Christmas-y stuff

First a little whine... it is really hard finding crafty stuff to post on a crafty blog when everything you are working on is a gift for someone who reads this blog! Sheesh...I'm sewing as fast as I can! However there is one project I can share cause I made these for me! Christmas-y pillowcases featuring Santa and Frosty!

Now I almost titled this post "Sleeping with Santa and Frosty" but my son informed me that it sounded kinda slutty... so I figured I'd just hide it here in the text and see if anyone else finds it as funny as I do - LOL - I am easily amused in my old age!

Anyway here is Frosty...

And here is Santa and the whole gang from the 1964 Rankin/Bass production of Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer.

I used that burrito method of making the pillowcases so all the seams are enclosed -quick and easy! You can find a tutorial here. I'll be cozy with all these guys in bed with me.... OMG.... that sounds slutty too!

Sooooo lets switch gears here and look at one of our Christmas trees...my younger son decorates this one and it is all "food" ornaments.

Big Dude is making sure all those ones at the bottom are hung in their proper place.

 That big slice of pizza is a Christopher Radko ornament and it started the whole collection.

The gumball machine is a new addition this year and I love the little baking sheet with the gingerbread guys.

And looky here! I just found these in a plastic bin in the basement. I don't have a clue as to where or when I bought these but a couple are going on the big tree today. Maybe next Christmas I'll do a little tree in my sewing room with polka dot ornaments... could be the start of another collection!

Hope your holiday preparations are moving along nicely. I'm off to drop my Christmas cards in the mail. Each year I send less and less and each year it is later and later when I get them in the mail. I even thought of starting on next years cards now while I had the stuff strewn all over my desk, but there are too many other things that need to be done NOW!

happy stitching-
carol fun

My favorite kind of man

Inquiring minds want to know... what is my favorite kind of man?  Well it is a gingerbread man! They are soft and warm and if they get too mouthy you can bite their heads off LOL! I have a couple of gingerbread men in my Christmas decor, but not enough. Darlene at Quilting Daze was just commenting this morning that there doesn't seem to be a lot of gingerbread men stuff out there this year, and I concur.

But to remedy the situation a bit, I put this together...

a garland of gingerbread men to dress up my kitchen!

And I found that gingerbread man potholder on the cabinet door when I moved, I don't remember when he came from but I like him!

I made a longer gingerbread man garland for the big window in my kitchen - sorry for the glare of the sun in the picture. It is a glorious sunny day, which makes up for the 3" of a "dusting" of snow they predicted. Oh the little gingerbread plate in the lower left corner of the picture came from Pier 1 this year.

I die cut them from chipboard with an old, out of production Sizzix die that I got on ebay. Too cute - nice plump little guys about 4" tall. Now the chipboard was blah, so I spray painted them with my current favorite spray paint, Rustoleum Hammered Bronze and then I sprayed them with a new to me find -spray GLITTER! OMG -- I LOVE this stuff!!

Here's a close up to the little guys.

This year I hung my gingerbread man quilt in my living room. I've shown this before on the blog. It started as a potholder - really! It was a pattern in Fons & Porter magazine years ago and was suppose to just be a potholder but I loved this block, and baked sewed up a dozen.

I made the little guys out of a brushed flannel and tea dyed the rick rack and added googly eyes - I love googly eyes!

I'll show more of my  Christmas decorating tomorrow!

Happy stitching -
carol fun

Merry Christmas

Wishing all of you wonderful people who read my blog the Merriest of Christmases and the Happiest New Year! I wish I could send all of you a card but since I can't I'll send you a picture of the ones I made this year. He reminds me of the decorations of the 50's - my childhood!



Hope this season gives you plenty of wonderful memories!



carol fun

The stockings are hung...

...and the tree has been trimmed...



... and I am pooped! Every year it seems to take me longer to get these jobs done. Don't get me wrong I love Christmas I just get stressed out trying to do it all, when in fact I'm doing less and less. It does look pretty when you get it up, doesn't it?

Now I showed close ups of the stockings last year (you can look at the Sunday entries for December 2010). They are from my needlepoint period and boy was I ambitious back then. I will say my boys, who are now young men, still love their stockings so I did okay. The tree is a kitchen sink tree - we put lots of different stuff on it. There are lots of colored lights, bubble lights (I remember these from my childhood and my kids love them too). There is a nice helping of Hallmark ornaments including a bunch of light and motion ones that make the tree kinda hum when you plug it in.There are vintage ornaments from my childhood and little sequiny ones my Mom made. And there is a sprinkling of cross stitched pieces too. I want to do more of them in the coming years.






Here is a close up of our tree topper - an angel with two little lambs - all pink and girly and pretty and yes she is crooked at the top of the tree. I need someone taller to come home and straighten her out.



I think I'm done buying gifts. I have some grocery shopping to do tomorrow and then I'll "wrap" gifts on Friday. I don't actually "wrap" them, instead I put the items into fabric bags that I've sewn up from Christmas fabric. We've been doing this for several years and the whole family enjoys it. I've made bags of all sizes and we tie them shut with sparkly pipe cleaners so everything is reusable year after year. I've seen this suggested as a "green" Christmas idea but I do it because it is pretty and it is easy - I like easy.

So now I'm going to sit in my chair and admire my handiwork and do a little stitching. Life is good!

Merry Christmas!
carol fun

Some Christmas-y finishes for Friday

Another week has blown by me, I really need to pay closer attention. However, I did get a few things accomplished. Want to see my boys' bathroom? I spent about 3 hours cleaning it. No - I didn't think so. What about some Christmas-y stuff? This is little grouping hangs on the wall in my breakfast nook.



The dishes are Debbie Mumm plates from years ago. Does anyone else remember when she had sets of 4 plates in tons of different designs? I was so hooked on them. I have quite a collection. I think I could probably do dessert for about 60 people and they'd all have a different plate.

This is one of my favorite Christmas sets - each one a little topiary - and I've added some greenery and berries and a couple of cute gingerbread guys.




And you can see that I finished the Bent Creek Quaker Noel Sampler. I love the framing. on this one. I've done several of these Bent Creek pieces and usually they are framed quite close to the stitching. Beverly, the framer at Joanns who I love, suggested this spacing and I will be doing this again. It really makes it a more substantial piece.



Here are some close ups - I had to stand on a chair to take these since it was up on the wall and I didn't want to take it down, since I would have to get someone taller than me to put it back up and he is holed up in his room playing video games - oh well - he is quite a big help to me.





Instead of the grey the chart called for I used 2 different reds, 2 different greens and 2 different golds - all overdyed flosses from my stash. I think it looks very Christmas-y.

And I took a couple of minutes to refresh my bedraggled front door wreaths. I think the last time I spruced them up was about 8 years ago. I tore off the faded poinsettias and added some nice candy cane ribbon, some sparkly mylar bows in the center and some sugared berries. Total cost - about $7 for 2 wreaths - and it shows up nice from the street too.



Tonight I'm going to hunker down behind my sewing machine and get the binding on my Flurry quilt and hopefully quilt the little Mary Engelbreit Schnibble too. And I want to make a new table runner for the front foyer -- wow I am being quite the optimist. Check back to see how much I actually get done.

Happy stitching-
carol fun