Holiday crafting continues

We got about 5 minutes of sunlight today so I took some photos of the other Christmas crafts we've been working on. First was a white yarn tree. I was inspired by this pin on Pinterest (here is a link to the original tutorial, per pinterest etiquette). I just used a paper cone from the craft store and hot glued the yarn at random increments as I wound up and up. I'm still trying to decide if I should do another row inbetween the rows -- maybe it's not full enough. It's soft and lovely though. It makes me happy. I like the little berries in the inspiration. Maybe next year we'll embellish but for now I like the simplicity of this.

Last year I bought the styrofoam wreath I saw on a happy nest (my friend Nikole's blog). I just thought it was so pretty. I cut my Christmas fabric into strips and hot glued just at the beginning and end of each piece. She used string too which is very nice.

I made the little cluster of bells with wire and added some ric rac because I have compulsions to do so while crafting.

This tree fabric from Boosterseat is amazing. My friend Anda (genius of boosterseat) designed it. I don't think she meant it to be Christmasy but it is. I got it from Spoonflower directly when they were having a crazy sale last year. Oh how I long for that one again...

We also doused a styrofoam tree with glitter. That was very fun. I'll show a picture of that later. There are a million different ones on Pinterest so I can't say it was just one pin that reeled me in. I hope your house smells as good as mine does right now. I love being married to a baker!

Holidays

We have been in super craft mode around here. Since we don't have Thanksgiving at our house, we sorta pass that one over and head straight to Santa because Santa's got elves. Of course we are working hard on the yearly elf costume (see above: 2008, 2009, 2010).

I also recently discovered how addictive Pinterest can be and we've been gathering supplies to make lots of ornaments and decorations (email me if you need an invite). We already made a cute garland and some ornaments from tins (I'll post this as soon as we get a sunny day). Here's the board if you want to check it out.

The Christmas Tree Skirt Tutorial that I wrote up last year is still very popular. It's very easy -- just a few quick seams and I even uploaded a printable pattern.

I developed an easy mini (ornament-sized) stocking tutorial. I will share that soon. I made over 20 of these last year for Z's class to decorate. They were a huge hit.

Finally, I will be adding a week of posts to the Play Dollhouse Guide. If there is something you want to review or are interested in, please let me know. The info on the furniture and houses as far as scale goes has not changed. In fact, many of the sets I reviewed are still available. We play with ours all the time and the only thing that has broken is the refrigerator door.

The elf on the shelf will be coming to stay with us this week!

Team Lemon heads to Pittsburgh once again

Please come buy up Lemon Cadet gear Sunday from 12 - 4 at the Pittsburgh Children's Museum. It will be our only show in Pittsburgh this holiday season and the last show in Pittsburgh for a really long time (maybe never ever again).

Other Crafty Endeavors

This summer I took advantage of semi-lax summer hours and a cooler-than-I-ever-remember-it weather pattern, and made a whole bunch of stuff for my kid:
This is a little drawstring bag lined with a shirt I bought at Gabe's just for the print. I appliqued these crazy animals onto it. They're from some fabric someone gave my mom. It's very weird and safari-esque. We put the finger puppets we bought last year at Old Navy into it.





I love this little fabric book. I cut out the animals from the new Eric Carle fabric that my local quilt shop surprisingly had in stock. I appliqued them onto some of my favorite prints from my stash. The facing pages are all solids. The inside of the cover also uses some of the fabric from the Eric Carle yardage. I didn't have a pattern or directions to follow so I just sorta went with it and I think it turned out well. I improvised a Japanese stab binding and it has started to come apart from toddler abuse so I'll have another go at that with some thicker thread or I'll double up the embroidery floss. That number print is Alexander Henry.

This is a travel highchair. If you do a google search you'll see what one looks like in use. I used some more fabric my mom gave me (her church quilt buddies gave it to her -- you can't buy stuff this amazing). There is also some polka dot and corduroy from my stash and that paisley print is a fat quarter I got free when buying from an Etsy shop that was having a sale. Oh, and of course, that Joel Dewberry pink faux boix that I can't get enough of (literally). I like the way the prints work together.

Look at this!

When Zadie started eating all this baby food, we began amassing millions of glass baby food jars. Even though we make our own baby food, after a few outings we just got fed up with bringing along several Pyrex containers of different vegetables and decided that sometimes, it's okay to go with what's already been prepared. It wasn't long before our kitchen was full of little jars and lids.

We recycle just about everything but it seems like a waste to recycle these when they could be reused so much better.

Along came this Junior Society blog post. Now I'm going to put all my little jars in a box somewhere in the basement and spend the next year collecting little bits to make some fabulous snowglobes. I even have the glass etching stuff hanging around from a previous project.

I'm so excited about this. I made these as a kid but had completely forgotten. It's so much fun to be a mom. I'm filled with excitement for all of these cool projects I'll get to make for my little one and even more for what we'll get to do together when she gets a little more coordinated.

Read the whole post here. And spend some time checking out the whole blog when you have the time. It's very well designed and is organized into easy categories. I have to add that I get this blog sent straight to my email so it doesn't get lost with all the rest of the blogs in my Google reader. It's one of my favorites.

Pillows, pillows, pillows!

I have been stitching my little creatures for weeks now and it has been a blast. I love watching the new friends come to life. I didn't think it could get any better...

...And then I started my pillow fronts. The squares I'm working on are just over 8" so it's a bigger canvas than the onesies and the sweatshirts. It's really satisfying to pick the background fabrics then work on the little guy who'll be featured. One of my favorite parts of the process is choosing the patterns. When I work on the pillows, I get to combine and juxtapose patterns a lot more than on the clothes. I don't have any finished yet because I'm waiting on my labels but you'll get a sneak peak this weekend.

I'm super excited about the labels. I can't wait until they get here!

The image above is my newest onesie. I'm calling it a meerkat and it'll be up on my etsy shop by the end of the week.

When I get some more time, I'll move my old posts from typepad over here to blogsopt where it's so much easier (and free).