Happy New Year Breakfast

Nobody in this house was either well enough or old enough to stay up until midnight and ring in the new year, last night. So I thought I'd take advantage of the fact that the only headache I am suffering from is the one induced by congestion, cough and cold and make a special Happy New Year breakfast for my kids. Let's face it, with New Year's Day falling right after New Year's Eve, my children are unlikely to be getting many special, bright and breezy 7am Happy New Year Breakfasts, so I thought I'd make the most of it this year, cold be damned.

The stars on this glass milk bottle were punched out of white contact paper and stuck onto the glass.

I made these milk cartons using a really helpful tutorial from Splitcoaststampers you can find here. I guess you could seal the lids if you wanted to, though I used mini paper clips to keep them shut.

Because this is a breakfast party after all (remember.... no hangover!!) I made up a special cereal which I poured into their milk cartons. I used pretzels, mini marshmallows, teddy grahams, M and Ms, and a handful of actual cereal. The spoons are there to kid you into thinking that my kids will actually use a utensil to eat this.

With a pinkish theme going on, I got some small bottles of pink lemonade and made some hang tags for them. Luckily I ran out of 2 and 1 stickers so I was forced to write 2012 in Roman Numerals, something that my son asks me about almost every day because of the Roman Numerals marking chapters in books. I printed him out this sheet because he's 7 and always asks me lots of questions I don't know the answers to.

Happy New Year!

I hope that 2012 will be full of healthy and happy days for you.

Roll on 2012...

Christmas table

Christmas aside, things have been hectic in our house this week. Among other things and without sounding like I'm moaning because things could be A LOT worse, we have a kitten recovering from an op, a 5yr old daughter recovering from a bout of pneumonia and a sewing machine recovering from its power supply blowing up. All of those things are on the mend thank goodness.

Since we've been laying low at home whilst all this has been going on (and because my sewing machine was out of action last week) I turned my hand to prettying up our dinning table with some Christmassy details.

I have a selection of pine cones (some I collected with the children on a walk a few months ago and some I bought from Michaels that are cinnamon scented) and I put them on a plate stand I made using a dinner plate and an upturned bowl.

I've been busy making batches of mince pies (they make my husband happy), which are a traditional English Christmas feature. Either you love them or hate them. We like them warm with cream poured on top.

Of course, there's also our gingerbread house which was put together using the kit from Trader Joes.

The kids and I have been discussing our Christmas dinner, making a list for grocery shopping and putting together this menu. Hopefully it'll please everyone in our family.

This is the reverse side of the menu. Can you tell we've been cooped up in this house for too long?!?!? I've never written out a menu card before and we really went to town on this one!

The kids and I also made these little ball ornaments which are also laying on the table. Making them kept the kids entertained for about 15 mins, which was pretty good going.

My 5yr old wrote the names on our place cards. I usually get called 'mummy' not 'mommy' so I'm not sure what compelled her to write this but I've given up trying to work out how the mind of this little girl works.

In all, it's looking like Christmas here and the kids are BEYOND excited.

Wishing you all the very best for the holidays!

Little gifts and a maths lesson

I wanted to share with you what we gave my children's school friends this year. My 7yr old is in second grade and they had a class party this week and each child was asked to bring in little stocking treats for each person. I made these little matchbook notepads (you can find a quick explanation on how to make them by clicking here) and Christmassified them a little stamp on the front cover. I fortunately found some boxes of small colored pencils and tied one to each of the notebooks (I had been resisting the temptation to run over to IKEA and nick some of their little yellow pencils as they would have also been perfect but I am not dishonest enough to take 30. FYI, I later found out that you can BUY those little yellow pencils - they are called golf pencils).

