to be a MERRY time of year :)

7. Set an "end of crafting" day at least 3 or 4 days before the holiday (if you cook, entertain or bake for the holidays, give yourself a break and quit the crafts at least a week in advance).  There is always something else that can be made, there are so many cute decorations to put up, but at some point you just have to say  I'm DONE and enjoy the holiday.

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Happy New Year!

oh....and check out this cute little puppy that is joining our family in a couple weeks...I'm so excited!

 o

Texas Roadhouse Butter

This years "Christmas Treat" is Texas Roadhouse Butter with Old english oatmeal bread.    I found the butter recipe on Pinterest via a blog called Fly through your window.  Check it out, it's a cute blog.  The bread recipe is from a Williams Sonoma baking cook book and they don't publish this particular recipe on their website so I don't think I should publish it here.  If you live near me though I would be more than happy to let you take a look at my cook book.

Thank you to whoever gave me that book for my wedding 6 years ago.   I have used it many times and the recipes always turn out wonderfully!  If you like to bake I would recommend This book.

Anyways, the butter is super easy to make and it is fantastic.  I like to eat it on toast for breakfast.  I have learned in my limited experience of making flavored butter (my Dad always made honey butter for Thanksgiving....mmm) it is best to let your butter soften at room temperature.  DO NOT MELT YOUR BUTTER!!! You will get a weird butter in the end and you won't be happy.  

Enjoy!

2 little Mermaids

2 Little Mermaids have joined the ranks of Christmas gifts for the girls.  They have yet to be wrapped so they are hiding in my closet.  I have one blond daughter and one red headed daughter so they each got a doll that matched them. I used all left over fabric from my mom's fabric bins so this project was practically free! yay!
I found this pattern over at the Crafting Fiend.  It is a free Pdf download, the only part that didn't come up in the download was the body so I just made a long trapezoid that was the same width of the neck and not as wide as the tail width pre-smocked and I think the length was about 6 inches.   Their necks seem a bit long to me so I'm thinking of making a little necklace for them...what do you think?

The most exciting part of all?  This is my last sewing project of the year and my final gift for the girls!  After today I will be almost done baking my bread  and then I just have to finish Peter's top secret gift, and one quick gift for my mother in law and then I can just relax until Christmas!

8 hours later...

 I pinned this ruffled tree skirt how to, months ago and I have been wanting to make one for this year.  I was thinking about what kind of fabric to use.  I had seen it first in the cream, then in burlap and lace, and then in bright Christmas colors.  I loved the lace but hated the burlap, and Peter loved the cream, so I decided to do the cream with just a little bit of lace.

I found in my sheets pile 3 flat sheets that were the perfect color.  Thanks Mom for the hand me down sheet tops! I cut a 4 1/2 foot square out of one sheet and used the border piece as my width guide for the strips.  I cute the strips the the short length of the sheet to make them more managable.

 I cut up 2 twin size top sheets and the rest of the third after having cut out the base of the skirt from it, so this requires about 2 1/2 sheets worth of strips.  I also had 3 yards of lace which only made about a quarter of a row of ruffles, so I placed it strategically so it would show in the front.

  My pile of strips.  It ended up being about 2 times this size.

 next I just hot glued the strips to the base, making a ruffle as I went.  One thing I liked about this skirt was the messy, unfinished edges, this is my kind of project because after doing something for 8 hours I am not precise about anything.

 Finished!  everyone else has long gone to bed and left me to my ruffle gluing.  I had to wake up Peter to show him because it had taken so long and I needed to share my success with someone!

I love it!  It is so heavy though I bet it weighs 10 pounds or more!
 The tree is almost done, next I'm going to dry oranges and lemons to hang, and string some popcorn and cranberries for garland.  11 days till Christmas!!!

Tis the Season...

My goal this year is to not gain a single pound over the course of the holidays!  I have been frequenting the Pinterest fitness boards, a lot lately and I have been picking a new set of workouts to try at home for each week.  Last week I did this workout called 10 ways to fab abs

which was a great workout!  I loved it.  I could really feel it by the end.  I was surprised that the leg lifts were the most difficult workout for me.  Give it a try, which one worked you the most?

I get bored doing the same workout over and over again, so far this year I have been really into my wii fit, pilates, yoga, belly dancing, booty ballet, salsa dance your buns off or something like that and something called ab attack!  yeah I have to change it up a lot otherwise I just give up on working out and sit on the couch and eat M&M's (amazing that I never get bored of that). 

 So I love the pinterest fitness board because there are a ton of workout groups post that focus on one specific area of your body and gives you enough exercises to take up 20 minutes of your day.  I look for workouts that will give me a good workout in a short period of time, something I can commit to on a daily basis, even on those days where the kids wake up before me and I want to just curl up and watch tv all day.  I look for workouts that I can do even when I feel bad.  Something that will push me a little but not so much that I feel it's too hard and quit all together.

