Christmas

Merry Christmas! It flew by too fast as usual and is a bit of a blur. I don't know how much of that is going through the holidays for the first time with two babies and how much was my poor sick two year old who was up every few hours with a cough and fever every night leading up to Christmas.

This Christmas a cough, last Christmas pinkeye...

2012

2011

Poor little man was pretty miserable both years, but after a few doses of good medicine he was up and about and playing with Christmas toys again! I'm really grateful for antibiotics--it's a terrible, helpless feeling when your baby is sick. Next year I'm going to put him in isolation right after Thanksgiving. 

P was a really fun age this year! He loved the Christmas tree and Christmas cookies and Christmas music, we talked a lot about Jesus' birthday. I got some electric candles for an advent wreath, which he didn't fully understand, but he called them Jesus' birthday candles and carried them around the house. Santa was super exciting too, he wasn't terrified. 

He got really into the old clay-mation Rudolph, from the 70's/80's. This is his "very, shiny nose."

Me, mom, sis and sis-in-law did our annual Christmas lunch at a great little place out in the country. Baby V is swaddled up and lying on the floor behind us for the photo :).

We even had some snow this year (before Christmas). P said it was "yucky."

Baby V was baptized on Christmas Adam (Dec. 23). It was a really sweet celebration and covenant with our church family. The church was decorated beautifully!

V is starting to look so big and be really interested in what's going on around him. He grabs at toys and smiles and laughs constantly.

Christmas Eve!

V was a party animal on Christmas Eve, but...

...he slept through Christmas morning.

P had a ball (even with his cough)! This is the train board we made for him. I painted water and roads and trees and such, then we glued down the pieces. It's really fun and he seems to like it. I'll post some more info on how we did it in a later post.

It was a wonderful Christmas spent with family. We are blessed beyond belief and rejoice wholeheartedly in God's great mercy, Christ came to dwell with us and to restore us to the glorious presence of God! Though there is pain and sadness and broken relationships here on earth, He will wipe all that away when He comes again. Come soon, Lord Jesus!

Post Christmas: Wins and Fails

So I posted HERE about the Christmas PJ's I made for P and my little niece and the Santa suit for my nephew HERE.

P's PJ's turned out super cute and warm and comfy. I'm already thinking about what kind of PJ's I want to do for next year. Win! The fun slide from Grammy and Grampa was a win too, obviously.

I got to see my nephew in his Santa costume! He looked adorable, what a sweet face. Win!

Ouma and Oupa gave P a rockstar Elmo. Major win! I missed the picture of him giving Elmo a huge hug!

This is the nightie for my niece, made out of a beautiful, soft Moda flannel. Big, fat FAIL. The head/neck opening didn't open quite wide enough for her sweet baby head.  I'm going to see if I can add a snap closure somewhere, I guess maybe there's a reason why everything you buy for little ones have those built in. But, when you start experimenting with your own patterns sometimes things don't fit exactly right! Good thing I've got a really good, sharp stitch ripper :).

Trying to get P to sit in Santa's lap on Christmas Eve?

Priceless.

Ha! I mean fail! He gets so excited about seeing Santa in pictures and books, but real Santa is SCARY! He was completely terrified! We had a great Santa, by the way, so it was all P.

Seeing everyone in paper party popper hats (say that five times fast). Win!

               

Spending time with family...

Seeing this sweet face every day...

Win!

Christmas Recap

Can you believe Christmas is over?! I can't!

It's very strange being in a warm climate for Christmas and New Years. Christmas has always meant winter, bundling up in blankets, sipping hot beverages, wearing scarves and gloves! Here in New Orleans it is 75 degrees outside. That's right, P and I wore shorts and t-shirts to the park last week. People here have poinsettias OUTSIDE! In KY, we had to wrap the poinsettias in plastic just to walk from the car to the house to keep them from shriveling instantly. People here try so hard to make things look "wintery" with evergreen wreaths and garlands on the front of their houses, the problem is that all of it has been scorched by the burning rays of the sun so now the evergreen is a strawlike yellow. At the mall, they decorated with fake snow around the bases of the poinsettias which were planted in the ground (outside). Yes, it's all a big winter charade here. Folks wear gloves, scarves and heavy coats when it hits a chilly 55.

This year, we traveled to Kentucky for Christmas. P needed really warm clothes so I decided on these corduroy longalls for Christmas day. I wanted knee patches for fun decoration, but also because I knew he would be crawling around all over the floor playing with new toys, cousins, Papa and my brothers. I love fabric covered buttons so I added those as well. 

The back of the overalls have a little buttoned belt. 

Here's P enjoying some Christmas morning brunch! Well, he was enjoying the fruit anyway. :)

Grammy and Grampa (and Santa) surprised P with a slide, he was in heaven!

 It ended up being beautiful and warm on Christmas day. We played outside and visited the horses and cows.

We had a great Christmas this year! The one damper was that P had a bad cold and on Christmas Adam (that's the day before Christmas Eve :) he woke up from his nap with his poor little eyes all red and weepy. He was pitiful! Thankfully we were able to get him on some antibiotics that night so he felt a million times better by Christmas Eve. I'm praying that he didn't pass it along to the cousins who are visiting Disney this week. By this week hubby and I were able to laugh about it, W even wished me a "Merry Pinkeye Christmas."

