Handmade Ornaments

I love Christmas, and I love putting up our tree and hanging the ornaments.  I don't like "theme" trees--all my ornaments have significance to us. 

• a glass frog that my mom gave me a few years ago--to teasingly remind me of the hideous things that used to gather over the door to my apartment; I was TERRIFIED one was going to jump onto my head!!
• a pewter Headless Horseman from when I was traveling and got to visit Sleepy Hollow in New York.
• a pumpkin egg from when I used all my SkyMiles and flew with my mother 1st class for a mother-daughter vacation in Bostonit was around Halloween, and no place celebrates Halloween like Salem, Mass--it was an amazing trip, probably the best of my life  :)
• an engraved one from my husband's father, one for the first Christmas as husband and wife, and another for my son the year of his birth.

So that's the story of a few of my favorite ornaments.  For 2 years I joined an ornament swap, and I really enjoyed it.  You make 12 ornaments, send them to 12 different people, and 12 other people each send one to you.  I don't think I ever got all 12, but it was always so fun to do--they were presents, really, a few were real works of art.
Here's what I made:
In 2007, I made fuzzy yarn balls with Styrofoam balls and red, white, green and blue "fuzzy" yarn and white wire ribbons :

Of course, the cat is the biggest fan of these :)

In 2008, I made little rag wreaths using embroidery hoops and these fabrics:

 to make:

Very poor quality, sorry!

I've got tons of ornaments planned for this year, mostly to occupy my son during the school breaks.  I'm excited to see what we come up with!
Here's a link to my Pinterest Board for Christmas and Winter, and another to my School Break Boredom Busters, which is mostly "re-pins" so I can delete the entire board in January.

Enjoy your holiday preparations! 

Holiday Hangover

Since the school had their Halloween event this past Friday, I've been "over" Halloween ever since.  (By the way, the school's event was a "book character parade," and it never fails to amuse me the many ways they can celebrate Halloween without ever calling it "Halloween....")  My sister-in-law is currently out with my son trick-or-treating in our lil town's "shop downtown" Halloween event.  I'm so thankful for her, you have no idea!

My head has moved on from Halloween straight to Christmas.  "It's the most won-der-ful tiiiime of the year!" has been running through my head all day.  I actually love Thanksgiving, but we haven't really been "into" it the past several years.  Currently, I blame the lack of songs ;P  If there was an annoying Thanksgiving song, then it'd be running through my head, I'd probably be feeling more Thanksgiving-y....

Oh well...let's pull out the lights and wreaths and all those fun ornaments!!  (Not really, I will wait a day or two...maybe.)  One of the best things about having a fake tree is the ability to put it up whenever you want to, and leave it up for as long as you like.

While I'm debating whether the tree should go up tomorrow or wait til the weekend (ha ha) here's some pictures of Christmas past to tide me over:

2007, and yes that's a bow on my son's head, he seemed to think it appropriate and we've gone with it--every year on purpose now.  Don't you love family traditions like that?  I do :)

2008--I put fake things under the tree as place-holders for presents, like stuffed animals

Our first mantle in our home--Christmas 2008

2009--opening presents with Daddy I <3 this sooo much!

Let's get some red and green flowing through this house!!!

Featured!!

We have a normal schedule every day when my son gets home from school.  He gets the mail, I go through his backpack, we talk, etc etc, then I log online to check my email while he watches Phineas and Ferb.  (OK, we're both watching, I love this show--so I'm being "authentic" here.  The episodes never get old!  And the songs are fun to have running through my head, much more than Thomas and Friends.  "Gitchee, Gitchee Goo means I love you!" and "Those boys are evil--E-V-I-L-B-O-Y-S!"  Love it!)

Anyway...I logged onto my homepage and saw this:

What the...?  Is that MY NAME?? 

It is my name!!  And my Halloween Pinterest board!  I'm so excited to be featured--it's kind of crazy how excited I am, lol.  Now, off to email everyone I know and show off share on Facebook.....

What's That I See Outside My Door???

Hmmm, what's that I see, it's too dark in here.....

Eeek!  Are those...GHOSTS???

Why yes, indeed, we do seem to have spectral visitors!

We are having a blast decorating for Fall and Halloween this year.  My lil Scarecrow "Welcome" man has been on the front porch for at least a week now.  I used tracing paper to cut some simple ghost shapes and James and I gave them eyes and punched holes to hang them from yarn stretched across the room.  He also has another line of "ghosts" over his bed (that he deemed are a "spooky" dark red color, lol) and some turquoise ghosts with pointy heads, where Mr Man got into my "good" paper stash to make some ghosts in my favorite color.  They are my favorites indeed. :)  They're stuck to the walls as opposed to the flying ghosts in my picture there.

We also have 5 orange jack o' lanterns on the walls--mine with happy faces and James's all have very scary faces indeed.  I really hoped for one more "happy" Halloween as opposed to "scary," but it looks like I'm out of luck.  And more decorations are on the way!

Still no idea what James is going to choose to be for Halloween this year.  He was a cowboy last year, and this is one of my top 5 favorite all time pictures of him. They were playing "hot potato" in his preschool class, and I love how happy he looks in this picture.  He was just giggling away! 
(As a side note, they were using a Rocky Horror Picture Show record for the music, and I remember thinking at the time that maybe that wasn't the wisest choice of songs, but it was only on for a few seconds each time, so the kids weren't really listening.  Plus, it was a RECORD.  Who has records anymore?  We don't even have CDs around!)