paint prints for Christmas

the boys and I found some time after Thanksgiving to do a little Christmas crafting for their grandmothers.  this holiday season wasn't feeling much like Christmas for me for various reasons, but I really wanted to make these cute penguin prints and I think this project helped get me more in the mood for festivities :)

I picked up a couple of white aprons from Hobby Lobby to decorate.  all the boys had to do was sit still for a black footprint, and I painted the details on after those were dry.  the simple footprints ended up being a lot messier than I remember on past paint projects.  maybe it was the black paint on the white surface... I don't know.  they still came out cute.

we added some fingerprint string lights for a border, which I think really helped finish it off.  this was time consuming, but easier to control than the footprints since we went one finger at a time instead of a whole foot.  I added their names and year as well.

there's still room at the bottoms to add more, so maybe next year we can add some reindeer.

Jack's Christmas stocking

I forgot to post about Jack's Christmas stocking last year.  poor guy has just slipped through the cracks ;)  but I did make it in time for his first Christmas.
I decided I didn't like the fabric I chose after I finished it, but I'm used to it now.  I think it makes the colored felt pop a little more.

  

he of course got a Jackalope, I put a xylophone on it to remember one of the first Christmas gifts we gave him, and his snowman is a cowboy.

I was on the fence about putting "Jackers" on it, but since that silly name has followed him beyond the family (and it'll probably stick until he's old enough to tell us to stop calling him that) I went ahead and did it.  he might not even notice.  I didn't notice mine said Candi until I was in highschool!

I loved seeing all our matching stockings out growing up, and hearing the jingle bells when they moved - such a simple but fond memory of Christmas as a kid.  it's something that I'm glad I carried over to our family :)  I'm already gathering ideas for the stocking I will be making next year!

handmade for Christmas

we're mostly packed up here waiting to move into our new house, so my crochet stuff is really the only craft stuff I have access to anymore... not that I've been doing much else in the way of crafts for a while now!  I'm looking forward to having a room again that I can keep my sewing machine set up in, and maybe a table to work on my jewelry.  until then I'm just crocheting when I get a chance.  here are some gifts I made and sent to my brother in Shreveport for Christmas.

I made a square hat for Abbie with a zig-zag puff stitch.  I had to make the construction of this hat up as I went, but it's pretty forgiving since it doesn't have any shaping to it.  joining the puff stitches in each round was the hard part, but I made it work.  this could totally be done as a flat piece and then seamed together, though.  I put tassels on the top corners to look like pig tails, and I made some boots with puff stitch flowers on them to match the hat.

Ava got a striped slouchy hat (another pattern I made up as I went) and I added a puff stitch flower to the bottom band.  I used Red Heart Soft for all of these hats, which gets even softer when you steam or wash it.  I steamed the slouchy part of this hat which made it lay really nice, but I made sure to leave the band at the bottom alone in case it relaxed too much.

Ashton's hat is an earflap beanie that I decided to find an actual pattern for.  I used Micah Makes free pattern, but I added an extra row of single crochet to the edge and put a line of fringe on top for a mohawk.

advent calendar garland: finished!

this was a fun project to work on, and I finished it just in time!  the garland is hung with some clear command hooks in our entryway, but I'm hoping next Christmas, in our new house, we'll have a better place to hang it.

I wasn't sure how to hang these up to begin with, but after I finished them all off I decided to just make a long chain and attach them at each loop.  I might do something different with them later on, but I'd just have to undo to chain and they'll all be detached again.  maybe when the kids are older they can be hung on the tree after each day.

I used some number beads and buttons on each one, which are also easily removable in case I brainstorm a different way of hanging and numbering them in the future.  Leo has been good at keeping track of what day it is, so if nothing else I'm really glad to have this to help him understand dates!

I stuffed each one with a small goody for the boys to have everyday until Christmas, and the boys were already excited about it after the first day.  they wake me up early each morning to see what is in the next one.