For my daughter's pre-k class, the kids and I put together these little bags of 'snowballs'. At least, I thought the marshmallows looked like snowballs - the 5yr old apparently did not, but that didn't stop her eating them. These bags were actually great to make up because my kids got completely involved. We set up a little assembly line, had a quality control guy checking the numbers, a label maker...the kids loved it. My 7yr old was in charge of working out the different amounts of marshmallows, bags and labels we needed. At one point he even said to me 'Wow! This is like maths but with instead of numbers it's marshmallows!' I explained to him that this is exactly why they teach you maths in school, so that you can apply what you know to everyday situations when you need it. He totally got it and was so excited to be sorting piles of tens and units.

I never really felt like that about maths because it was always a subject I struggled with in school. Now that I do more sewing I use maths much more and I can literally feel the cogs of my brain slowly kick into life and start to turn with a reluctant rusty squeal. Just the other day I needed to work out the diameter of a circle from the circumference and it took me ages. In fact, I had to look it up in the end. Probably you already know, but you need that little Pi guy, so no wonder I couldn't work it out in my own head, and despite knowing Pi off by heart I had no idea you needed it to work out the diameter of a circle. It's probably good for all sorts of things I don't know about.

As my husband pointed out to me later that day that's the difference between learning by rote and really understanding something. And if the Christmas snowball bag making extravaganza is anything to go by, my son is obviously way ahead of me already. But I knew that already.

Orange pomander from Martha

I noticed this idea on the Martha site a while ago and tonight I got around to giving this a go with the kids. It helps that we have a huge orange tree in our garden which is perpetually laden with fruit.

Martha suggests using an elastic band to wrap around the fruit to give you a nice straight line.

Of course, children don't want to make nice straight lines.

Even if I do.

They want to make funny faces. With hair!

We placed them on a plate as a table centerpiece along with some pine cones and some orange leaves.

I didn't preserve these oranges so I don't expect they will last very long. Luckily we have more fruit than we can eat on the tree, so we can always make more.

More gift tags and new border punches

Have you seen the new interchangeable border punches from Fiskars? I was sent a set of them and they've been getting some use, helping me get ready for some happy gift giving. I made this gift tag (it took me a while because I wanted to get it just right. This was a one off. I will not be spending the same amount of time on all the other gift tags I need!!)

The new punches are really cool because they take up so much less storage space. You get one punch and you can swap and change the cartridges for different designs. They stack on top of each other too.

Silhoutette Portraits

I have another Christamassy project up over at Fiskars that you might want to check out. I show you one way to make some silhouette portraits. I put mine on some colorful moleskin notebooks and on linen mounted in a frame. Have you made these before? How did you present yours?

Felt flower brooch

A while back before the summer I made this felt flower brooch which I gave to my mum. She came to stay with me recently and she brought the brooch with her because she loves to wear it, a lot. She told me that people often stop her in the street and comment on it (my mum is well known for exaggerating) but while she was here and we were out together, guess what? So many people stopped her in the street to ask about her brooch! With great glee and pride she would tell them that I had made it. Then they'd comment on the beautiful bag she was carrying (also made by me!) and she'd be giving them my email address and contact details and trying to sort me out with commissions.

Before she left to go back home, I wanted to make her a little goodbye and I love you gift so I made her another brooch, but this time using more wintery/Christmassy colors. I also cut the flowers slightly differently, which I think I prefer.

Burlap Christmas wreath

I really wanted to make a wreath with my kids. I'd seen so many inspiring ones around and the kids love a good craft so we went to the fabric store and I was drawn to this red burlap. As much as I love natural fibers, burlap is generally a bit 'rustic' for me. I prefer bright, bold and modern. Having said that, most of my Christmas ornaments and decorations are wooden and felt because the majority were bought when my eldest was a baby and we didn't want too many breakables around the house. So actually, this wreath fits right in. Or at least it will do. Once we get the rest of the decorations out.

I bought a straw wreath from JoAnns for just a couple of dollars and wrapped strips of natural burlap around it.

Actually the kids did the wrapping. I was in charge of the glue gun which I dabbed in places, to keep the burlap on the wreath.

The kids even worked together with one of them holding the wreath and one of them wrapping it. (This would have been a completely blissful project in fact, if it had not been for the amount of burlap 'dust' that covered all surfaces and us by the end).

