Made A Celebration

 Today is a very big day. Celebrations abound.....my dad's birthday, New Year's Eve, and the completion of my year of "Made."

 

 Throughout this past year I've made endless cuppas and mug ups,

 

 and almost as many pincushions!

 

 I even made some teeny version for wee dolly friends.

 

 I made things tidy,

 

 and created more than a few messes!

 

 I made friends with felted wool,

 

 and wrote up my first tutorial....Yippee!!!

 

 I cut out a wooden village,

 

 and painted it too.

 

 A few day trips were taken.

 

 A few treasures were acquired.

 

 Thousands of tiny stitches were put into the creation of....

 

 ...an entire fleet of Hitty capes.

 

 Flowers were picked,

 

 quilt blocks were stitched,

 

 and Lily Red was made cozy.

 

 Simmer picnics were enjoyed,

 

 and a few more rows were added to the never ending winter scarf!

 

All in all it was a great year!

Thanks so much to each of you for sharing it with me.

I do hope you'll peek in again as a whole new set of adventures are about to begin in 2013.....

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!

 



Made A Cook Off Out Of It

 Unfortunately the snow stopped and a beautiful sunny day was before us with no company, no commitments, and no conceivable way we could stall the inevitable for any longer.....we were headed for the mall. Returns and gift cards had been burning a hole in the kiddies pockets ever since the last gift was unwrapped on Christmas morning. Hours later we returned home with zero energy and even less enthusiasm for dinner preparation. Grilled sandwiches were grumpily agreed upon until a challenge rang out as to who could cook the ultimate version, hot and melted on the inside, crisp and golden on the out. And the winner was.....
 

.....Teen #2 who instead made himself a bowl of soup since his wisdom teeth were acting up.

Everyone else ate their burnt, lukewarm creations with an eye of envy on his bowl!

 



Made A Night Of It

Another snowy day (and night) here in New England. At last look we had at least 6 inches and it's coming down harder than ever. Time to dig out a puzzle and declare it family fun night! Teen #1 and Teen #2 were somewhat reluctant until they heard the alternative was shoveling the driveway!!!

 

 

Made By Dear Hubby

 I seem to be in a creative funk.

A melancholy in the "made" department.

 I'm thinking it might be a post Christmas thing.

Or perhaps it's a stagnant pause while waiting for the New Year to arrive.

What ever the cause, fear not, it's not contagious.

For while I wallow in woe dear hubby has found his creative mojo!

Oil pastels have been practically flying out of his sketchbooks this past week.

I came home this evening to the one above.

And I'm in love with it!

 

 This is my favorite part!

 

 This is my second favorite part.

 

 This is my least favorite part.

It's being gifted away in the near future.....but not to me.
 

Not that I was slighted in the gifting department mind you.

 Look here what I found under the tree Christmas morning compliments of, you guessed it,

dear hubby himself! The icing on the cake was the fact that it came accompanied by a miniature hand written novel featuring this very same sumptuous onion portrait. Considering this, I dare say I am far from lacking.....therefore I must simply be greedy.

I WANT THEM ALL!

 (And some of that mojo too while your at it.)

 



Made Plans

The freezing snowy slop outside our door made it the perfect day to hunker down in a cozy chair and dream up some future projects for the year ahead.

 



Made It Home

We had what turned out to be a wonderful white Christmas up in New Hampshire. It was just white enough to make it snow globe pretty but not drastic enough to cause complications. Such is, however, not the case with the storm currently creeping towards us. We are home now in time to avoid the foot or so expected just over the border from us but our local prediction for freezing rain and high winds has me fearing the worst.....power outage! Far more often than I care to remember, the loss of power has frequented our neck of the woods. Each "off the grid adventure" adds a lesson learned to our repertoire so that by now we've become expert power outage preppers! Candles and flashlights at hand....this one's easy. Charge cell phones....fairly obvious. Stock up on dry goods.....we're lucky to have a gas stove so soups and pastas are a breeze. DON'T stock the fridge.....this was a very expensive learning curve! Fill your car with gas.....I'd always heard this one but never really knew why until the time I didn't fill up and was embarrassingly surprised to realize stations without power could not pump gas into your car. Clothes washed and more importantly DRIED.....a washed load left in the washer is far from clean or fresh smelling several days later! Needless to say I'll be spending a portion of my evening washing, drying, folding, and keeping my fingers crossed it will all be for naught come tomorrow morning.....

 



Made a Production Line

With slightly more than 24 hours to go we are down to the wire which means Christmas has become very serious business all through the house! I've got two sewing machines humming.....one for paper wrapping such as you see above and one for fabric projects all of which are currently top secret. Dear hubby is in his cubby doing his art thing. Good thing it's a hop, skip, and a jump from the kitchen since he's also got a pot or two simmering away on the stove. Teen #1 and Teen #2 have both secreted themselves away to start wrapping their goodies which actually does not seem too out of the ordinary since, being teens, they spend a good majority of their time distancing themselves from us anyway. And last but not least our very own elf (aka child #3) collapsed on the couch several hours ago from the shear exhaustion of being excited.

 

I'm not exactly sure how the next 24 hours will play out but if I don't pop in tomorrow I've either sewn myself into a package or collapsed on the couch next to that little elf. Regardless of the scenario please know that I wish you all the merriest of holidays....

