Oh, my goodness! It’s been so long; I wonder if I even remember how to do this blog thang?!
I can’t believe it’s been a year since I first shared some of our family’s holiday traditions. (You can see the original post from last year right here.)
crafts
Happenings Behind the Scenes and a Glimpse at What’s to Come
Hope everyone had a great New Year! I didn’t even do anything, and I still feel like I’m struggling to get into the swing of things! It’s part my crazy-hyper-crafty personality and partly my crazy-hyper-crafty (where’d they get that from?) kids — and, I suppose, partly the chaos that comes with the holidays. I wanted to pop in and reveal what’s been going on in my world, because there’s a lot. Continue reading
The Best Christmas Tradition Ever (Warning: Potentially Budget- and Environmentally-Friendly and a Tutorial?!)
My daughter (A.S.) and I started making cookies as gifts two years ago. It seemed like the perfect way for our family to avoid wasting time in the mainstream money-spending, time-sucking Christmas traditions (sorry for painful honesty!) that have taken the light from what I want my children to feel is most important this time of year. (If that’s sounds straightforward, I mean it to; if it sounds nasty, that’s not what I’m going for.)
A Magnolia Blooms in November! (Tutorial for a Project to do with Your Kids!)
Today was the first day in a long time that the kids and I didn’t have a schedule to keep. That usually makes for a crazy, disorganized, kind of all-over-the-place day; but today I had a plan! Actually, I’ve had this project in my mind for months now.
Since moving in our house almost eight years ago, we have been doing nothing but home improvements. The latest major thing my husband built was a gate across our driveway. He is awesome and let my imagination guide the construction of the gate. I really wanted it painted black and a certain shape.
Matt delivered, as usual:
Literally the day I saw it finished and painted black, I came up w/ a mural for the inside of it. This side isn’t as showy and pretty as the side that you see when you pull up to the house, which is fine. But the sharp contrast of the black against the natural fencing had me immediately thinking of an all silver/white, whimsical winter theme. I actually drew it out in chalk and everything. (You can still see some of my chalk lines in the picture.) It was awesome! I had a large tree to one side that had no leaves left on it, the moon, and the silhouette of some snow-covered evergreens on a distant hill. And then I thought of my kids’ handprints as the leaves on the bare tree in the foreground. Triple 9-1-1 level awesome!
My Take on a Little Mermaid Birthday Party
Good Morning!
So this is the first project/event that I did that had me thinking I should really start blogging, that their might be other people out there that just live and breathe and dig this creative stuff. I guess it’s kind of cheating since I made all of these things over a month ago, but since I haven’t shared it here yet, we’ll consider it a new topic.
My daughter’s fourth birthday was looming and she was all about The Little Mermaid. So was my two-year-old son, for that matter.
Please take absolutely no offense here if you are a fan of the full-on Disney birthday party. The decoration packages are absolutely adorable, I agree. (I also own all of the Disney Princess movies, thanks to a slightly crazy, princess-obsessed grandmother – my mom.) But, I swear, there’s something wrong w/ my insides. If I don’t do something really over-the-top, craft-wise, for my kids’ birthdays, I feel like I’ve let not only them down, but myself.
SewOldSchool 