A couple of years ago, my mother showed me this hilarious e-card. Thanks to the greatest website of all time, youtube, I can share it with you for the holidays! Take it away Santa...
Monday, December 15, 2008
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Friday, December 5, 2008
Bring On the Cranberries
Merry Christmas! I'm in the spirit of the season, and it is so very sustaining in these hard times. The biggest project I've had for Christmas so far are my cranberry strands. I showed you all a picture of my mother's cranberries, and here is my best imitation:
I took apart my bead curtain my sister gave me for college, sorted out the little from the big, then spraypainted the big beads.
Here they are all lined up on our balcony to be sprayed...
A veritable waterfall of craberries!
I took apart my bead curtain my sister gave me for college, sorted out the little from the big, then spraypainted the big beads.
Here they are all lined up on our balcony to be sprayed...
You would think by looking at the picture that my drop cloth caught all of the spray, right? Wrongooooo. I didn't notice the fine red mist on either side of the drop cloth until the wind blew up a corner of the cloth. heh. Several hours of scrubbing with mineral spirits insued, and my poor little knees were shot. I love the result so much though that it was worth it :)
A veritable waterfall of craberries!
I strung up the little beads in their natural colors. Pretty with the red, huh? I'm so tickled I could burst. POW! Last night I made my tree-topper. My husband was wanting a gold star of some kind, so I used some gold foil I had from a Christmas craft set, glued it to a file folder and cut it out following a 3D paper star pattern. It's freakin awesome. I need to take pictures...
Friday, November 28, 2008
A Day Late and a Dollar Short
Happy Thanksgiving :) I am a day late with my wishes, and I wish I were only one dollar short! Here is our comically small table decorated for the most festive eating holiday there is.
My shutter-happy hubby took some shots of my dishing out the goods. The meal was a particularly good one, even if I DO say so myself (hubby said so too).
And I leave you with some pictures of chocolate chip pumpkin bread and banana bread I made during the week. I definitely plan to make the pumpkin stuff again...I have a serious weakness for pumpkin - is it adictive? Hubby and I are also adicted to peppermint bark - our yearly dose is sitting unopened (amazingly) for us to enjoy around Christmas.
I love an excuse to break out the crystal fancy stuff. I have yet to acquire a fancy dish for turkey however, so this turkey breast is on a sushi plate :) Faaaaancy stuff people. This year my hubby and I ate as a twosome, which was surprisingly nice. We made french press coffee, listened to Christmas music, stuffed ourselves, watched the Sopranos (we only have two episodes left. mphf), then watched the Visitor - an awesome movie, I highly recommend it.
My shutter-happy hubby took some shots of my dishing out the goods. The meal was a particularly good one, even if I DO say so myself (hubby said so too).
I think he captured the quiet mood of the evening quite well.
And I leave you with some pictures of chocolate chip pumpkin bread and banana bread I made during the week. I definitely plan to make the pumpkin stuff again...I have a serious weakness for pumpkin - is it adictive? Hubby and I are also adicted to peppermint bark - our yearly dose is sitting unopened (amazingly) for us to enjoy around Christmas.
Happy holidays to everyone! I hope you are all surrounded by people you love, and that safety and security find their way to you in spite of all the bad news this year.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Haaaaang on Snoopy, Snoopy Hang On!
Have you ever heard that song by the McCoys? I love that song - and when I was little, I always thought they were saying "Snoopy" instead of "Sloopy" :) I just have to keep singing that to myself so I can make it to Christmas...
Here is the giant Snoopy balloon at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in New York last year. My eldest sister came to spend the long weekend with us then, and we had so much fun. I have to admit the parade itself was a pain in the patoot, but I really loved the rest of the weekend.
It has been nearly a month since I posted last! Life is stressful beyond my wildest dreams these days, as I tend to keep saying. We're still working on placing my father-in-law in a good assisted living facility, and my mother-in-law is coping with sickness and blood clots. All a barrel of laughs. On the plus side, we're all alive and we love each other, and the holidays are upon us! This year my husband and I are doing Thanksgiving as a twosome since everyone is tired of traveling. I've done more driving this year than I have in my entire life.
