some of the gifts I made

This year I crocheted 4 doll blankies and 3 doll dresses (but promised one for Tessa in the near-ish future). One of the blankets was on its merry way before I thought to take a picture. That one is another granny square blanket. My favorite was the shell stitch blanket (dark purple in the back). I made that one last and was sure I wouldn't be able to figure it out - but I did!

For Birdie & Mikay (my oldest two) I made bracelet/necklace/earring sets.

And because she likes ponchos, I made this for Tess.

Suzy received one of the doll dress/blanket sets, a penguin and a charm bracelet. I made some slippers for my husband and earrings (that I didn't photograph) for sisters and friends.

and here is my wreath, enjoying the Utah snow:

Hope your Christmas (if you celebrated) was merry and bright.
Now on to New Years' and that pesky "get in shape" resolution. I don't know about you, but I'm about sugared out anyway.

Duck the Halls

A Christmas Carol sung by Tessa

Duck the halls with holly jolly
la la la la la la la la la
Only with a pair of jammies
la la la la la la la la la

She tells me it's a song about everyone wearing only jammies all of the time, oh and always having a duck with you.

So from my little spot on the web, I wish you all a happy Christmas filled with nice things like ducks and jammies. I, personally, am most excited about the jammie part.

charm bracelet how-to

This is mostly for the super nice woman working at the craft store this morning. I am going to attempt to explain how I made the charm bracelet. Please keep in mind that I don't generally write patterns or instructions because I have difficulty translating the workings of my brain into English. Today I enlisted the help of Tessa's chalkboard. High tech, huh?

1. take a jump ring (or something similar)
and feed some super thin hair elastic-type
stretchy cording through (don't cut it), like this:


2. string beads and charms, like this:


3. feed elastic through jump ring in the
same direction as before, like this:


4. string a second round of beads and charms, like this:


repeat - mine has 5 strands total, so does the lia sophia one.

To finish (5th round):

cut elastic enough for half a round plus knotting
on the beginning end. string beads and
charms on each half, tie so
knot is under a bead (I liked using
one of the wider tubes to hide the ends).

Now, I hope that makes at least a little sense. Happy beading!

eat cake

In great FAM-forum tradition, I give you: Cakeballs...

Sounds weird, tastes evil. They are so good. And so easy. All you do is take your stale, left-over cake, mix in a few globs of frosting, form into balls and roll in melted chocolate chips. And eat. A million.

More cake: Mikay recently had a birthday. She wanted a flower cake (in December, she's so cute!). My mom suggested using fruit roll-ups for the flowers when I was lamenting about how I somehow got passed over by the amazing cake decorating skills gene that she and most of my sisters (and even sisters-in-law) possess.

Because it seems you can't buy fruit roll-ups without those weird tongue tattoos anymore, each got wiped down with a damp dish cloth before being cut with a cookie cutter and place on the green frosted, round cakes. Mikay liked it. I liked it. And actually the fruit roll-ups tasted yummy with the cake.

(I made Betty Crocker's recipe for a yellow cake and frosted it with butter cream.)

bracelet

I love my lia sophia charm bracelet (on the right) so I decided to try my hand at making one (or two or three) for Christmas presents. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out (left & below).


I found most of the beads and charms at a local craft store and a few I already had (probably came from Hobby Lobby).

treat bags for classmates

It's the last week of school before Christmas break (or winter recess, as it is now known). The girls have been working on these little treat bags that will be filled with trick-or-treat sized candy bars and mini candy canes for the other children in their classes. I have 4 students and that equals a lot of tiny lunch sack style bags. This idea came thanks to Mrs. (Miss?) Moss' second grade class' bulletin board santas.

festival pictures

some pictures from the Festival of Trees:

Our tree: The Season to be Jolly
A tree covered in Santa's, what could be more fun than that?

**
The amazing glass tree - there was a video showing how it was made. It was absolutely spectacular. The lights were set to music.

**WARNING TO SARAH: do not look further!**

a fabulous door hanger:

devil's slide

devil's slide, morgan county, utah - a favorite site
(click picture to view larger)

pie: an original recipe

From the play kitchen of Tessa

The other day she asked if she could dictate something to me while I wrote it down. Sure, I don't mind. We do this often. Usually it's one of her many books, though typically she simply wants me to spell roughly 9,000 words for her while she writes them down, sometimes her little five-year-old hand gets tired from so much writing and she asks me to write for her. This day it was a recipe. For pie. I will copy it here for you so that you, too, may recreate this masterpiece for yourselves:

PIE
3 c. dirt
2 c. water
4 c. grass
6 c. sun

Let sit in sun for six minutes. Serve.

wreath face-lift

I intended to take a before picture but, well, I forgot. So just imagine a tired, old wreath with a faded red bow, faded red "berries" and some pine cones. There. Now I'm sure you have a good enough image to be able to appreciate my after photo, don't you?

This wreath is a total copy of one that Sandy saw and posted on her blog (or very close to a complete copy, anyway). She said she saw it at a Starbucks and couldn't resist getting supplies to make one of her own. Obviously, neither could I. I can't wait to see Sandy's!

**

Ok here's a little story I can't help sharing... While Tess and I were at my mom's house this afternoon we took their two doggies for a walk. Well actually, I walked the dogs and Tess and her cousin (E) rode scooters. While waiting for the old dogs, E (who is two years younger, so not quite as lightening fast) and me at a corner, she fell and skinned her elbow. This tiny scrape seemed to cause her great pain if not actual blood-loss (there was one little drip that never really dropped).

While sitting on the stool, nursing her wound, in the kitchen after our return she asked, "Mom, what do you think hurts more, a scraped elbow or a baby coming out of your belly?"

She didn't like my answer and seemed to determine me an unreliable source from that point on (neverminding the fact that I've experienced both, but hey, I'm just Mom. What do I know?).

ps, if you know and see Tess, please, please, please do not mention this little story to her. She'd never forgive me!

Another Tree

Another tree for Lucy. And, sadly, I forgot my camera. However, after I left I noticed an ornament in my pocket that I forgot to put on the tree, so I will show you a picture of that. (at potentially great personal risk, I might add, because I didn't mean to steal this and now that I've published it on my blog, my little sister will know!)

And one of my sweatshirt with this year's pin (the red one) and one from another year (I should have written the years on the backs, but, of course, I didn't). I did not remember where the other pins were off-hand this morning, but I doubt they'd be too hard to find. I only have three jewelry boxes and one push-pin board (the green one had been acting as a very fancy thumb tack. I like that use for them). I have five pins now - one for each year of decorating for Lucy. Sweet Lucy.


A short description of decorating day that I originally posted on my family's website (names changed to protect the innocent and the not-so-innocent.):

...there is a lot of wire (must wire EVERYTHING! And then wire some more!), lots of decorations, lots of laughing, some scones, some cold air when they open the bay doors, usually a baby or two (yay Baby L! he had his turn today), lots of ribbon, lots of wishing we'd brought this, that, or the other thing (tables, sharpie, etc), and some tears. It's magic. And every year is the best. Like Anchely said of our annual contributions - every tree is my favorite!


in case you were hoping to see a photo of a tree, I'll post one from last year to tide us over until I can take one of the current tree when we go to The Festival of Trees to watch Mikay & her dance class perform.