I don't want it to be over!

I came into the livingroom last night and found Dusty all curled up under the tree. All the gifts have been opened so there is a nice spot just for him. He looked so sweet curled up under the tree. I love this tree. This photo is sort of blurry but I like the glowy quality of all those lights. Ahhhhhhh!

I think it all went too quickly this year. We got our tree early enough but we aren't really done enjoying it yet. Plus it seems like the kids just got out of school and now they have to go back. I am keeping fingers crossed that we get a snow day Monday so they can stay and play with me a day or two more. Legend has it if you sleep with a spoon under your pillow and put ice cubes in your toilet the snow will come. It is worth a shot! On the flip side, once they go back to school I can finish up my next fabric collection and I am ready to get that one out the door. I am excited for it! I hope everyone had a really nice holiday break.

Gift idea...

I really had to pick my brain this year on what to make for my 11 year old son. He is at that age where I have sewn just about everything he would want and is in that sort of a kid sort of older place in his life but I still wanted to make something for him. I always make something for the kids at Christmas- and they like to make things for us as well. We are big believers in the handmade gift here! One thing he loves to do pretty much all of the time is Legos. After much thought I came up with this:

I found this box full of smaller boxes and I lined each one with fun paper. Then I hot glue gunned the ribbon on to hang it. The idea is that he hang it on the wall to display some of the lego figures in his collection. I am happy with how it turned out and I hope he loves it! And with that, I may actually be done with the gift part of Christmas! Now if the kids would just get healthy so we could go do some fun winter break activities!! I am itching to go ice skating!

WINNERS!

Here is a picture of a couple of Christmas presents I finished yesterday. That hexagon quilt has taken a good long time- I tend to go overboard stitching the hexagons and it takes more time than it needs to . I will also say that at 2.5", the hexagons were a little trickier than the little ones I usually make. I am very happy with how it turned out though and I know my daughter will be happy to have it for her dolls. I also made a potholder for my sister. She is a tough person to give/make gifts for. Hey Sis, if you are reading I don't want to see this in your next garage sale! I want to make more potholders- like making tiny quilts in a tiny amount of time! Now that I have made you listen to me blather on let's get to the good stuff!
The first winner (chosen with a random number generator) of a set of ten fat quarters of my Party Dress line is...Val from A Day in the Life of Val ! Now I did say winners even though I had initially only mentioned one prize. Honestly I was pretty wowed by the numbers of comments and yesterday, when I popped on to check things out there were around 450 ish. I said to myself that if we hit 500 then I am giving another set to the 500th person. And 500 came and went so Hungry Crafter Joanna, you are #500 so you get a set too! I found her blog the other day and I was the hungry crafter after seeing all the photos of the yummy food she makes.
Thanks everyone for the wonderful Christmas comments. Even the person who commented she just can't wait for Christmas to be over. I appreciate the honesty! Thanks also to the always amazing Kristin at Sew Mama Sew for facillitating this party for all of us!
Have a fantastic weekend! And Val and Joanna, email me your addresses so I can get your goodies in the mail to you!

Giveaway Day!

Welcome to Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day!! Should be a really great day of giveaways with lots of fun blogs to check out! My giveaway for today is a set of 10 fat quarters from my Party Dress line. I am happy to ship internationally so everyone is welcome to enter. All you have to do is leave a comment telling me what you most look forward to during the holidays. For me it is the lights on all the houses, all the home made cookies but mostly it is time with my family. Especially time making Christmas crafts with my kids. Paper snowflakes, little felt creations and gingerbread houses. That is the best! Happy Giveaway Day!!

Swappin time!

When I first started blogging many many moons ago, I used to participate in swaps pretty often. Anyone remember the Back Tack swaps? Those were the BEST! At any rate, Heather is a buddy of mine and all of her swaps were looking pretty fun so I finally made the time and got in on one. The flickr group alone for this swap will knock your socks off! I received a beautiful pillow in the mail the other day and I need to get a pillow insert the correct size so I can photograph it. The one up above I amde for my partner. All this rain made it a record breaking mushroom year in these parts so I had mushrooms on the brain. Plus if the sun could actually get through this clous cover and it weren't so gosh darn dark, it would make photography a whole lot easier. Violet, Monica, Heather and Traci came over yesterday for a day in of chatting and eating and getting our craft on and it poured all day. Crazy amounts of rain- streets were flooded, it looked like dusk pretty much all day. So cozy inside though with part of my tribe. Thanks girls for such a fun day!!

Free holiday printables for you!

It was sort of hard to photograph these so you could see the sparkle but it's there! These are some tags I did a few years ago but I still like and use them so I thought I would share them with you! I print these on card stock paper with a shlight sparkly sheen so the overall effect is soft and sparkly. Then I add tiny bits of glitter on the dots the stars hang from. I hope you enjoy them!
These are for your personal use only- just a little something from me to you.
tags are here!
cards are here!

Here is a link to the post with my peppermint tags printable from last year in case you missed it and want more printables!

Green Bag Challenge!

A couple of weeks back my lovely friend Kristin from Sew Mama Sew spoke at our local Modern Quilt Guild Meeting about the Green Bag Challenge. Inspired by Teresa, The Green Bag Lady, she proposed that we all wrap our Christmas gifts this year in fabric bags and fabric wrapping. Of course I love this idea because if someone gives me a gift all wrapped in fabric that is like getting two gifts!! But there are some really great reasons to wrap in fabric. Here are some very eye opening things to think about from Kristin:

Fact 1: US consumers generate 4 million tons of wrapping paper and shopping bag waste during the holiday season alone.
Fact 2: The US alone goes through 100 billion single-use plastic grocery bags every year.
Fact 3: This year, you can make a difference!
The Green Grocery Bag Challenge is a project to encourage sewists to wrap their holiday gifts in reusable cloth grocery bags, thus reducing the amount of wrapping paper entering the waste stream, while simultaneously getting multi-use bags into the hands of consumers (gift recipients.)
Our goal is to challenge the sewing community to include Mother Earth in their holiday plans.
Get Involved!

The idea that 4 MILLION TONS of waste that is primarily made up of paper and other lightweight items like ribbons boggled my mind. I can't even imagine what sort of volume that would be if you were to spread out even 1 ton of lightweight wrapping waste , let alone 4 Million tons of it. A woman at our guild had the great idea to purchase a set of winter themed king sized flannel sheets on sale at Target for around $15.99 on sale. She was able to make 20 bags out of the one set of sheets and the winter theme insure their future use. I wrapped that little gift above for a friend and the fabric and ribbon are re usable and it took no time to wrap it and it looks adorable. Kristin has been wrapping her gifts in fabric for years and suggests using safety pins to help hold where you need holding.
This year I am using Irene's tutorial for these adorable shopping bags and it will be reusable all year for grocery shopping. Plus I am making additional ones for gifts. Irene told me yesterday that one year she made 32 of them and got it down to 20 minutes per bag!
Here are some additional links for more Green Bag Challenge tutorials and ideas.
Visit The Green Grocery Bag Challenge Facebook page where we're posting links to tutorials, videos and other inspiration. It is also a place where people can go to say, "I'm in!"
Join The Green Grocery Bag Challenge Flickr group to share photos of handmade bags and gifts wrapped in reusable cloth bags
I hope this gets you inspired to join the challenge!