I have Christmas on the brain to keep my sane, and I've been working on some basic ornaments and decorations for a while. I recently took apart the wooden bead curtain my older sister gave me when I was in college. Being a wannabe bohemian, I had always wanted one and never got a chance to hang it up. My husband is a definitelynot bohemian, so hanging it in our apartment is not really an option. heh. So I decided to use it for Christmas! I'm taking all the bigger, round beads and spray painting them red. The rest are smaller, and I've leaving them their natural wooden colors of cream and brown and stringing them up alternating each other. Basically I'm trying to achieve my mother's cranberry strands which I associate so closely with Christmas since my childhood.
Aren't they pretty? For kicks and grins, here are some other shots of last year's decorations at my mother's house. You can thank my gifted sister for such cool pictures!
This is my hand and my grandmother's hand - those peach ballet slippers are my special ornament my mother gave me a long time ago. My eldest sister has blue ones, and my other sister has rosy pink ones.
Here is the giant Snoopy balloon at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in New York last year. My eldest sister came to spend the long weekend with us then, and we had so much fun. I have to admit the parade itself was a pain in the patoot, but I really loved the rest of the weekend.
It has been nearly a month since I posted last! Life is stressful beyond my wildest dreams these days, as I tend to keep saying. We're still working on placing my father-in-law in a good assisted living facility, and my mother-in-law is coping with sickness and blood clots. All a barrel of laughs. On the plus side, we're all alive and we love each other, and the holidays are upon us! This year my husband and I are doing Thanksgiving as a twosome since everyone is tired of traveling. I've done more driving this year than I have in my entire life.
I have Christmas on the brain to keep my sane, and I've been working on some basic ornaments and decorations for a while. I recently took apart the wooden bead curtain my older sister gave me when I was in college. Being a wannabe bohemian, I had always wanted one and never got a chance to hang it up. My husband is a definitelynot bohemian, so hanging it in our apartment is not really an option. heh. So I decided to use it for Christmas! I'm taking all the bigger, round beads and spray painting them red. The rest are smaller, and I've leaving them their natural wooden colors of cream and brown and stringing them up alternating each other. Basically I'm trying to achieve my mother's cranberry strands which I associate so closely with Christmas since my childhood.
Aren't they pretty? For kicks and grins, here are some other shots of last year's decorations at my mother's house. You can thank my gifted sister for such cool pictures!
This is my hand and my grandmother's hand - those peach ballet slippers are my special ornament my mother gave me a long time ago. My eldest sister has blue ones, and my other sister has rosy pink ones.
That metal bear ornament is possibly my favorite ornament of all time. The red ribbon is actually metal too, and the green center are tiny jingle bells. So sentimental!
Friday, October 31, 2008
All Hallows Eve....MWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Happy Halloween everyone! I've bedecked our still messy abode with a few haunting decorations I made last year. On our table we are representing lindt chocolate with our little pumpkin tin and godiva chocolate with the ADORABLE little black cat box. Yum!
Hubby and I are going to the Wild Wing Halloween party tonight - I'm dressing as a batty witch, and he's dressing as a Chicago gangster. The bats in the picture below have been hanging on our door for the last month, but last night they ended up on my witch hat :) Hence, I'm batty. I'll also be sporting moon earrings, a little black dress, long black gloves, and some spooktacular makeup.
Hubby dearest will be sporting some awesome white spats I made for him last night, as well as a black fedora, a dark grey suit and a mustache. We're also going to try getting a cheapo clip-on tie for him and rig it with wire to look like the wind is blowing it - Chicago is a windy city after all :)
I will hopefully have some really cool costume pictures to share soon. Have fun eating tons of candy! The only candy I'm counting on is the sale candy tomorrow :)
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Christmas Plans!
I am so very excited about Christmas this year - my family is planning to come to Hilton Head this year for a week, and thanks to my mother-in-law's timeshare, we have a super cheap and super nice condo for overflow. Yay! My mom and I are about to burst with excitement - this year is all about quality time and food. We're skipping gift-giving and sticking to making ornaments, baking cookies and cooking. My mom is planning to bring her brand new sewing machine so we have two machines making cute ornaments. Here are some of the ornaments I made for her last year...
This one was actually done while I was at work in NYC (hehe). During my more quiet and secluded moments, I would cut out circles from old Christmas cards and glue them into this awesome shape. I got the pattern here from Martha Stewart (Heather Bailey did something very similar for Valentine's Day here). These are gorgious when they're finished and light as a feather - perfect for those delicate branches that can't hold much weight.