Cozy Hat for Chloe

A couple of weeks ago when my sister Chloe visited New Orleans, she saw a hat at Urban Outfitters that she really wanted. She ended up not going back for it so I decided I would make one for her Christmas gift. It's a really pretty green color (it looks a little washed out in this picture, it's super bulky, Lion brand yarn) and it was crocheted (10.0 mm hook) with a double strand. I came up with the pattern as I went, I'll work on writing it out and maybe post a pattern or a tutorial. 

I decided for a little something different that I would line it. I used a soft, stretchy jersey that I had picked up on the $1 table at Hancock's sometime oner the summer. 

I used a zig zag stitch so that it would stretch comfortably.

She likes it and I think it looks really cute. It's super warm and really comfy feeling, I also like that it keeps your ears warm. Merry Christmas, Chloe!

Lots of sewing

So I've been doing some sewing, making a few gifts (although blogging about them seems like a bad idea since a few of the recipients might get a sneak peek). Here are some safe ones. Christmas morning PJ's for Baby P. When I was growing up we always had special Christmas pajamas. It was a fun tradition. I had a pattern in mind so I just sketched out the pieces using some of P's clothes as size reference and came up with this.

It's made out of a soft flannel. They are so cute on. When my husband, W saw them, he said "They're so old fashioned, you should add one of those flaps on the back." He was referring to the kind of flap in old-fashioned, cowboy long-johns... hmm

He likes them! This was the "squat test." Anything for a toddler has to have enough give so that they can squat easily :)

Here are the Christmas overalls I just finished up for someone on Etsy, I found a lady here in New Orleans who does monogramming in her home. I think she did a great job! I want to monogram some of P's clothes now.

I am super excited this year because I have a little lady to sew for for the first time! She's only 7 months old so I know she's not surfing the web. Here's what she's getting. Spoiler alert for her mama :).

It's a photo book like P's but I've learned a few things from the first round. I got much better plastic to cover the pics and I got to use girly patterns!! FUN!

This little lady is also getting some Christmas pajamas, I got to pick out sparkly buttons and use ric rac. You can't use ric rac on boys, this was a treat.

 

These three little ones are going to look super cute together on Christmas Eve! Remember the Santa Suit for my nephew, HERE.

Last thing! Since we aren't going out of town for Christmas, we didn't do a tree and lots of decor. I decided to do something super easy but festive for the door. I cut out lots of felt circles, stacked them in groups of three and sewed down the middle (one pile after another) to make a garland.

I've seen lots of easy felt garlands like this, but I thought using several layers of felt would give it a little dimension, they kind of "flare" out. Fun and easy!

Merry Christmas!

Think it Through Thursday

I've been quite the absentee blogger this week! Santa's workshop has been in full swing, along with filling some Etsy orders and running around shopping and getting ready for our church's service of lessons and carols...not much time for taking pics of what I've been making. Assuming I have some sunlight tomorrow, I'll be back with some new stuff tomorrow!!

Just because it's Thursday and the Christmas season, here is a verse I love from Hark the Herald.

"Hark! The herald angels sing:
'Glory to the newborn King!'
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!'
Joyful, all ye nations rise,
Join the triumph of the skies.
With the angelic host proclaim:
'Christ is born in Bethlehem'
Hark! The herald angels sing
'Glory to the newborn King!"

God and sinners reconciled! What joy! How much we have to sing about this Christmas season!

Christmas Weekend in KY

I always enjoy the gifts from my girlfriends, but this year everyone was extremely creative! C made her own sugared almonds and gave us these adorable vintagey, Christmas hand towels. S found cute Christmas oven mitts and stuffed them with Christmas goodies (and an awesome, owl handtowel). B ordered cool, fabric covered earrings from her sister (who owns an Etsy shop HERE) and Ashley gave us fun metallic make-up pouches with earrings, perfume and nailpolish.

I made these pouches from Noodlehead's Scrappy Make-up Pouch tutorial but I added zipper tabs (from HERE). I definitely recommend adding these, the finished product looks more polished. The hand embroidery was inspired by Aimee Ray's Doodle Stitching.

This was a really great way to use up my little scraps, it's fun to find small pieces of patterns that I was crazy about but only have a teeny bit left. The back and sides are muslin-one of my favorite fabrics to work with--and everything is reinforced with fusible fleece. You can see I definitely gravitate toward the reds and teals. 

If you want to see more pictures, take a look at Ashley's post HERE!

Dutch Blitz!! We always go home from girls weekend with sore fingertips and hoarse voice from all the rounds of Dutch Blitz and charades. We have so much fun making up our own charades (lots of inside jokes and hilarious animal impressions--B pretending to be a grizzly bear might have been a highlight of the weekend). I highly recommend it. I will just give one disclaimer, red wine and blueberry beer do not help when it comes to games that require quick fingers.

Yes, we ate an entire 9 x 13 of B's famous bean dip for lunch. Along with some sharp cheddar, crackers and very small glasses of wine :).

It was a great weekend! Can't wait for our next one, I'm already thinking up some new charades.