This week my workout is called 5 moves to work your core/ ab exercises for runners (I'm not a runner but I like their abs)

Here is the link to the exercises.  I didn't feel like 2 sets of 6 reps was enough so I just upped it to 10 reps per set (it's still a little easy I may do this morning and night).  So far the side plank side march pictured above is the hardest exercise!  I have no balance at all, so this is the one exercise I try to do away from anyone else because I look silly doing it.  I usually collapse laughing at myself by the end.

The best thing that has happened to me because I have been following fitness inspiration boards is that I am excited to try new workouts, I look forward to that 20 minutes a day where I get to just focus on me and do something I enjoy (which as the mother of 2 young kids those 20 minutes might be my only alone time the whole day...yeah it happens).  

Anyways give some of these workouts a try or head over to the fitness board and get inspired to do some working out.

Make your own green glitter....or the case of the crusty pile of green salt

I still don't have my camera back...ummm Mom...I kind of use that a lot.  I tried to make my own glitter because I was making my own 

Calm Down Jar for the girls and I needed more glitter because I had used most of my glitter supply to make glittery letters to go over my piano that spelled 

Joy.

So I was really excited when I saw this picture on Pinterest 

MAKE YOUR OWN GLITTER!!!

Awesome!!! Now I can avoid one more trip to JoAnns...it get's a little weird when more than one employee recognizes you because you have been in more than 3 or 4 times that week.

Ok so the recipe says to mix up some salt with some food coloring and bake it on a tin foil lined baking sheet, and 10 minutes later you will have a 1/4 cup of gorgeous glitter.  

well I decided to make green glitter cause it's my favorite color and I thought it would work well in the purple calm down jar I was making...sounds cool huh?

Well what I got was a sheet of crusty green salt, not sparkly at all.  I used gel food coloring so maybe that was it.  I'm willing to try this one again with liquid food color but for now my calm down jar is just a little less fabulous than I want it to be.  That's ok it doesn't calm the kids down at all it makes them run around screaming SPARKLES!!! SPARKLES MOMMY!!!!

Christmas book Countdown!

 Ok I am super excited for December to get here because of this Christmas countdown that our family is doing this year.  I did find this on pinterest but it looks like in all my excitement over the idea I forgot to pin it, but you don't really need the pin because it's an obvious concept :)  24 days of counting down to Christmas, and 24 books to open....one each night to read with the girls.

I am so excited about this!  I LOVE reading!  I read all the time and I have usually have a stack of 3 or 4 books by my bedside because I like to work on multiple books at once, I just can't focus on one.  my average library checkout total is 17...so yeah I like books.  I am always looking for ways to share my love of books with my kids.  We go to the library story time, and we check out a ton of books, we have story time, and I make sure that they see me reading too.

 I had hoped to buy some nice new books for our countdown supply but like everyone else in the world, our family budget is a little tighter this year than it has been before.  So I checked into the penny books on Amazon, and there were a ton under "Children's Christmas books" but shipping was 3.99 and considering I needed 15 more books to complete the 24 that was still too much money for us this year, so we will be collecting nice books a little at a time.

   I had 9 books already and so we hit the good will for the other 15.  For 20 dollars we got 15 Children's Christmas books ( they were mostly generic It's Christmas time stories, but the kids will like them) an Aladdin book and  mini Carebear for our little helpers :)  Also...sorry if you are at the Olympia Goodwill and cannot find any children's Christmas books....we bought them out.

 If you are on a really tight budget you could check Christmas books out from the library and just keep renewing them...at my library you can check the same book out 3 times in a row online and each checkout period is 3 weeks, so that is plenty of time to collect books from the library and do the countdown.  Also I'm sure everyone has family and friends that would be willing to lend some Christmas books to your cute little kids :)

This year we will be collecting The polar express for our nice book.  I am so excited, I love that book and I actually can't believe that we don't already own it because Peter loves it too.

Here is a list of books that I found on Amazon that I thought looked cute:

1. Who is Coming to our house

2. Olivia Helps with Christmas

3. Merry Christmas Curios George

4. I spy Christmas: A book fo Picture Riddles

5. Froggy's Best Christmas

6 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

7.Thomas's Christmas Delivery

8. The Night before the Night before Christmas

9. Duck and Goose: It's time for Christmas

10.  Merry Christmas Mom and Dad (Mercer Mayer)

11. How the Grinch stole Christmas  (of course)

12. A wish to be a Christmas Tree

13. Bear Stays up for Christmas

14. Merry Christmas Stinky Face

15. A charlie Brown Christmas (is it Christmas without ole CB?)

16.  Elf on the Shelf ( Holy Cow even used he is 30 bucks!)

17. Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

18.  The tale of the Three trees

19. The Polar Express

20. The gift of the Magi

21. The animals Christmas Carol