Christmas Eve magic

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When I was a kid, I remember waking up Christmas morning to a pile of gifts under our little tree and wondering how on earth my brother could sleep in, knowing he had all kinds of packages waiting for him!



I would sit at the kitchen table, sometimes eating breakfast but usually fidgeting and wishing I could go pinch my brother out of his slumber so we could get at the presents.



(Can I just say how much I wish that was MY tree?)

And then once he finally pried himself out of bed, I would launch myself into a paper-tearing frenzy, until the floor around my feet was a mess of ribbon and bows and torn wrapping. I loved it, and I have nothing but fond memories of Christmas as a child. My parents didn't do much in the way of Santa or traditions, but they still made it special for me in the best way possible - a lot of love.




Fess up - who's wrapping the last of their gifts this Christmas Eve?

*raises hand* Guilty.

The way our paychecks fell this year (with me jobless), I had to buy the last few of my gifts today at Walmart. Thankfully it wasn't too crazy, as I was fully expecting a madhouse! But I got all the ingredients for brunch with my family tomorrow - more on that in tomorrow's post! - and two cheap men's shirts for scarves. I originally wanted to stencil on them like I did in this post, but I got crunched for time and I decided to find another Pinterest creation instead. And I found something really fun and easy, and best of all, no sewing!



I made mine into an infinity scarf while parked in front of my tv watching my recorded X-Factor finale. I also only used once shirt as opposed to three or four, but it was so easy and looks so cute that I may dig out a few old shirts this weekend and make one for me. I'll get some pictures of the finished deal tomorrow on my giftees, it's way too dark in my house right now, hah!

I hope everyone has a wonderful night, enjoy the time with your family this weekend!

Daddy is for flying

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So last weekend we took our Christmas photos for this year. A little belated, but very much anticipated. As the photographer, I am always behind the camera so I rarely end up in photos. Thanks to my jobless state (I started my new job Monday - more on that later), my friend Ana offered to take our portrait this year. She is a genuinely kind soul, and she also has a soft spot for Micah - she put his photo on the cover of her quarterly magazine back in spring.



We took the photos at a park near our house, one that is normally beautiful, but thanks to the snow and rain the past week, just looked sort of brown and sad. It didn't deter Ana in the slightest, and she still took some absolutely amazing shots that seriously love.













Can my kid get any cuter? I know I'm biased but seriously...he is adorable. I love my family.

When was the last time you saw a sewing fail?

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If you never have, I'm not surprised. Who wants to post stuff they made that didn't work out? After all, the way to keep people coming back to your blog is to show how incredibly awesome you are with your sewing machine.

Me? I'm not afraid to admit I am a total novice with my sewing machine, despite how very badly I want to be brilliant. You remember this post, which I wasn't able to finish because my white thread went awol? Well...I found my white thread a couple days ago and spun out those two shirts in record time. Micah was with my dad that day so I wasn't able to try it on him until the next morning.

Epic. Fail. I won't even share pictures because it's just ridiculous. I haven't tried the white shirt on him yet, because I am a tad disillusioned, but the green and white striped one was just sad. If you recall, I took it in from the middle, both front and back, because of the deep v-neck. Despite taking out a total of 4 inches, the neck is still too wide. If he was a girl I'd put it on him with a tank top under and it would look like a ballet top. That tells you exactly how wide it was. It touched his shoulder bone on each side .It dipped down the front of his chest to an indecent level.

Sigh.

Let's move on to something a little more happy, shall we?

I am a part of a Christmas gift exchange this year with a group of online mommies I have grown close to over the past two years. They are the best for venting and sharing my mommy worries and woes, and my happiness. We are very close and share photos of our kiddos every Friday, with what we call BPF (Baby Picture Friday). I love these ladies. So when one suggested doing an Elfster exchange, I was all for it. The best part is that I drew the name of one of the members that I don't know terribly well, so I had to get creative for her gift and really start chatting with her, and figure out what she was into.

Being the Pinterest nerd that I am, I went straight to browsing my saved DIY projects. And I found two things right away that I had always wanted to make for myself that I thought she might like.

The first was this awesome camera strap cover. You can find a million variations of this tutorial, but this was the first one I found. It called for fusible fleece, which is not something I had on hand and I was far too broke to go pick some up (can I just say how excited I am to be starting my new job Monday?), so I winged it using plain white flannel on the inside. It was super easy, I didn't even really follow the tutorial. I sewed together three cut pieces of pretty printed cotton, then lay a piece of white flannel the full width of the cotton on top. Sewed them right sides together, turned it inside out, and then ran a careful stitch around the open ends to hem. Easy.



The second gift I made her was a variation on this tutorial for a very simple scarf. I decided to make mine into an infinity scarf, so I bought a men's XL shirt and cut it straight across just under the armpits. I didn't even sew the top edge since jersey curls up nicely.



I left the bottom sewed hem to add some weight, and to clarify top and bottom. Then using freezer paper and my exacto knife, I cut out a stencil that says, "I <3 my DSLR".



I ironed the freezer paper shiny side down onto the shirt in two parts so I could use red for the heart and yellow for the text.




I didn't make the paint thick so that it looks faded and broken-in. (The other two in the picture are ones I made for other people for Christmas. A super quick project, I couldn't resist those shirts on sale!)



You can't see the design very well once it's on if you drape it around your neck twice, but it still looks cute.



Have you made anything from Pinterest for Christmas?

The woes of well water

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For two days this week my house has been without water. We briefly got it working last night with a space heater and let the water trickle all night to try and fix the problem...but then this morning it was frozen again. Now at 10:30 we have no water still. So. Incredibly. Frustrating.

So since I am a few days behind in my crafting thanks to the wonders of well water, I thought I would jump in here with The Vintage Apple and do a Pinteresting Wednesday. You can find me on here on Pinterest.

google


It is all about Christmas on Pinterest right now. You can't view a single board without finding some cheer.



Source: google.com via Allie on Pinterest





(Can you tell that food is my favorite part of Christmas?)



Christmas lights are definitely a big part of Christmas to me, and it makes me sad that my neighborhood has very little lighting going up. So I live vicariously through others online.

And of course...SNOW. Beautiful to look at, not so much fun to deal with personally. Hah. Of course, my view is slightly jaded now.



This makes me want to have a Christmas party!



I hope everyone is having a fabulous week full of Christmas cheer!