Nativity and Ornaments

It's been busy around here with all the great projects I've been excited about. Having said that, most of them are gifts so they will not be posted until after Christmas. I decided that to fill the void I would post projects from Christmas' past. Some of these may have been posted in previous months, but I thought they'd be fun to see again since it is Christmas time.

Sculpy Nativity

I made this in December of 2005 with great plans of selling it and more like it to set aside money to buy my hubby a bike. Ryan did not get a bike and I never parted with this miniature (less than 1" tall) Nativity.

Sculpy Gingerbread Ornaments

2005 Was the year of sculpy I suppose. I made these as gifts for family members and kept one for our tree. I had prepared to teach how to make them for an activity at Relief Society but the snow in good old Pennsylvania prevented that from ever happening.

REAL Gingerbread Ornaments

The first year that our little family had a real tree was in 2007. We had only had a miniature tree previous to that and did not have enough ornaments to fill up the massive tree we had hauled home. Ryan and I sat down and made these ornaments using the Scoville bakery recipe from Nauvoo. They smell delightful and are still being used this year.

My favorites every year are the Kangaroo and Pig. We have all the traditional shapes as well, but these are just more fun.

Christmas Trees and Advent Box Calendar

Tis The Season!

Yes, I know we've all seen this before but it is just so cute on my wall that I had to repost it. I made this last January. We've waited all year to get it out and use it. Each day there is a chocolate and little ornament for the tree. The boys love it and I sure don't mind when it's my day to open a box and have a little sweet treat.

I hope in the future to fill the boxes with other items besides just treats. How fun would it be to have a different story to read each day, or Christmas song to sing. As is... we are just lucky to get the boxes opened every few days. We can dream big right?

Ribbon Tree

My Mom and youngest sister get the credit for this project. They found the idea, bought the supplies and all I had to do was sit there and follow directions. What a fun little project. My sister would have got an A+ on hers. If you look closely you will see that I'm at about a B / B+ level. Man, I can be sloppy!

Wooden Tree with Button Ornaments

My mom found something like this at the Cranberry Festival in Wisconsin and we got to thinking those four dangerous words "we could make that". I drew it out and my dad cut it out for me. He did let me put the grooves in all by myself. The painting was the fun part. Did you know you can buy paint snow in a jar! How fun, especially after adding the sparkles.

The Legend of the Sand Dollar

The Legend of the Sand Dollar Ornament

The Legend of the Sand Dollar

There's a lovely little legend
that I would like to tell,
of the birth and death of Jesus,
found in this lowly shell.

If you examine closely,
you'll see that you find here,
four nail holes and a fifth one,
made by a Roman's spear.

On one side the Easter lily,
its center is the star,
that appeared unto the shepherds
and led them from afar.

The Christmas Poinsettia
etched on the other side,
reminds us of His birthday,
our happy Christmastide.

Now break the center open,
and here you will release,
the five white doves awaiting,
to spread Good Will and Peace.

This simple little symbol,
Christ left for you and me,
to help us spread His Gospel,
through all Eternity.

Author Unknow

I remember reading this poem at my Grandparents house as a little girl. That was the first place I ever saw a sand dollar. In 2008 Our family headed back to WA state to visit my husbands family. We were able to spend a few days at a quiet beach. There I found myself a great collection of sand dollars. I knew exactly what I was going to do with them when I got them back to Wisconsin.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, packaging design and had a blast coming up with this boxes design.

I made these for my family and a few friends. It is still one of my favorite ornaments on our tree. It reminds me of a great family vacation, my grandparents, and the great reason for this season.

Count Down to Christmas Album

In 2006 I tried my hand at scrap-booking for the first time. This was my first completed project. It was a lot of fun (and work!) I know why I am not a scrap-booker and more of an all around crafter. (Is that a word!?!)

There is a page for each day in December leading up to Christmas. Each page contains a tag with a song, poem, or scripture to read or an activity to do. Honestly, we don't do the activities in this book each year, but I do get it out and look at its pages. By the way, I did not come up with the activities myself. I believe I found them in a "Friend" magazine from December a few years past.

At the time I had maybe 5 stamps... and they were all Halloween themed... so I decided to illustrate the album myself. It does make the book a bit more meaningful though it took more work. (Who has time for this stuff?? Apparently I thought I did...)

Merry Christmas! You made it to the end of the album!

Christmas Advent Quilt

Christmas Advent Quilt

Yes, I know, once again I am posting an "old" project. However, I made this earlier this year and it is up in my home for its first official Christmas. What can I say, I love this project. I got to spend time with my dear friend Jenni making it, and I'm so pleased with how it turned out.

Let's just say I got pretty good at sewing on buttons! (and cutting and appliqueing!)

I know a star isn't gold, frankincense or myrrh, but they just didn't have all of those at JoAnn's or any of the other stores I tried. (Look! I made my first button hole!)

The fun is in the details.

Baby Shower Quilt

I co-hosted a baby shower for a dear friend. We decided to try something I'd never done before. As we talked the idea evolved and we came up with this. Each guest that came traced their hand onto a piece of fabri backed with "wonder-under". We cut out all the hands afterwards and I took them home. Then began the real work... and real fun.

