Pre-Christmas Presents

Now that Christmas has come and gone I will do a couple of posts of what I made to give this year.  I'll add some more after we celebrate with Jason's family on the first.

This year I participated in a ornament exchange on the nest craft board. This is the pair of ornaments that I created for the exchanged. The person I made them for recently got married and loves mermaids.

This scarf was made for my mom's family Christmas exchange. Though it appears to be black and white it actually purple and white since the majority of my cousins are K-State fans. I made it with Lions Brand homespun yarn using an adaptation of this pattern that I found on ravelry. It was a hit and stolen a few times.

This is a work in progress that will be one of projects that is shown off after the first. As you can see I've been cutting it a little close on the thread. 

I'll post some of the projects that I gave away on Christmas next.

It's time...

Christmas is almost here and I am finally starting to get in the mood. My to do list is starting to get smaller, though I still have a ton to get done before my final Christmas in January. I took Friday off and spent the entire day and part of Saturday baking. I made pecan rolls, Oreo truffles, Divinity, 3 different kinds of cookies and orange chews. Sunday was my mom’s side Christmas, where I entered a purple and white scarf into the exchange. I will post pictures once December Christmas’s are over because some gifts were made for multiple people/exchanges. My sister was given one of the last chances to steal it but decided to gamble and hope that there was one under the tree for her. She gambled wrong but I was looking for one last idea for her went to JoAnns over the lunch hour for more yarn. Add another thing to my to do list. --> I still have to get almost that entire list done and wrapped before the fifth of January. Actually the list doesn’t look too bad, but most of what I have left are large projects and only the ABC book has been started (prewashing doesn’t count).


In less than two weeks we will be starting a new year and in honor of the New Year I will be simplifying my life. I will be cleaning out my dashboard and eliminating blogs that no longer inspire me. I will be deleting the games off of my Facebook and may unfriend/block a few people as needed. Life has gotten so complicated lately that I decided to start my new year early. The family/IL drama no longer warrants any attention and neither does my work drama. I will be more optimistic and will complain less to my husband. I will try to be less snarky and will love my nieces and nephews equally regardless of their parents’ personal opinions/decisions. Hopefully the next year will bring us closer to our dream and will inspire both of us to be better people. What do you want for your New Year?

It's almost here!

Christmas is just around the corner which means two things. I have a ton of things to do and this is what I see when I drive two and from work. This is the sunset yesterday as I drove home. It really makes me dread the day we move to the country. Then I'll won't see any daylight at home but sunsets like these make me want to drive to the country after work.

 These arrived in the mail this week from a secret elf that I met on the nest. They are adorable little stocking hats. The red one has multiple colors in the yarn which doesn't show up in the picture.

Since it's almost Christmas here are a few pictures of our decorations.

Jason has a huge Lego train set and each year a portion of it goes around our tree.

This is part of the decorations on top of our TV.

My latest craft show find.

This is a preview of something I'm currently working on. I've gotten bad about taking pictures as I finish them up but I plan to take a bunch before I start wrapping.

Birthdays & Thanksgiving

The weekend before Thanksgiving we got together to celebrate a couple of birthdays. Here is the birthday boy (my nephew)with his cake. His mom makes amazing cakes and she was 9 months pregnant when she made this one.

 We also celebrated my sister-in-law's birthday and here she is watching our niece steal the candy off of her cake. She didn't mind though.

  As promised here is a larger picture of the quilt that I finished last week. Unfortionately I'm still not finding the right lighting to take good pictures in especially now that the sun sets so early. Even though in this picture the quilt looks really distorted, it really is square.

Sunday after our birthday parties we went to grandpa's house. Grandpa always tries to send us home with the latest thing he found in the attic or some more of grandma's crafting supplies. He's been giving away grandma's stash now for over four years since she died. Though he's given away the majority of it there is still a lot of selection if you know what you are looking for.  Whenever we go, I always bring things home from grandma's craft room and this time was no exception. I have now added to my stash 4 boxes of fabric, a half a dozen balls of crochet thread, a complete set (every size) of kniting needles in a couple different lengths and some for working in the round, a crochet hook thingy (we are not sure what it's used for but I was sent home with it to do research), all of the leftover thread and the display to hang on the wall and a various stack of pattern books. It's a lot like shopping in a vintage craft store where the tating shuttle is stored with the knitting needles which belong on the shelf next to the quilting fabric.  Though we have now gotten through all of the closets we are still finding new and fun toys to take home and play with. (Anna do you need more yarn? There are still several boxes to go through we could surprise you with one ;))

This Thanksgiving was the first that I have spent without seeing any of my family. It was a little weird buy I still had fun with Jason's family. We had traditional Thanksgiving dinner at Jason's mom's house which was only an hour late this year thanks to many extra hands. We then went to Jason's grandma's house, where everyone was looking through ads and planning their black friday shopping. The night quickly turned into a casino night as more people showed up.

This year Jason and I participated in Black Friday which is very unusual becasue neither of us enjoy crowds. We started our shopping at 5:00 and were back home by 6 with both things that we wanted. Jason then went to the farm and I worked on Christmas projects until about 8 when I went back out to JoAnns. Some how with my lack of sleep that morning I miscalcualted how much flannel I needed for the two projects and I purchased twice as much. Oh well, my stash could aways use more flannel. Saturday morning we again got up early to head out to get a deal on a new tv for my craft room. My old one had started to squeal at me which drove Jason crazy so he decided that it was time to replace it.

As soon as I have time to take pictures I have another project finished. Hopefully I'll be able to add several more to the finished list in the next week before things start getting really busy.