Happy Holidays

It has been a very busy holiday season. This year we decided to stay home for the holidays rather than traveling to California. I'm happy with our decision, but this means Christmas at our house... which means a clean house (as close as I can get) and it means decorating for Christmas. So, of course, some things have to give. The blog is often the first thing to be pushed to the back burner. But it's not because I haven't had things to share.

First of all, today is the last day that I will ship for Christmas delivery in any of my shops. I hate the stress of knowing if a present gets to the recipient in time, the craziness and the post office and just trying to juggle yet one more thing before the holidays. I'll still have my shops open and I'll still be shipping... but I won't guarantee that it will arrive before Christmas.

Okay, on to the fun stuff. Crafting! House cleaning is not one of the things I do well. I get bored or I get absorbed and do more than my body can handle. So, I have been breaking up the house cleaning with a little holiday sewing for myself. First off... the trees.

I love these trees. I've made a forest (well, a forest of 5) for our HUGE mantle. I think these trees are the first thing to actually look like they are filling out the space. They are made from recycled tshirt scraps sewn onto cotton. I made the bottom of the trees so that I could easily stuff and unstuff them. And the genius part? They are stuffed with all the plastic grocery bags that keep building up because I forget to take them back to the grocery store (yes, I forget my reusable bags all the time). After Christmas, I can unstuff them and fold them away neatly. Yay for space saving decorations! I'm hoping to make some of these for the shop next year... and maybe even some in other colors for the rest of the year. They are fun to make and they use up the ridiculous amount of scraps I have built up. I'm fairly certain it's an illness of some sort not being able to throw away scraps. I made a huge step the other day and bagged up all my cotton and miscellaneous fabric scraps and gave them away to someone off of Craigslist. Hopefully they'll be able to use them since I can't seem to find the time. Of course, I kept the tshirt, cashmere and fleece scraps.

So I felt like the trees needed a bit of a back drop. Behind the trees I have shoved all the things that were already up there. This way, I didn't have to pack any of it up (it's all my Grandfather's pottery) and after the holidays, it would easier to set it all up again. My solution to hiding these things was to use what I have... presents. I wrapped our presents in white paper from the dollar store (not Christmas paper, I think it's wedding paper). Used silver ribbon and finished them off with a snowflake tag. They look great behind the trees, I got most of my Christmas wrapping done... and again, putting them away at the end of the holiday will take care of itself.

My daughter decorated one of the trees with one of her plastic star mardi gras necklaces. It actually looks really cute. These trees vary in size from 18" to over 2 ft tall. I love them :)

I've also made miniature versions of these trees. I plan on having the kids glue buttons on them and we'll hang them as ornaments. Perhaps I'll get around to taking pictures of those when they are complete.

And the last thing I wanted to share is our advent calender... or advent garland. We actually made this before December 1st - I think that's a first in history for me and advent calendars. I'm usually having to catch up a week or so into December.

This garland was super easy. My son helped me make it. I took some cotton yarn I had and made loops in it every 6 or so inches. I made 25 of them. My son took a bag of these super cute adhesive glittery stars I picked up at Walmart for $5 (one package was all I needed - they are similar to these, but came in a bag).

I bent paper clips to make loops and my son sandwiched them between to adhesive stars. And that was it! we made 25 of them. The one pictured below is the one he made for Christmas... he put an extra star in the middle to make it fancier :) You can also tell it was our last one because I stopped caring so much about getting the wire straight before I made the hook :) I mean really, who is going to notice (unless you take a close up photo and post it on your blog).

The kids have been very diligent about keeping it current... and by Christmas, we will have another completed decoration. Again, this will be easy to pack up - taking very little room (can you tell space saving is one of my big things right now?).

I'm also using the stars to decorate packages. I just sandwich the paperclip between the two stars with one end hanging out for the loop. Super easy and so pretty! I love pretty packages.

Next up will be a wreath from tshirt scraps. I have to use different scraps though, so it won't be the traditional green. I have a ton of red... maybe I'll make it a candy cane wreath and stripe it with red and white.

So now that I've taken an hour of cleaning time to post to my blog, I need to get back to cleaning. today my task is to get ready to bring the Christmas tree in. I know, it should already be up by now... but I hate having needles all over my house - especially while I'm still trying to clean it! Bah Humbug, right?

Have a great holiday!