Teacher Gifts - Coffee Cozies and a Gift Card

I have several other Christmas crafts I made but I haven't posted yet because I keep forgetting to get some decent pictures!  I need to wrangle those kiddos this weekend to get some and will post them next week.

I made the kids' teachers Coffee Cozies this year and included a cup (I just asked for them when I bought the gift cards) with a $5 gift card inside.  They turned out really cute!  I made three of the brown/turquoise fabric.  Paige also has one male teacher and I was originally going to come up with a different gift for him.  However, it was the evening before the last day of school before the holiday break and I hadn't ever picked up an alternate gift.  So.... I dug around and found this faux-leather that I bought at Halloween to make Blake's boots and wrist-thingies from for his Halloween costume.  I used a brown houndstooth on the inside and it ended up looking very manly :-)

It wasn't what I had planned for him but I'm happy with how it turned out and hope that he can and will use it.  If not, at least he got the giftcard too.  Here they are all packaged up and ready to go.  I included a personal note from Mark and I as well.

And while I'm posting, let me throw in this cake I made for my nephew's BDay last month.  His party didn't really have a 'theme', but my sister-in-law was taking all the kiddos go-carting and one of Nate's favorite video games is ModNation Racers, so I just took inspiration from the game cover.  He was happy and it sure was yummy, so I call it a hit!

I apparently need to work on my 'writing names on cakes' skills as well as my counting skills.  I started putting down little 'stars' of frosting to stick the candles in to - put down 12 'stars' but only needed 11.  We'll just call that extra one a decoration, shall we?

I'll get those pics taken this weekend and will post some more crafty-goodness next week.



Handmade Birthday Gift - Bella hat from Eclipse

One of Paige's friends has a late December birthday.  They're always hard, especially because money is usually tight right around that time.  She was having an "Eclipse" themed party (Team Jacob, of course) and I proposed that we make her a hat like one Bella wore in the movie.  It's this one, from the camping scene:

I found a crochet pattern online here and whipped it up in under 2 hours.  It came out pretty good, I think.  Here is Paige modeling it:

The ribbed brim should have been a little longer, but I was adjusting the size as I went for a child's head, so couldn't go as far down.  Paige said the BDay girl liked it, wore it while they all watched the movie, and then even did a "Hat Dance" during that scene.  When we wrapped it up, we included a print from the movie so she understood what she was getting.

Score for handmade gifts!  Enjoy!

Ridiculously Absent...

I haven't posted in over a month.  That's just plain pitiful, I know.  No excuse other than the typical ones... busy with family, with work, with the holidays, etc.

We had a very nice Thanksgiving even though we ALL passed around a yucky stomach bug the weekend before.  The week before Christmas we went to visit Mark's grandmother Lora in Snyder, TX.  It was a very nice visit and eased some of my roadtrip-with-kiddos-anxiety.  They did very well and really had a good time.

Christmas was just excellent.  I think everyone was really happy with everything.  I had a LONG list of handmade projects I was going to gift this year, but my sewing maching really started acting wonky the last few months so I started and failed many times.  I abandoned some, but still plan to complete others, but my handmade gift giving was a little limited this year.  I'll post what I did get done separately.

However, after hearing me lament about my crappy second-hand machine, Mark and the kids all decided to get me a new Janome sewing machine for Christmas.  I'm still in the 'playing with all the cool features' stage with it, but expect to be doing a lot more sewing soon.

All in all, all is well and I hope to have much more to post for this year.  My wonderful sister-in-law Kim went out with us one weekend to do some family pics for our Christmas cards.  We got some good ones.

I do hope everyone had a wonderful end to 2010 and is looking forward to great things to come in 2011.