Finished in time for Christmas Giving

I just finished the last afghan to be given for Christmas.

This is the one from the Bernat CAL.

It will be going to my daughter as the colors should compliment her house.

And this one is going to my granddaughter for her bedroom.

She however, knows I was working on it as I wanted her approval on the colors.

More holiday crafting

Today my daughter was back to work on more plates.

She made real progress and hopes to finish next time she comes over.

While she did that I worked on making some 'natural' ornaments for her tree using walnuts and glitter. This was another easy project!

I look forward to seeing her tree.

Snow Ornaments

Here are photos of the snow ornaments I mentioned in the last post.

I am afraid between the reflections and the heavy sun blocking screens they are a bit difficult to see.

These were so easy and fun to make.

The ones we saw in the store were filled with small Styrofoam balls

but I chose to use some plastic pellets left over from stuffing toys.

Just pour in a small amount and replace the top.

Then using a metallic marking pen 'paint' snowflakes on the outside.

I chose blue to match my kitchen and to show up better.

If you were to put these on a tree silver or gold would probably show up well and be quite stunning. I tried writing on my test ornament but quickly discovered that is much more difficult that it looks to get good results.

Snowman updates

I had debated adding arms to the snowman tree topper but it took me a while to decide that he definitely needed them and then to find something appropriate to use.

And the bottle cap snowmen just seemed bare without a scarf so had to update them as well. I think I am now happy with this tree.

Next will be some ornaments for the kitchen...

Cowboy Christmas

The cinnamon ornaments were dry enough to hang today so up they went.

And now the tree is complete. Or should I say, ready for presents?

Making tree ornaments

For the past several years I have gone back to using a 3 ft fake tree that I bought one year when it began to look like my husband would not be back from his deployment in time to go cut our own tree. The only problem with using this smaller tree is that I get bored with the ornaments since the old traditional ones are too large and have thus been passed on to my grown children.

Therefore I rotate themes and most of them are hand made. This fall we spotted some cute ornaments made from bottle caps that were not for sale but merely a store decoration. Or so we thought as when we went back for a second look the entire tree full of ornaments had been sold. Being as I have a bag full of root beer caps I decided to try my hand and this is what emerged.

It quickly took on a cowboy theme and I painted a cardboard cone I had in my stash box to match and decorated him accordingly.

By that I mean I used the cowboy hat ornament I made from a doll hat and some leather cording .

Of course every cowboy needs a neckerchief so I cut a bandana in fourths and knotted them for more ornaments.

I will share a photo of the finished tree in my next post.

Gifted

This is my friend Darlene modeling the jacket I crocheted for her. She is nice and tall and it looks better on her than mine does on me. She even put on the necklace I made and gave her.

This is the secret gift that I was working on the latter part of the summer. It just took me awhile to get it shipped off to her.

Holiday Dishes

This past summer my daughter was talking about wanting to paint some holiday dishes, like ceramic classes. We looked into some in this area and were put off by the prices and the lack of options. So I suggested something I had run across on a blog somewhere.

Well, she was very excited and a couple of weeks ago we went looking for clear glass dishes which we found on sale. Then off to the fabric store for some Thanksgiving appropriate fabric.

For our trial run we just used some Christmas fabric I had on hand. I decided to get daring and add glitter which came out far too fast and guess what? It did not want to come back off of the Mod Podge coating! So my plate was not very good as the glitter prevented a good adherence. Kristy's however came out great.

So yesterday she started on her set of dishes. She is quite good at this and it went much easier this time. But it will take a few more sessions as she wants to do these small plates with a print and then dinner plates in a solid color. Possibly decorate some bowls as well and we are looking at a service for 12! Hmmm how many days until Thanksgiving? But they are coming out great. When finished they will all need to be sprayed with a sealant.

She is already thinking about future holidays. She has always been an overachiever! LOL

Meanwhile at the other side of the table I worked on a couple of my own crafts. Here is a photo of the tablets. The bottle caps will come later.

Halloween in the Kitchen

These are the traditional ghost cookies at my house. My family waits eagerly each year for their arrival! There are also Muddie Buddies, which are fun to munch as well.

This year my daughter had been wanting to try using fondant.

So when I saw ghosts made with fondant we had our excuse/reason.

These are the bases, which have to be made ahead to dry.

Some have malted milk ball heads and some have jelly bean heads (since I could not find black gum drops anywhere) and some were left plain.

And here are the finished ghosts. Aren't they cute? The chocolate chip faces were really hard to do as they are so tiny and do not want to stick. I like the candy faces that you just 'carve' out as you can get more detail but maybe I should have made them larger. They are still drying. We had no idea this stuff gets quite hard and is made entirely out of unhealthy ingredients so we decided there is no way we will try eating one. But they are cute and now we have tried fondant.

Fall Fun at last

I finally finished the surprise for my friend, though it still needs to be blocked so I was able to whip up a cute little baby hat for my little brother's first granddaughter. And new tea cozies! I love this simple pattern. Front and center is an apple bookmark that I intended to do last month. Better late than never.

Actually I have been too busy to get much crocheting done until this week. I broke off a tooth and had to have a root canal done with a post and crown prep, then a temporary and impressions the next day. All of which left me in pain. Pain that is bearable as long as I sit still. Now there is an invitation to crochet if ever I heard one! I have moved on to an afghan for my granddaughter now.