The center of the quilt says "Helping Hands" to remind our friend of everyone who is here to lend a hand when needed.

This is a detail from my favorite part of the quilt. Using my darning foot I was able to quilt butterflies around the border of the quilt. How fun is that! To add a little more fun I used the thread that changes colors as you go from white to lavendar to purple and back again. Too much fun!

I then went in and quilted in the names of all the people at the shower onto their handprint.

You can see "holly" pretty well on this hand.
I loved getting to play with my quilting skills on this project. I may struggle with the straight lines, but curly and crazy ones are a breeze. Oh well, we already knew I wasn't normal.

On the bright side of Mono

At the end of July I found myself to be... S-I-C-K. The doctor suspected mono and I found myself on the couch for several days. Gracious friends brought meals and cared for kids. When I wasn't sleeping I found a great way to pass time. Card making! it worked out great because when all was said and done, and I was back on my feet again, I had plenty of Thank You notes ready to go!
Props to Stampin' Up and their Template to make 16 cards out of one 12x12 patterned paper and 8 solid 12x12 cardstock pages.

Cute stamps, right? I love finding stamps at Garge Sales!

Picture Puzzles for Sunday

So, I had so much fun with the picture puzzle idea that I had to take it a step further. This is the same idea as my previous post, only I used some images that would be fun for church or Sunday afternoon. I included a family picture and the boys favorite temple... Salt Lake. I also had to have a picture of Daniel the prophet...
I also through in some other favorites. Here's how it turned out.

Puzzle Pictures

Props to my friend Chris for this great idea and how to do it. Using 12 abc blocks I was able to put together a 6 sided puzzle. Since I have three sons I though it would be nice to place a current picture of each of them on one side along with a baby picture of each of them. Using Adobe Photoshop I dazzled up the pictures with a little digital scrap-booking. After printing, slicing and dicing, the images were ready to be adhered to the blocks with a little Super 77 (My FAVORITE brand of spray adhesive). After everything was in place it was time to go old school and get out the Mod-Podge. That has protected the surfaces and kept all the pictures in place when the kids play with them. Right, you thought they were for decorative purposes only? Is anything just for decoration when you have kids? No.

Chore Chart

The day I found an laminator / bookbinder on clearance at Wal-Mart for $20.00 changed my life. No, not really. It has been a lot of fun though. One evening I went looking for a great chore chart to print out and had no luck so it was off to the old drawing board for me. I put together this little octopus and laminated it. Each leg has a chore written in dry-erase marker on it. When the chore is complete the leg can be put in place on the octopus. Pretty simple, pretty fun, and really pretty effective. The boys look forward to seeing what new chores will be posted and enjoy putting the octopus together.

Back to School Snacks

Our Relief Society had a "Back to School" night and I was named as the Food Science 101 Professor, with a focus on after school snacks. Truth be told, before this my kids were lucky to get dry cereal after school... but that's be side the point. I did some research and discovered all of the great possibilities out there. I think these ideas would be great for special days or for bringing in snacks for the class room. I had a lot of fun and found most of the ideas at either marthastewartliving.com or familyfunmagazine.com. There were more ideas out there than I could possibly demonstrate so I focused in on FISH... you know like a school of fish. And I focused on APPLES, for obvious reasons.

I filled up a fish bowl with ...GOLD FISH, pretzels as fishing rods, marshmallows for bubbles and gummy worms for bait. Believe me, the kids took the bait!

These little beauties are made of dried mangoes and pretzels for the tails. They are held together by frosting. I used a dot of frosting for the eye and then placed a mini chocolate chip on top. my favorite part here is the plate. I purchased it at our local dollar tree and I use it everyday for the kids school. It doubles as a dry erase board! Each day my boys come home there is a question of the day for my 7 year old to read, like "How did you help at school?" or "What did you play at recess". Then in the middle of the plate I like to write a simple word for my 5 year old to read. When I can I like it to relate to the snack. For this snack I'd write "fish".

These are my favorite fall cookie... besides all of my other favorite fall cookies.

I set up an assemble it yourself station labeling the different toppings in order. This would be a fun surprise after school for any kid. #1 Peanut Butter #2 Thinly Sliced Apples #3 Caramel #4 Cinnamon. Delicious!! I wish I had one to eat right now!
Apples, apples, apples. An apple at room temperature can post a special message for your special little someone or it can simply carry a smile when you use a non-toxic dry erase marker. The message can be easily wiped off before eating.

A gummy worm in an apple makes for a healthy but also tasty after school snack, or fun lunch box surprise.
Now these are my kind of apples. Cupcake Apples! I used a white cake mix and added in mini chocolate chips for seeds. ;) They are topped off by red frosting and sprinkles. The stems and leaves are made of original tootsie rolls and lime flavored tootsie rolls.

I have to admit, I have been trying a little harder after this to make coming home from school more pleasant. I try everyday to have a plate and a snack waiting for my little guys. It doesn't have to be fancy. A banana that has been specially chosen for them with a cup of chocolate milk can go a long way.