Merry Christmas!

A few photos of the holidays...





We are thankful for the good company of family and friends, good food, warmth and light, and good health.


The girls had their holiday concert at NEC. My middle child plays cello in first chair.


My oldest played viola and was lucky enough to have a few soloist parts.



Three little green monsters that I made for each of my girls...



A few cake topper sets which I completed just before the holidays...

Getting into the spirit of Christmas, crafting and cleaning house

I'm making slow but steady progress on the doll as more snow comes our way. I hope to attach the arms and legs to the body today and crochet a little hair "cap". I'll add the eyes and mouth tonight once I quiz my daughter again on the eye color. I think she wants the eyes closed like Annie.

Meanwhile I am cleaning, and dusting, and vacuuming, and dusting, and dusting, and dusting .... Ugh! This is not my favorite thing to do. I know I'm whining about this a little but this kind of job is never ending.

I have one little wee folk doll finished. She is pretty cute with a little acorn cap. Now I just have to finish a few more and make a little woodland house for them. Hmmm.....

I can't help enjoying the pretty scene outside with the snow falling (... again).

Getting into the spirit of Christmas, crafting for my family!

Last night I finally sat down to start on a "friend" for Annie Ootie. Annie is my daughter's waldorf style doll and she wants a friend. At first this friend was going to be a little boy but now it looks like it will be a girl named Rosie. I have the head finished and the cloth cut out for the body, legs, and arms. I am using the Magic Cabin doll kit again. I think Rosie might end up as an Annie's twin since my daughter indicated that black hair was not acceptable. The only other I have right now is blond.

Guests are showing up for Christmas on Friday and I am seriously behind on the house cleaning. So I know I will be busy working on this for the next few days too. Also we need to start thinking about what we might have for Christmas dinner.

Though I love the snow I am silently cursing it now. Having a rather short driveway I need to make room for at least two cars along the road. That means digging out a two foot (at least) snow berm that is pretty frozen. I am hoping the small snow storm in the immediate forecast is small!

Similar to JRR Tolkien's Father Christmas letters, Santa writes and draws letters to our children. Each year is a continuing story of Santa, the elves, Polar Bear, and his good friend Penguin.

Getting into the spirit of Christmas, the second step!

In reality I have skipped my first step (making our Christmas cards). But I'm not going to let that stop me from going forward. This weekend I promise will make an attempt at that project. I am going to continue our trend of using our children's artwork in combination with a few of their photos.

In the meantime I am continuing my small steps to the holidays. Every year I try a few new handmade decorations to get me in the spirit. I wanted to share one cute idea I had. Being a big collector of driftwood I thought this little card/note holder was a great idea. I had seen many wire holders but none using driftwood. If I had had more time I would have tried making some for my shop but that will have to wait until next year I suppose.



I also made a few more wire "curls" to place in my blue bottle collection in my kitchen "niches". Putting a used wine cork on the end and into the bottle helps them sit up better.





My daughter has a friend named "Annie Ootie". She is an adorable cloth doll in the Waldorf style. This Christmas my daughter wants a friend for her. So next week my plan is to start work on this friend. I think that Annie wants a little boy to be her friend. This time I promised to let my daughter see the process and have some say in the hair and eye color. I have a kit I purchased from Magic Cabin last year and some yarn for hair.

Chicken girl

I have been wanting to make a few little dolls for my shop but only managed to get this little one done.


I guess I am a bit rusty on doing this. I have made so many over the years as birthday gifts, party favors, Christmas decorations, but its been a while since I had the opportunity to do this again. I dreamed of this little chicken girl a few days ago and wanted to try it. I couldn't decide whether to make the precious hen black or white but settled on black in the end.

A set of my little pottery chickens is in another Etsy Treasury called Big Cocks by poorlulu