My lovely boy. Growing up so fast.

We made burlap flowers which we stuck onto the wreath with the glue gun. The 7 yr old quickly got the hang of making perfect flowers after a couple of tries.

I still need to decide how to hang this up and where to put it. It's an indoor wreath. I don't think it would last too long outside. Even in SoCal weather.

Sewing for boys - Pajamas

You all know how much I love the book Sewing For Boys because I have told you several times. What you may not know is that I made the Goodnight Sweetheart pajamas for an article I wrote for Fiskars about handmade Christmas gifts. Do read the article because there are some useful ideas about enhancing store bought items with heartfelt embellishments.

I suggested making these lovely pajamas and you can read more about the project here. They are a complete joy to sew up.

Last weekend I used the pajama pants pattern to make some cozy fleecey bottoms for my kids. I bought a couple of while long sleeved t-shirts (perhaps white was a bad choice...) for the top.

So snug and warm for winter.

Rudolph gift tags

I don't know about you but I am having to tell the kids that no, we can’t get our decorations up yet, on a daily basis. It’s hard for them because so many of our neighbors have their lights and decorations up already. We may LIVE in America, but we are still English. And that means we can’t possibly contemplate getting a tree in November. I remember one occasion a few years ago when my eldest was about 5 and he said to me on an early December morning ‘Quick mum, let’s put our decorations up now and they’ll all think we’re American!’ Poor boy.

Anyway, even though we don’t have our decorations up we’re still starting to get into the Christmas spirit. Much of my shopping is done, our beloved wooden nutcracker dolls have been unboxed and are back in their rightful winter places safely tucked up in my kids’ bed (don’t ask) and I made a special Christmas Songs Pandora station which has been turned on more than once.

I spent some time wrapping some gifts earlier this week to send back to England and I made some gift tags for them. Do you sometimes see a craft project or tutorial that just inspires you so much that you have to give it a go almost immediately? This happens to me often, and it happened when I saw this tutorial on the Fiskars website written by designer Lisa Storms. If you scroll down a bit you’ll see her really amazing and clever way to make a little reindeer using some Fiskars punches.

I couldn’t get this little guy out of my mind.

Being on the design team, I am lucky enough to have been given a lot of Fiskars products so I was able to give this Rudolph a try. Lisa used a snowflake punch for his antlers but I used a tree punch I have. You'll have to go and read the whole tutorial to discover which punch she used for his head. Genius!

I still need to make plenty more gift tags. If you have made some you think I'll love, let me know, ok?

Cushions...continued

Do you remember these cushions I made a while back? Well, I finally got around to making some bigger ones that co-ordinate and sit behind the first set on my sofa. I used another print from Amy Butler's beautiful Lark collection - River Shine and put a kind of piping around the edge. I'm not sure what to call this piping stuff - it's like a twisted, coiled piping.

I find the colors in these prints completely irresistible.

Miniature embroidery hoops

I have a new tutorial up over at Fiskars. I know it's hard to think about Christmas with having Thanksgiving this week (US readers) but this is a sweet little craft that takes very little time and I always think that a bit of hand sewing is such a calming, pace-changing activity. You can read the full tutorial here.

Talking of Thanksgiving, I have been wondering about whether to join so many other bloggers and write a post about what I'm feeling thankful for... Part of me thinks that if I start writing, I would probably never stop. Writing the first few sentences would open a flood gate of emotion I'm not sure would ever run dry. Just thinking about this time of year literally fills my heart to overflowing, makes my hands shake and want to hold my children and husband so close that I'd never let them go.

Sewing for boys for girls

Last week my daughter had to go to school dressed as a scarecrow for their Scarecrow Olympics day. She didn't have anything plaid so I picked up some plaid jersey from my local discount fabric store for about $1 and quickly made up the Raglan Tee with long sleeves for her to wear with jeans and a straw hat. The Raglan Tee is such a lovely pattern and takes probably less than an hour from start to finish. I left the sleeves and hem raw and let the fabric curl naturally.