Here's another lightweight ornament - I got this knitted tree pattern from Elizabeth Zimmermann's "Christmas Fiddle Faddle in the Wilds" chapter of the Knitter's Almanac. I also knitted up some stars, and definitely plan to do it again this year. It's a great way to use up yarn scraps.
This one is a soft tree pattern I got from sewmamasew. This was so much fun! I basically just cut out tiny circles of fabric scraps and sewed a curvy line through each of them, then sewed on some sparkly beads, and wrapped it with some candy-cane string from my local NY bakery. It's like a little sugar plum tree :)
Of course I had to make some bird ornaments one of my all time favorite books, Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts. They take way longer than I had thought, but I definitely wanna make more this year.
After looking at the beautiful embroidery over at Wee Wonderfuls, I just had to try some of my own. The house ornament below is a portrait of my parent's log home. It was a very sentimental ornament to make, and I was so pleased it was recognizable :) The front is canvas and the back is a piece of Laura Ashley fabric from a thrifted dress.
For the other stuffed, embroidered ornament, I did a bear in red. I drew inspiration for this from a woman's printed fabric I found online, but I totally can't find it again. Oh well.
I'm also gonna use up my straw supply to make more straw stars. I got the materials from a Christmas craft kit when I was a kid, and the pattern from this book. This year I'm also gonna make some 3d geometric ornaments from that book. I have some gold and silver paper of some kind for that purpose - you can't beat free, handmade ornaments!
My lovely sisters decided to hang this in my hair last year - not a bad hair accessory. I love love love LOVE straw star ornaments. They are traditional in the most Christmassy parts of the world, like Switzerland, Sweden, Finland and the Ukraine. Plus, they remind me of something from a Jan Brett book. My other big ornament plan is to use the wooden bead curtain my sister gave me in college as cranberry garlands. You can see my mom's canberry strands in some of the pictures above, and they are some of the most sentimental Christmas decorations of all time for me. I'll just spray paint my beads red and string 'em up. I can't wait!!!
This one was actually done while I was at work in NYC (hehe). During my more quiet and secluded moments, I would cut out circles from old Christmas cards and glue them into this awesome shape. I got the pattern here from Martha Stewart (Heather Bailey did something very similar for Valentine's Day here). These are gorgious when they're finished and light as a feather - perfect for those delicate branches that can't hold much weight.
Here's another lightweight ornament - I got this knitted tree pattern from Elizabeth Zimmermann's "Christmas Fiddle Faddle in the Wilds" chapter of the Knitter's Almanac. I also knitted up some stars, and definitely plan to do it again this year. It's a great way to use up yarn scraps.
This one is a soft tree pattern I got from sewmamasew. This was so much fun! I basically just cut out tiny circles of fabric scraps and sewed a curvy line through each of them, then sewed on some sparkly beads, and wrapped it with some candy-cane string from my local NY bakery. It's like a little sugar plum tree :)
Of course I had to make some bird ornaments one of my all time favorite books, Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts. They take way longer than I had thought, but I definitely wanna make more this year.
After looking at the beautiful embroidery over at Wee Wonderfuls, I just had to try some of my own. The house ornament below is a portrait of my parent's log home. It was a very sentimental ornament to make, and I was so pleased it was recognizable :) The front is canvas and the back is a piece of Laura Ashley fabric from a thrifted dress.
For the other stuffed, embroidered ornament, I did a bear in red. I drew inspiration for this from a woman's printed fabric I found online, but I totally can't find it again. Oh well.
I'm also gonna use up my straw supply to make more straw stars. I got the materials from a Christmas craft kit when I was a kid, and the pattern from this book. This year I'm also gonna make some 3d geometric ornaments from that book. I have some gold and silver paper of some kind for that purpose - you can't beat free, handmade ornaments!
My lovely sisters decided to hang this in my hair last year - not a bad hair accessory. I love love love LOVE straw star ornaments. They are traditional in the most Christmassy parts of the world, like Switzerland, Sweden, Finland and the Ukraine. Plus, they remind me of something from a Jan Brett book. My other big ornament plan is to use the wooden bead curtain my sister gave me in college as cranberry garlands. You can see my mom's canberry strands in some of the pictures above, and they are some of the most sentimental Christmas decorations of all time for me. I'll just spray paint my beads red and string 'em up. I can't wait!!!
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