Cute Handmade Shirts for Gifts

Luke and my unborn baby boy got quite a few really cute handmade shirts for Christmas!

My sister-in-law made several super tiny onesies for our baby boy who’s not here yet! 

She also made this other onesie for the baby, and one for Luke to match

And lastly, another shirt for Luke

They are perfect. (Thanks, Amy!)

First, My mom made each of her grandkids these adorable snowman shirts! 

I was actually talking to her on the phone and told her my plan to make one and she said “NO! don’t do it!!”  Then she told me she made them for all the kids!  Honestly, hers came out way cuter and I’m grateful I didn’t have to sew all those buttons on!!

However, that left me with a plain white shirt for Luke still…so I made this one! 

It’s based off this print from JSGD.  I found the dino svg file here.  I designed it with Sure-Cuts-a-Lot and cut it out of freezer paper using my Cricut.  Then I painted it with fabric paint.

It says the same thing as the shirt Amy made, and darn it do great minds think alike or what!  This phrase is actually pretty perfect for Luke who is always going around rawr-ing at people!  I like that he has 2 versions of the phrase on shirts now.  If' I’d known I could have made him a different shirt—but I didn’t, so now he has two :)

Lastly, every year I make Luke a shirt to wear on Christmas Day.  Last year I made a bleached Tee. 

This is his (very appropriate) shirt for this year:

I also did this one with a freezer paper stencil. 

Love that Luke has a bunch of cute handmade shirts now, and I look forward to putting the little ones on my little baby!

Pretend this has a Stamp.

Christmas Decor

{sorry for the absence!  Sometimes it’s hard to catch up after a vacation!}

Keeping it pretty simple this year…with the exception of our Christmas Tree.  It is huge and round and beautiful and I filled it up with wonderful ornaments.  I love that we paid less than $50 for it at Costco and since they come already netted it was a total mystery what it would look like!  I don’t think I could have picked a better tree off a lot!!  I still have to take a nightly shot of it all glowing and beautiful—for that I need to play around with my camera settings!

Many of the ornaments I collected each year growing up, some we’ve bought together since being married, and then I made several ornaments this year to add as well! I also switched out the multi-colored lights that I usually go with for white ones and I love it that much more! It’s my favorite tree yet!

This little angel is the ornament I bought in memory of Rachel last year. 

And the little details scattered around making it feel a little more like Christmas around here:

Found this sign at Hobby Lobby (50% off of course) 

The mantle this year.  I have plans to make new stockings, and I’ve even bought the fabric I want to use…now it’s just a matter of whether or not I will get it done!!

What you can’t see in the above picture is how EMPTY the wall above it still is.  Haven’t decided what to put there since we painted the walls. A collage of frames, mirrors or one giant mirror?  still thinkin about it. 

And I haven’t put up the photo/art gallery wall above the couch either! Such a big job and I’m putting it off…

Anyway, that’s it for this year!  I didn’t even decorate the entry way—though this was the first year we did outside lights.  I haven’t taken pictures yet because it’s so coooooold outside at night!! brrrrr!

Drowning in the To Do List

It's been FIVE days since I posted last! But this is just a teaser post because i have absolutely ZERO time to be on here posting!!

--I still have a friend's family photos to edit

--I have currently 6 family tree orders I am working on!

--I have said yes to helping with an activity Wednesday night that requires me to make card-making kits for about 20 people!

--I have still to even LOOK at our pictures from our Florida trip and we got back on Thursday!

--My laundry pile is enormous and I'm trying to get through it today

--I have a preschool Christmas party to plan for the end of the week

--I still have one more ornament tutorial to finish and post here--but I think it will be worth they wait--I think they are going to turn out awesome!

--Not to mention we still need to get a Christmas Tree and decorate for my favorite holiday ever!

--And I need to take more maternity photos for this week because I'm pretty sure I'm now officially enormous and need photos to prove it to those who keep telling me I'm not. I have another appointment on Wednesday and can you believe I only have 7 weeks left til my due date?? I can't. It went so fast!