ENJOY!!!!

Made By Our Very Own Elf

 Look what fell in our house today.....

 

 An abundance of snowflakes compliments of  child #3!

 

Yes, our youngest has what I do not.....an inexhaustible ability to engage in Christmas preparations round the clock! After donning his Santa hat, making these snowflakes, creating a family of snowmen sock puppets, and baking 6 dozen cookies he then wanted to shop for a few more presents to wrap! I on the other hand just wanted to take a nap.
 

Made My Bedtime

I truly don't know how Santa does it.....Christmas preparations are exhausting!

Off for an early meeting with the sandman and hoping for a fresh start tomorrow.....

 



Made Soup For The Sickly

Just in time for Christmas......teen # 2 is sick and a few others are flirting with sore throats so I made an extra spicy batch of southewestern chicken soup in the hopes driving all germs off the premises.

 

Made Some Purchases

Shhhhh...don't tell but I've got a secret stash of goodies hidden in my trunk!

 

Made A Start

 Look ma, no tape!

 

I kid you not.....I have decided to go "tapeless" this year in the wrapping department and thus far I have to say I love it! My inspiration came from this post over Dottie Angel way. I too have oodles and oodles of magazines hanging about and thought how lovely it would be to put their pages to use as gift bags just like she did.  

 

 Unlike Dottie Angel, however, I am not a big fan of tape. It's either too shiny or too drab, it often sticks to itself and creates havoc with my patience, and sometimes it even smells. One of my least favorite parts of wrapping presents is in fact the balancing act of attempting to rip off a length of tape while folding and  holding the paper in place. And yet, for all the sticky malevolence it displays during this process, it's inability to hold bows and tags in place three days down the road is incomprehensible.

 

Thread, on the other hand, is my friend. We work and play well together and so it seemed quite logical to team up this year and try stitching the gifts into their wrappings.

 

 The magazine pages recycled quite nicely into gift bags by simply zipping up some zig zag stitches along the edges.

 

 Even more exciting was the discovery that I could go "tagless" as well by writing my messages here, there, and everywhere directly on the packages.

 

 For those gifts a bit too large for the standard magazine page I turned to some postal paper I had on hand, "appliqued" it with a few clippings appropriate to the gift, and zipped it up tidy. The bigger one here is for dear hubby and you can bet it has something to do with Paris inside!

 

 Again, no tags required.

 

While I'm sure there will be some challenges ahead I was heartened to discover a great length of burlap leftover from one of the kids long ago school projects. That stuff can cover just about everything, all you need is a bit of string to hold it in place.

Oh what fun!

 



Made a Wrapping Rescue Plan

One week to go.

Round about this time panic usually begins to set in and yet this year I find myself quite calm. I do believe it has something to do with the "genius" plan I have concocted for my wrapping adventures. It's something quite zippy and familiar and has me filled with high hopes for it's success once put to the test tomorrow.

Wish me luck !!!

 

 



Made Myself At Home

The first real snow of the season began falling soon into the day and proved to be the perfect excuse to just stay put. Dishes were washed, laundry was folded, and potatoes were peeled. Chicken and gravy now simmering away will soon be devoured by five hungry mouths........six if the Bichon's wish comes true. (Don't worry, it will!)

 

 Wishing such peace and joy to everyone.

 

Made an Amendment

Oops!!! Seems I needed to be a bit more specific with the cutting sizes of the napkins! In order to accommodate the 3/4" scallops, the finished size must be divisible by 3/4" with no remainders. In other words the finished size cannot be any willy nilly number of  you choice. Oh how much I hope no one had a run in with this issue! Sooooo sorry if you did.....

Here's the handy selection of sizes I've since added in to the tutorial. I did the math and checked it twice so all should be well now!

10.5" Tea Napkins..........cut 12" squares
12" Lunch Napkins........cut 13.5" squares
15" Dinner Napkins.........cut 16.5" squares
18" Feast Napkins..........cut 19.5" squares

Made a Playdate

It's not until the Christmas Dollhouse has been retrieved from the deep, dark corner of the basement that it truly feels as if the season is upon us. Once upon a time I was solely in charge of it's yearly interior decoration and let me tell you what a fuss pot I was about it. Not only were all the scale relationships in order and the colors coordinated but everything had to be placed just so. A place for everything and everything in it's place....year after year after year.

And then we had kids.

Tonight when the lids were lifted from the storage boxes I noticed how varied the contents had become over time. A fair share of official Dollhouse miniatures still remain.....on Etsy they would be considered "vintage" in age which is a really nice way to say they've definitely seen better days. The Fisher Price pieces that have wormed their way in, however, remain perpetually perky...boy does that plastic hold up over time! Dig a little deeper and you'll find a Calico Critter or two, an odd assortment of Playmobils, and a few Lego's to boot.

It wasn't until Child #3 came along that the real interesting additions occurred.....matchbox cars, plastic dinosaurs, pencil erasers, and stickers galore. And now this year the Luke Skywalker and Boba Fett figurines showed up looking to rent a room for the holidays!
 

Our favorite part is peeking in the windows to see how cozy it looks from outside. Child #3 took care of the kiddie rooms upstairs.

 



.....while I got to decorate the kitchen.

 



Now it's finally beginning to look a lot like Christmas!