Hoooot!

Hi All,
Such a busy Christmas season this year! I've been a real crafting workhorse (a crafthorse?) lately. Hmmm...I think I like that - crafthorse. I'm going to call myself that from now on. But that's not why I'm writing today. Check out the freakin' cute owl ornaments I made with another tutorial from juicybits!!!

I made this little guy first. Cute!

I made him a little guy friend next and then my 25 year old daughter got caught up in the frenzy and made a girl owl! See how the boys are both looking over at the girl and she's peeking back?

Whooooo do you think she'll choose?

My daughter gave the girl owl and the purple boy owl to her new boyfriend's parents for Xmas, so I guess owl girl chose purple!

It should have stopped there, but me being a crafthorse and all, I had to keep going! I made a boy and girl owl to represent my husband and I.

And hung them right up on the tree. Awwwww! It's love.

Edited to say: I later made an owl softie with the same pattern! Worked great.

In other news, on Gigi's party day Sunday we took the kids out to the Nature and Science Center. Absolutely gorgeous weather here in Austin, 68 degrees and sunny. Hot in the sun, cold in the shade. Gigi loves leaves.

I call this photo "the essence of boyhood". Playing so hard he stepped in the water and got his socks and shoes wet. Took them off and found special rocks to line up and sort through. Very busy. Very boy.

And Gigi loved her party! Rare to catch her smiling, notice it wasn't when she could see me taking the photo.

Hope your holidays are filled with joy and love and crafthorsiness. (Look, I just made up another word! You can use it - go ahead!)

Advent Calendar Gets a New Ornament

Merry Christmas (almost) everyone!  My sewing room
has been turned into the Christmas room, but that's okay, I'm only in there once in a while anyway, being a hand sewer.  The stockings are hung on my design wall with care!  (No, really, they are!)
















Today I'd like to share our ancestral Advent calendar.  I'm pretty sure it was made by my Aunt, Sister Mary Alice in the 70's.

It just says home to me.  Everytime I see it I'm transported back to my childhood.  The little ornaments live in the pockets (see that fish in #22?) and every day a child gets to hang one on the tree.  The angel goes second last at the top of the tree and the nativity scene goes last.

















Well I've been missing one of the precious ornaments for years now and every year I think I'm going to make another one and I never do.  So this year I finally did it!  Here's a cute snowman I made out of 100% wool felt with no stabilizer.

Funny story about that snowman.  I put it on the tree to take the photo and left it there.  Apparently I put it right at two year old height.  When I came back five minutes later, she had grabbed the wool snowman and stretched it downward with all her might.  Having no stabilizers, it stretched like crazy and looked, well, crazy.  Sigh.  I had such a cute ornament for five minutes.  I managed to recompose it a bit so it looks more normal. Don't have a photo of that, didn't want to show you!












Here is my favorite ornament, the nativity scene:

Feliz navidad, ya'll!