Back from the (happy) depths of Christmas

*gasps for breath*

Wow, I survived! This Christmas was a whirlwind.

• My mom and sister came and had a blast with N; 
• we did lots and lots of baking; 
• I finally sewed the stockings; 
• celebrated with family on Christmas eve
• went to church, and had brunch with family again on Christmas day. 

It was wonderful. Now I am exhausted. But happy.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. Merry Christmas! (albeit a little late)

Card-making, merry-making

I couldn't resist. I was inspired by Scarlett at Blue, Purple, and Scarlett and her beautiful cards and just had to go try some of my own. Ok, ok, I know I'm not anywhere near as good as she is, I mean wow! But I wanted some card-making fun anyway.

So, here's what I did:

First I found some colors and patterns that I liked.

I measured everything to scale and to make sure it was centered.

Then I cut up the papers and pasted them together.

Added some embellishments

Until I thought it would do.

Hope you're all having a wonderful day!

Pretty little things

I've been getting into full on holiday mode lately. Decorations are up, but I'm still doing Christmas-y crafts as I go along (see this post from yesterday).

So today, in the spirit of Christmas decoration, I want to share a giveway that Bluebird Notes is having, because well... take a look at the shop where the ornaments are coming from. I love, love, love those ornaments! *sigh* I'm definitely getting my hands on some, regardless of the giveaway.

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On a different note, can we talk about blur? Does it make me a bad photographer or even a bad consumer of photography if I love blur?

Of course I love crisp, clear, and focused photography as well. But sometimes, I feel that life is not completely in focus, and that's what I want to portray in a photo. This photo of N. wasn't originally supposed to be out of focus, but when I retook it with the correct focus on her eyes, I didn't like it as much.

I love this picture.... but maybe I'm just out of it. 

Are there any pictures that in your opinion came out better as a "mistake?"

The 5-minute mama crafter

N. watched Frosty the Snowman for the first time a couple of weeks ago. Oh boy. She hasn't stopped talking about snowmen, Frosty, Santa Claus, "Karen," and Christmas in general. It doesn't help that every house in town has put their lights and decorations up (including us).

So yesterday we were killing time and playing before our bedtime routine, and she kept asking me for Frosty. So I decided to make her one with scrap materials we had around. It took us all of 5 minutes too! My favorite kind of baby craft.

Materials:
2 styrofoam balls (one small, one medium; or one medium, one large)
some red felt for the scarf
some black felt for the hat (which quickly got destroyed and thrown away by miss N.)
1 Toothpick
Chenille piper cleaners
Black and orange paper
Glue

How we did it:

I broke the toothpick into a smaller piece, so that I could stick each end of a different styrofoam ball. Then I cut the eyes and mouth out of black paper and glued it on the smaller ball (the face). Cute the red felt into a scarf and glued it where the two balls were connecting. I cut small pieces of the pipe cleaner and stuck them on the sides of the bigger ball for his arms. Then I took another piece of the toothpick and stuck it at the very corner of the mouth (for Frosty's pipe). I tried to imitate Frosty's button nose with black paper, but didn't like the results, so I decided to use a carrot nose (N. didn't notice). I cut a long and narrow piece of orange paper and rolled into a "nose" like you see above, took another piece of the toothpick and glued it to the inside of the orange nose and stuck it in the face (poor Frosty was stabbed a few times during this process...). Then I did something similar to the pipe (cut orange paper, glue the end of the pipe toothpick to the inside).

The hat... It took me the longest, cutting out round pieces of felt for the bottom and top of the hat, then a long one for the wrap around. It looked like a top hat... I glued it to Frosty's head but miss N. wouldn't wait until it dried (I should have used a hot glue gun, maybe?) and the thing got destroyed very, very quickly.

But I really like how it came out anyway, and so after she played with him he proudly went into our balustrade's pine needles among the lights and other things.