On the Fifth Day of Crafting: A Lumpy Wreath

I woke up this morning to see a few flurries dancing outside our window. The flurries called their friends down from the clouds and within the hour everything was dusted with a soft sprinkling of powdered sugar snow. They say the first snow of the season is a magic snow, so I made a wish that I would get all of my holiday crafting done on time. That magic snow has been coming down hard ever since, making everything clean and white.

The snowy backdrop inspired me to make something to decorate the outside of our house; a wreath. I covered a Styrofoam hoop with thick batting, then alternated red and green pieces all the way around, with a few white muslin bits here and there. It's a little lumpy and uneven, but quite pretty all the same. We've already gotten compliments on it from family and neighbors.

Speaking of lumpy and uneven, I cut my hair again today. This time I was sitting on the sofa, watching Dr. Phil and feeling a little bored, so I decided to give myself bangs. Does anyone else change their hair when they're bored? No? Ah well. I like them. And ignore Adam's messy office in the background. I am in no way responsible for that foolishness. However, our living room does currently look like a Joann Fabrics exploded, so I really can't talk.

Note the adult language on the mirror behind me. That was a birthday gift I made for Adam last year.
I've also been working almost nonstop on ornaments, which I haven't taken pictures of yet. I think I'm going to wait until we decorate our tree and then make an ornament post showing all of my many, many, many creations.

On the Fourth Day of Crafting: A Tree Skirt

Today I made a skirt for our yet-to-be purchased Christmas tree. Red, felt, white rickrack, and more of my favorite holiday prints. I only bought half a yard of each of those prints and I'm determined to stretch them as far as they'll go.I think this is my favorite crafted decoration so far. The jumbo rickrack and fabric ornament appliqués are just so festive and fun. As I write this Autumn is sitting on the couch in quiet concentration, making a paper chain garland all by herself. I can't tell you how thrilled I am that she enjoys making things as much as I do. I love giving her small, simple projects she can do on her own, and being able to sit and chat with my girl while we work.
I hope she never loses her desire to create.

On the Third Day of Crafting: Gifts for Mini Me

Can you believe it? I'm done crafting and the sun is still up! Today I made gifts for my sweet Autumn Rose. First was a set of hand puppets for her doorway puppet theater; a cat, a frog, and a bear. The googly eyes were a cop out because I think I'm really bad at drawing eyes and didn't want to ruin them. But she is fascinated with googly eyes anyway so I'm sure she'll appreciate them. Is that bear rolling it's eyes at me? Bear, I brought you into this world and I can take you--what was I saying? Oh yeah.My second gift is a treasure hunt bag, also known as an I Spy or Peekaboo bag. You may have seen toys like this on Etsy before. It's a bag usually filled with plastic pellets and small trinkets, and children have to shake, squeeze and manipulate the bag to find all of the objects hidden inside through the clear vinyl window. I came close to buying one, but decided to try making it myself first. It was a lot easier than I expected. I collected small objects and toys from around our house (mostly my craft room--great way to use up the little random things I had lying around) and used some vinyl, ribbon and treasure map fabric I had in my stash (yay for using up my stash!). Instead of plastic pellets I filled the bag with white rice because I always like to use natural materials in place of synthetic ones when possible. Plus it's cheaper.There's still one more gift in the works for Miss Autumn, but it will have to wait until I can obtain all the materials I need. Until then I'll be working my way down my to-do list like a good little elf.

P.S. Speaking of elves, this is cracking me up right now.

On the Second Day of Crafting: The Living Room

Today I decided to focus on the room we use the most. Our coffee table isn't exactly a table; it's actually four ottomans with storage compartments and tops that flip over to make little square trays. I made a set of square placemats to line and protect the trays with some of my favorite Elvis prints, but today they've been replaced with patchwork placemats in some of the same beautiful Christmas prints I used for the advent calendar. Add some pinked-edged coasters for our hot cocoa and a festive throw pillow and our living room is beginning to look a lot like Christmas.Can you tell it was dark outside again when I took these pictures? I really need to start my crafting in the morning.It's finally starting to feel like Christmastime in the Sugar and Snails household. Believe it or not, I'm actually looking forward to seeing some snow soon. Tomorrow I'll be making gifts for the Small One while she is at school. Hopefully I'll be able to finish at least most of them in 4 hours.