OK...I'm off to cross off some of these items off my list!

Fall Decor

So you probably saw most of this in yesterday’s post, but here’s a couple extra shots of the simple fall décor I put up around the house.

The fireplace—you saw this picture in yesterday’s post.   I made the sweater pumpkins last year and I still love them.

  The Entertainment Center

I love this centerpiece.  It’s simple, and easily removable from the table when we need more space to play games with friends and whatnot :)

This leaf pillow was actually a placemat I got from walmart! I just unpicked the seam, stuffed it and then sewed it back up!

The painted tree in the entry got a Fall update with scrapbook paper leaves

And the porch outside which I didn’t do a whole lot with—we just kept the pumpkins from Halloween, and then I put the acorn wreath that I made last year back on the door.  I made some leaf garland to hand down the windows (actually, I got lazy and only ever did one side!)

That was our fall décor—probably should have posted these pictures earlier, but time gets away from me sometimes!  Now it’s onto Christmas Décor!! 

The New Paint!

After months of staring at my walls, contemplating what to do with them, I’m so happy to say that they are DONE!

So my kitchen and one wall of my dining room used to be green, but I didn’t want to carry the green into the living room, so I was just kind of stuck. One day I decide I’d just have to paint over the green, and after that it went pretty quickly! I was able to land on a color I liked and I got a sample can of it. I painted sample swatches pretty much everywhere downstairs and decided to go for it! Our neighbor friends came over to help us and we got the living room, dining room and kitchen painted in just 4 hours! A third of the time it would have taken me to do myself.

Ok, so here it what it looked like before:

The line between the dining room area and the living room bugged me every.single.day.

And here’s is some of the chaos we lived in for a few days after it was painted (turned out to be a busy week and we had a hard time getting it put back together.

And here is how it looks now! I got new curtains that go better with the color, but there’s still a few more things that need to be addressed—like the fireplace and redoing the frame gallery behind the couch.

Yeah, I pretty much love it! Everything looks brighter and better, I find that it’s easier to coordinate my decor. I didn’t realize how much it was stressing me out until it was all finished and I could feel the burden of it disappear. What do you think? It’s a nice soft aqua green (the pics make it look more blue) —I will update this post when I get home with the real color name.

*So the paint color is called April Mist 450E-2 (by Behr) and I used Olympic ONE paint (Lowe's)*

Ornament #5 Pom-Poms

Now, I actually had a really cool ornament tutorial to show you, but they were taking forever to dry and we had to leave for Florida for the holiday so I couldn’t get that tutorial finished before I left!  So when I get back later next week, I will finish the tutorial and then put it up as a kind of a late bonus tutorial!  They are pretty stunning thus far…here is a sneak peak:

But since time was not on my side this week, I came up with another quick and easy ornament.  If you’ve been making or will be making some of these ornaments that I’ve posted this week, you will probably have leftover yarn to use for these pom-poms.  I like these for ornaments because they are most definitely kid-friendly!

{PS excuse my crappy pictures, I was tired and was doing these late at night while we watched TV}

All you do is grab a fork. I used a really big fork to get bigger pom-poms

Cut a piece of yarn about 6-8 inches or so long and drape it evenly on both sides like this:

Then start wrapping yarn around the fork

When you feel like you are done wrapping (I didn’t really count how many times I went around-just play around with it) pull really tight and tie a knot.  Then take it off the fork and pull it really tight again and tie another knot.  You should have some string left for a loop to hang the ornament.

Cut the loops

Trim to look like a ball!

Done!

The one on the left I did with a regular fork, and the two on the right I did with the jumbo fork.

You can find really cool sparkly yarn too—I found this at Hobby Lobby—it will bring a little bling to your poms

That’s it!  And that concludes my Handmade Ornament Party Week!

*********************

Like I said we are in Florida right now celebrating the holiday with my hubby’s family (and enjoying the nice warm weather!) I will probably be finishing up posting some pictures of my fall décor and such that I never got around to but then it’s going to be ALL Christmas!  I love Christmas!  Happy Holiday Weekend!