24 days and counting

Now that Thanksgiving is over it's time to focus on Christmas! :) I have a few Christmas projects in the works; so be looking for them very soon. To start the season off, Madelin and I made a Christmas Countdown Chain after school today. We've never had an advent calendar (as much as I like them and have always wanted one), so the next best thing is a Christmas Countdown Chain. Madelin and I have made one each year for the last few years. It's quick and easy (that is unless you have a 1 1/2 year old trying to get his little hands on the strips of paper and is also trying to "help" by dismantling the stapler)! We used green and red paper and pinking shears. I folded the width of the paper into eighths.

I cut a majority of the strips and Madelin cut the rest.

Our pile of 24 strips...the number of days until we will be celebrating Christmas at our house. I did not want to take the chain on the plane with us!!

I looped the strips through each other, making sure to overlap each loop and then Madelin stapled them.

Our Christmas Countdown Chain!

To finish off the chain, I used a strip of felt to tie the chain to the curtain rod.

Thanks for reading!

Madelin's winter coat and other warm pieces

Here is Madelin's new winter coat. The picture is lacking quality and detail but you can still tell the coat is a pretty buttery color. The afternoon Chris brought it home, the kids and I went to Target to hunt for some matching pieces. Unfortunately, there weren't any pieces that had the pretty buttery color in them (lots of pink pieces, though). So, I told Mad to pick out a solid hat and matching mittens and I would make the scarf (an idea I got from http://www.noodleheads.blogspot.com/).

Here are all of the pieces. As you can tell, the hat and mittens are made of two different solid purple pieces of fleece. I figured, "Yeah, the purples might be hard to match but I'm sure I can find something that closely matches the two purples." Boy, was I wrong...I checked Hobby Lobby, Hancock Fabric and Joann's (a little overboard, I know) and they all carried light purple or "Crayola" purple. I ended up picking a bright pink and I was fortunate enough to find a matching buttery yellow fleece. As you can see, I cut-out (6, 2 are hiding on the backside of the hat) yellow stars and (hand-sewed them onto the hat and mittens). The stars on the scarf were done using a different technique.

As I said earlier, I got the scarf idea from a Noodleheads tutorial titled fleece neck warmers tutorial (I know that there is a way that you can click on "here" and go straight to the tutorial, but I don't know how, so please enlighten me) . You should head on over there for an in-depth description on how she made the scarf. Her pictures are fabulous, too!!!

"New" used jeans

Gymboree hand-me-down jeans for Madelin. The heart pocket was my inspiration for the knee patches.

These jeans were just too cute to get rid of, plus Madelin wore them less than a handful of times. After coming home from school one afternoon with a hole in one of the knees, I decided to make some patches...an idea I got from I am Momma Hear Me Roar. I folded the knee area in half and cut-out 2 different sized hearts. I pinned the pink fabric (an old shirt of Madelin's) on the underside of the cut-out hearts. I then used white floss to secure the heart to the jeans, it took 2 DAYS!!!

After the patches were created, Madelin wore the jeans to school and came home with a hole in one of the patches. I still couldn't let go of the jeans! I used purple fabric from old pair of pants to create the small heart to cover the hole (I used an iron-on adhesive to adhere it). I guess if she comes home with another hole, it's time to say good-bye to the hand-me-downs!!!!

Baby Boden-inspired shirt

This was a hand-me-down outfit that I used for some of the pieces on the penguin.

Here is the finished product; to the right is the penguin shirt from Boden. The shirt is from Target. It was white but I used brown Rit dye to change it up a bit. All of the penguin pieces were created from scrap fabric. I put the pieces together using iron-on Pellon transfer adhesive and then I hand-sewed around each piece (I'm still not confident enough to sew around small, curvy areas).

Welcome!! I am very lucky to live the good life. I was lucky and very blessed to teach preschool for 6 1/2 years and now I am lucky be a full-time stay-at-home-mom (SAHM-as I have learned in blogland). I now get to use all of my creative energy on things at home. After being inspired by two creative blogs: I am Momma Hear Me Roar and Made, I decided to start my own. It is my desire to share all things creative; I hope you will be inspired by what I share. Please bare with me as I (slowly, as I am teaching myself) perfect my sewing skills and my photos won't be exactly blogworthy (as our camera is less than desirable). Enjoy!