What We Made for Christmas Gifts ~ 2013

My goodness!  I sort of forgot I had a blog for a while.  But I'm back.  Would you like to see some of the things we made for Christmas?

We made 6 or 7 Martha Stewart  no knit scarfs.  I thought they'd be so easy to teach the Activity Day girls (church group for girls ages 8 to 11).  Not so easy for most of the girls after all, but S (& the other girls from my 4-H club) caught on quickly and S made one for her grandma, a cousin and a friend, plus a mini one for the friend's favorite stuffed animal.

 J picked out THE ugliest yarn he could find and asked for a scarf out of it. It took longer to sort through the variegated nastiness to make it acceptable to my sensitive aesthetics than it did to make the scarf. :)

I made his and one for my sister 2 rows wider than the Martha pattern, I think I like it better wider.

I made pj pants for the kids and painted their initial onto long sleeved t-shirt for some Christmas Eve jammies.  I glued (Aleene's Jewel-It Embellishing Glue in case you're interested) some pompoms and googlie eyes to some fuzzy socks for even more Christmas Eve silliness.

My sister and I get along brilliantly and love each other fiercely, BUT we both WANT great grandma's awesome mid century atomic place settings in the worst-break-a-family-apart kind of way.  (just kidding. . . kind of)  By a cruel twist of fate, SHE got most of the set and I am getting over it.  Well as life goes, one of the salad plates broke and I asked her to send me the broken pieces.  That does sound like I'm a beyond nut case about these dishes, but I wanted to salvage their awesomeness and make pendants for us!  Here's how they turned out.

My Mom is a major rock hound and every summer she brings a bunch home from the family cabin trip.  This year she is in New Zealand serving a mission with my dad and missed the cabin trip for the first time in something like 45 years!  Most of my siblings & I were up there with our families on the same week and had a blast together.  We and the grandkids picked up some colorful pebbles while we were there and I made them into two necklaces.  The single pebble is just glued to a bail, but the bigger one is all wired together with dark bronze colored wire.  

Mom also got a small wall hanging.  They have major luggage weight restrictions as missionaries so if I wanted anything to come home with them, they need to be wearable or very lightweight.  This is 3x5 piece of foamcore covered with a map I photoshopped and then hand stitched the lines between the places her children live in the US and their home in NZ.  I think it turned out sweet.

Sage sewed a heat/cold rice pack for M and J helped sew a new gym towel drawstring bag for M, but I don't have photos of those.  They loved giving those gifts.

M's dad made a cute little music box/jewelry box for S.  He is quite the wood worker and she loves the box.

All in all it was a very fun creative season!

biggest snowflake I've ever cut

like I said, I'm a tad over the top when it comes to cutting snowflakes.