By the way, did you know that Swiss Miss now makes a dark chocolate hot cocoa mix? Yum yum yum.

On the First Day of Crafting: An Advent Calendar

Today I finished our advent calendar and filled the pockets with red and white polymer clay beads for Autumn to make herself a Christmas necklace. On the 25th she'll get a Christmas tree pendant to complete it. I also started the dozen scrappy ball ornaments I want to make for our tree. These are fun to make and a great way to use up the pretty scraps I don't want to throw away. Unfortunately by the time I was finished crafting it was starting to get dark outside and the lighting in our house isn't the greatest for taking pictures, so I may replace these shots tomorrow with some better ones. But for now, here is the evidence of my progress.



The calendar was really fun to make. It's natural linen with holiday print and felt pockets, numbered in gold glitter. I'm not entirely happy with the lettering at the top because it's a bit crooked, but oh well. It's charming, right? Tomorrow I'll try to get an earlier start on my projects so that they're done in time to take some good photos.

Twelve Days of Crafting

I have a plan. A challenge for myself that involves some hard work and commitment on my part, but with enough effort I think it will be very gratifying. Adam and I moved in together in January, and this is my first year living away from home (i.e. not under the roof of my mother or grandparents, i.e. being a real live grown up). The thing about having your own place is, you have to start from scratch because the things you always took for granted aren't there from the start. Things like furniture, dishes, appliances, towels, and of course, holiday decorations. I know, shocking, right? You mean my new townhouse doesn't come fully stocked with this crap? Well we pretty much covered the furniture, dishes, appliances and towels in the first couple of weeks, but what we don't have are Christmas things. You know, the things that are supposed to magically appear from a cardboard box in my grandparents' basement? We have no ornaments, garlands, knickknacks, stockings, baubles, tchotkes, or thingamajigs. No doodads! No whatchamacallits! So what's a holiday cheer deprived homemaker to do? Run to K-Mart and fill a cart or two with the entire Martha Stewart holiday collection? I think not my dear friends! It's time to get crafty! So here is my decoration crafting to-do list.

50 ornaments and a tree topper
3 stockings
1 wreath
4 placemats & coasters
2 throw pillows
1 advent calendar + 24 thingamajigs and/or doodads to go in it
an undecided number of soft trees
1 tree skirt

And probably a couple of other odds and ends that I forgot. And I didn't forget about my Handmade Pledge this year, so along with buying a few things from Etsy I am making something for everyone on my list, adding up to about 15-20 individual items, give or take. Doesn't sound too daunting when I have almost a month to get it done, but that's where the challenge comes in. I'm going to do this in 12 days.

Why 12, you ask? Well I don't have any logical explanation other than the fact that I was listening to The Twelve Days of Christmas when I thought of this, and it seemed like a good number that would be challenging but doable. Oh and I'm a masochist.

So starting tomorrow, for the next 12 days I'll be sharing my progress on my blog and probably venting many frustrations and "Why am I doing this to myself?!"s along the way. I'm glad I have this blog because posting about it will help keep me on track. There's a certain accountability that comes with challenging yourself publicly. It's one thing to just set a personal goal for yourself and forget about it, but when you make it public you're more driven to follow through. I think this will be a lot of fun in a frequently stressful, oh-lord-what-was-I-thinking sort of way, so I'll be checking in tomorrow as soon as I finish my first project.

P.S. Before I forget (well, I did forget, and came back to edit this in) I wanted to share this idea I found on Craftster with you all because I think it's so adorable and easy to do if you don't have a lot of time (or crafty skills) this holiday season. It's a photo advent calendar with family pictures behind each numbered window. You can just print out the PDF and add your photos and presto! Instant cuteness.

Holiday Shop Update

Giving handmade gifts this holiday season? The shop has been stocked with some great holiday goodies and stocking stuffers, including scarves, hats, Crayprons, and even a stocking craft kit for the kiddos (click the pictures above to go directly to Etsy listing--I just figured out how to do that and I'm all proud of myself). I'm adding new things this week so keep checking back!

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