Merry Christmas!!!

I hope everyone has a really wonderful and sweet holiday weekend! Recipe for Hot cocoa here! Yum!

Christmas show and tell

Here are some of my favorite holdiay decorations. Some of these are blurry but I like the glow of the lights over a clear too bright picture. I like to have lots of tiny lights all over the house. This little group is in the dining room and I love it. I adore me the vintage christmas ornaments.

I love theses candy canes made out of vintage glass garland balls. Laurie made them- she has the magic touch with this Christmas stuff. We found the snowman in my hubby's folk's attic. So cute- and probably pretty old.

I love our tree this year. It looks so big in the corner of our living room. I love it! I love the glass garlands and all the sentimental ornaments.

I found this nativity at a rummage sale last spring and think it is just perfect. So sweet I couldn't wait to put it out.

The kids and I made these bells out of egg cartons 3 years ago. They are one of my favorite decorations. remember having so much fun making them together.

We made these last year- another favorite. They are so cute and, again, we had a ball making them. Here is more info on them in case you want to make some.

These I made last year too and I love them hanging on our armoire where we keep my husband's computer. I love glitter! That is just some of my favorite things to have around the house at Christmas. I hate to take it all down in January. I will confess though that I leave the outside lights on until Februaryish. I love looking out and seeing the color twinkling at night. I hate the long dark days so I have to do something!

Whoa!

That is a lot of butter!! It is friday after school so officially winter break has begun!! I am so excited. I love having the kids home with me, we have so much fun together. We are baking cookies tonight. That mess o' butter is for a triple batch of Spritz- our favorite. Tonight we are going to get all snuggly and watch Elf together while we eat those yummy spritz. Ahhhh, now I am really in the Christmas mood!

Gift & exciting news!

I had intended this to be a gift for a friend's birthday in October but she got it today! Better late than never, thankfully. It is a pieced scarf from Denyse Schmidt's fantastic book. I love how it turned out. It is vintage Kimono pieces that I got on etsty with some beautiful wool I got here locally. Some of the wool has cashmere in it too and it feels so good. She loved it so that made me happy!
I love the colors. So perfect for her too. She is an orange girl for sure.
So the exciting news is that my son's Lego Robotics team is going to the State Tournament! They did a great job at the qualifying tornament but I didn't anticipate this at all- none of us did. I help out with the team so we will now have another few weeks of prep before the Robotics season is over. Should be pretty exciting- lots of teams from all over the state. I made these cupcakes for the what we thought was going to be end of the season pizza party. Wish us luck!


Those lego candies are so cute but hard as a rock!

The Intern

Here is one of those great working at home perks. His name is Dusty and, aside from some occasional gas, is the best little intern around. He doesn't really help me much when I am working but he is always right there in case I need a little mid day snuggle. And he thinks I am the best person he knows so that's nice too.

If craft supplies were currency...

I would be a bajillionaire. I have so many supplies for all types of projects that I have collected over the years. We do use them and often but I knew we had more than we would probably use. We love to make our gifts for the holidays and I think it is a great thing to do with kids so that they can feel like something they make can be a wonderful present, especially this time of year when they are getting a few too many store bought gifts. (I have gifts for them underway and I will share that soon!) A couple of weekends ago I had gift making classes for kids whose Mom's don't have such a ridiculous supply of fun stuff to paly with. We did a group of 6 on sat and a group of 7 on sunday. I have to say though it was a good amount of work ,even with the patient and sweet help of my less crafty husband. The kids had a ball and being around all that excited creative energy was really enjoyable for me too. Soap and eye pillows were a couple of things we made. I dragged one of my sewing machines out and let them sew up their little rectangles. All but one of these kids had never used a sewing machine and they were all so excited to get their hands on it. We stuffed them with lavender and lavender scented flaxseed. By the way, you need very little flaxseed. You do not need a giant 7 pound bag of it. If anyone wants to make an eye pillow I have about 6 pounds of lavender scented flaxseed over here...

I did different projects each day (with the exception of the soap which is fast and easy and the kids love to do it) in case kids wanted to come both days, which a couple did. We also made candles, the cute bird ornaments above (from a holiday magazine I bought), decorated matchboxes to go with our candles, decopaged candle holders (with tissue and origami paper- I love them!), decorated boxes for wrapping the candles in and decorated mirrors. I had to laugh though because probably the most popular project was these snowmen we made out of felt and toilet paper tubes.

My son made these to go together. Note the snowball stuck to the side of the face of the guy on the right- and the little pile of snowballs the guy on the left has. He thought he was pretty funny with that and I did too. We made Santas like this when I was little so I adapted for snowmen to make it more winter themed. The kids were really into them and so excited about them. It was a really fun couple of mornings.