[Image via Condé Nast]
The past few weeks have been full of Christmas present making, birthday gift buying, baby stuff planning and baby shower invite designing!
We’ve been making the majority of our presents for a couple of years now; which is fun, budget-friendly, as well as, time consuming. In my family, we mainly do presents for the kids and just a gift exchange for the adults since there are so many of us. Andrew’s immediate family is smaller so we buy gifts, but we’ve also made gifts for them in the past.
This year we got an early start and many presents have already been completed. I’m really excited about them and want to post them but I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise for some people!
So instead I will post about a few of the gifts that we’ve made in the past years. You can read past posts about Christmas gifts here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Apron and cookbook for Monica: Designed and sewn by Andrew. Made from thrifted fabric.
Bag O’ Shapes for Arwen: Designed, sewn and screenprinted by myself and Andrew. Made from canvas, thrifted fabric, and polyfill. This is something that we eventually hope to make more and sell in our etsy shop.
Doll for Abigail: Based on this design from a Japanese craft book. Crocheted scarf and a skirt made from a doily.
Leg Warmers for Abigail: I designed and crocheted these, but it was difficult because I’ve never made a pair before and I didn’t have Abigail to try them on as I was making them.
Crocheted Bag for Mariela: I crocheted this from a free pattern that I found at JoAnn Fabrics. Made with Bernat Handicrafter Cotton Naturals (you can find the pattern online here at the Bernat site, but you need to sign up for a free account.)
–c.
In thinking about what to get some of the nieces and nephews for Christmas I remembered seeing wooden guitar cut-outs that the Make Believe Company was making. So I did my own versions. One is based off of my Fender Coronado. The other is a Les Paul.
The latter was given to a friend for his daughters. Before I started his I asked him what his favorite guitar was, he simply texted back: gold top. It worked out quite nicely seeing as the top is technically golden.
Here’s our nephew Falcon mid howl. He has an interesting way of holding the neck but far be it from me to tell someone else how to rock.
As you may have picked up on from my use of the past tense and the visual of Falcon rocking, these guitars have already been distributed. So Christmas presents was the goal but they turned into Autumn gifts instead. Oh well, there’s never a bad time to give a gift.
-a.
PS – We have video of Falcon, too! It’s hilarious. If we can put it up we will.
Our lovely friend Angela gave this to us recently! It’s a paper cut portrait of us on our wedding day, with the words “Nothing Can Change This Love” (which is the title of the Sam Cooke song that Andrew and I danced to at our wedding).
It’s absolutely stunning and we love it so much. Angela makes beautiful paper cuts and never ceases to amaze me with her talent. I wish she had a website that showcased all her work so I could share it with all of you, but until then take a look at these detail shots. Super fantastic!
–c.
Surprise! Another crocheted toy for the baby!
This one though is not from the same pattern book as the others I’ve made recently. I found the pattern online here. But I only followed the pattern for the body/head part because I didn’t read the whole pattern before I started. I didn’t realize that the legs are knit and not crocheted and I don’t know how to knit! (Though I sorely want to learn.) So for the legs I just winged it and surprisingly they turned out better, in my opinion, than the ones in the original pattern.
How, you ask, do I have all this time to crochet? The answer is: It’s basketball season. The CAVS have been playing every other night it seems and after last season, and in my heightened state of emotions, I can’t seem to take the anxiety. So instead of actually watching the game, I crochet during the game so I don’t get so worked up. It’s been working out quite nicely. I finished two Christmas presents during the last two games!
–c.
The trees in our yard have been bare for a few weeks now but before all the leaves fell I was able to get a few shots of them in their full autumn glory! I can’t believe Thanksgiving is next week. Where did the time go?
p.s. The glass circle hanging from the tree is a beautiful bird feeder by Eva Solo that we got for our wedding from our friend Iliana. We used to have it hanging on our porch but the birds loved it so much that they made such a mess all the time!
–c.
This baby is going to have one million crocheted toys before it’s even born! Here are the newest additions: Mushrooms! These are also from the same craft book (Ana Paula Rimoli’s Amiguri Two!) as the Peas in the Pod and the Turtle Mama that I posted about before.
These ones are a little different than the ones in the book though. The pattern called for white felt circles to be sewn onto the mushroom cap, but I didn’t really like the look of it so I just used white yarn to embroider circles onto the cap. I wasn’t so sure about how the circles turned out since they aren’t filled in completely like you’d normally see on a mushroom but I think they are growing on me.
I have plans to make a super-huge one but I’ll have to add that to the end of my list of things. I still have a quilt to get cracking on!
–c.
These were taken when I visited Andrew while he was living on Bodhi Creek Farm located in the foothills of Washington State’s North Cascade mountain range. The top image is of one of the many huge slugs one could encounter while on a walk in the woods (we don’t have those here in Ohio). And the bottom photo was taken in an old growth forest.
–c.
Our lives have been on hold for the past few weeks while waiting for our furnace to be replaced. We had to dismantle our craft closet and the contents have been strewn about cluttering up our living room. Also our whole upstairs has been in disarray since they had to put in new duct work that required us to move things from their designated areas.
This week the furnace dudes were finally able to make it out to our house. We now have a lovely new efficient furnace and vents on the second floor, which it was sorely lacking before. We are warm and toasty but our house looks like a war-zone and we now have the task of getting this place back in order. This weekend will be dedicated to this and I’m hoping to have more posts for next week!
Until then, I’ll leave you to be awe-inspired by this blog: Resurrection Fern
[Image via Resurrection Fern on etsy]
–c.