I’m celebrating Christmas with my family tomorrow, so Christmas day is no break from the madness of preparation.

I enlisted my boyfriend’s help to finish up one last present for my mom. I made her a pincushion inspired by one I saw at http://www.craftapalooza.com/ and wanted to include some shrinky-dink pins. So we sat down with some coloring pencils and shrinky-dinks. I drew what I thought were some cute designs – a leaf, a flower, a little bird. Then I look over at my boyfriend who is drawing a detailed replica of the outfit he’s planning to wear the next day along with some bunny slippers. I am starting to feel really uncreative.

Me: “You’re drawing clothes?”
Him: “Yeah. This pin cushion is supposed to be for sewing, right?”
Me: “Right.”
Him: “Well, it seems we should draw things a person might actually sew.”

So out of my league.

Posted by The Little Happy Ones at 08:05 PM | Permalink

I made it! Here are the finished scarves for my two best friends. They were photographed just moments before being wrapped up and carried off to our annual Christmas get together. This photo is all blurry, and I think my purple couch is trying to steal the show! Of course, I didn’t realize just how bad this picture was (for the scarves, not the couch) until after they were given away, and there were no more re-takes to be had. I wish I had had this advice or these tips then.

I think the colors were much prettier in person (which is good given the ridiculous number of hours I debated yarn choices at the store). Everyone knows what an indecisive shopper I am. I think I picked up and put back the bluish-green yarn on at least 8 separate trips to Michael’s. When Kristen put it on, it made her eyes light up. This is no credit to the scarf. Kristen’s eyes are just really cool like that.) Now there is just one more scarf to give…

And yes, I probably owe one for my grandmother. Hello, and welcome to my 2006 To Do List.

Posted by The Little Happy Ones at 09:01 AM | Permalink

As promised, I made an apron this weekend.

My sister is quite the chef and really loves preparing meals for her family. I wanted her to have something a little special for the kitchen so I made her this set of potholders and an apron.

I will admit that while sewing the potholders I felt pretty stupid. When I was a kid, I had one of those looms where you weave little loops to make a potholder. I couldn’t help but feel like I was 6 again making a present for my grandmother. My sister is cool! She’s cooler than a potholder loom!

I have to say, though, that putting anything into a “set” instantly makes it better. The more pieces I made, the more the potholders started to make sense. They also started to look a whole lot better after my mom patiently sewed on the bias tape for me (evil bias tape!).

I’m not sure how practical the oven mitt is going to be for her. This was my first attempt at quilting something. Maybe this will be her “for show” oven mitt when company comes over. Do people have oven mitts for show?

I had wanted the apron to have a little tulip shaped pocket, but that was a total disaster. Maybe next time after more sewing practice…

Posted by The Little Happy Ones at 09:41 PM | Permalink

Said out loud at a party (you know, the type of party where you dress up and drink alcoholic beverages and pretend to be cool):

Him: “So, what are you doing this weekend?”
Me, Idiot: “I’m going to make an apron and some potholders.”

Feeling lame. Really. Lame.
Also: feeling extremely thankful for non-apron judging boyfriend.

Posted by The Little Happy Ones at 09:45 AM | Permalink

My mom really loves nativity scenes so we had a lot of them in our house during Christmas. Ok, to be honest, it wasn’t just at Christmas. She started keeping up some of them year round. In fact, my mom has a lot of little traditions like putting Baby Jesus in a drawer and waiting until Christmas morning to add Him to the nativity scene. One Christmas morning, half-way through unwrapping presents – she exclaimed “I left Baby Jesus in a drawer!” We stopped while she ran around the house placing the many little Jesus(es) in their rightful locations.

The one pictured above was my favorite. The little wood pieces were kid-friendly, and I liked playing with and rearranging the animals. Except that the one in the picture above isn’t really the set I played with as a child. My mom sent that one to me when I was in college, and I gave it away or lost it somehow. I was careless then.

This year I was slightly (ok, seriously) obsessed with Christmas decorating, and I wanted a nativity scene – but not just any nativity scene, my nativity scene. The one I had played with as a child. The one my mother had carefully wrapped up and sent to me. I harassed her with all sorts of questions about where it had come from and how I could find a replacement, but in the end, it was E-bay to the rescue.

It’s embarrassing, but I got so emotional about the whole thing that I ended up in a bidding war and spent WAY too much money on this thing. It was very sweet and lovely to have again, but there was no way that it was worth the $50 I spent. I swallowed hard and waited for it to arrive.

Yes, it was the same as the set I had had, but it smelled funny, the donkey didn’t look quite right, the paint was peeling -- and I tried to figure out how in the world I was going to explain to my boyfriend that I’d spent $50 on this thing. I felt SO silly.

But you know what? It stopped smelling funny after awhile, the little animals are still fun to play with, and every time I look at it, it feels a little more like Christmas. To me, that’s $50 well spent.

Posted by The Little Happy Ones at 08:50 AM | Permalink