Handmade Christmas Gifts

I wanted to share a couple of things I made for Christmas gifts this year.  First, I sewed a Christmas pillow for a friend.  I appliqued the trees, did a little stitching, and added ric rac.

I kept an opening on the back so a pillow form could be used inside.  I like to buy my pillow forms at IKEA and cut and sew it down to the size I want.

I couldn't wait to share the next gifts I made, these adorable Raggedy Ann dolls.  I bought the patterns from Raggedy Old Annies.  I've always have loved her dolls and I've admired them for years, so finally I bought the patterns to make some myself.  Aren't they adorable?  I thought a few of my little nieces might enjoy them.

I'm keeping the littlest one (above).  Well, I couldn't give them all away!  She is really little, less than a foot tall.  I love her shoes!

The next smallest one.  They also have cute little bloomers under their dress that I didn't take a picture of.

These last two are the largest dolls I made.  I love their heart lips!

I had so much fun picking out the fabrics for their dresses.  These were so much fun to make, I just might have to make more for my Etsy shop.

Merry Belated Christmas

I hope you had a great Christmas!  We enjoyed some of our tradional holiday activities that we do as a family.  One thing we like to do is go downtown Portland and visit Santa at the Macy's.

(Spencer wasn't feeling well, so he didn't want his picture taken)

We also did some crafting and holiday baking with cousins.

The kids made snowman ornaments using socks.

The kids decorated sugar cookies.

We also like to go to the Old Spaghetti Factory with the river view and watch the Christmas boat parade.  This year we didn't see any boats, but hopefully we will next year.

The Stockings Are Hung

I finally did it!  I made stockings that I'm happy with and so is everyone else in the family.  The first stockings I made for us was about 7 years ago, and they were just okay, so I've been wanting to make new ones that are a bit more fun.  Last year I saw really cute quilted stockings in Blogland, so I started making some for this Christmas.  Well, not everyone in our family liked them, ahem Jason, so I was determined to make some this year that we all mostly liked.  (By the way there are still three two quilted stockings left in my Etsy Shop).

Here is the fabric I chose from fabric.com, they are Premier Prints.

Now presenting our new stockings...

Jason's is a bit boring because that's they way he likes it.

I added a ruffle to mine for a little femininity.

Spencer and Tanner wanted heel and toes on their stockings.

Logan loved this print!

And finally Preston's cute dotted stocking.

My amazing sister Caron embroidered all the names for us, thanks Caron.  I just love them!!!

Christmas Advent Lollipop Tree

First, here is my inspiration picture for my recent project, a Lollipop Advent Tree.  I really loved this picture and thought it would be fun and cute.  This can be moderately easy project if you have a power miter saw and the right size drill bits.  It was a little frustrating trying to get everything to fit, but eventually it worked.

I used brighter colors on this one.  I stamped the number of days on the ends of the sticks.

Here is another one I made, using a little more traditional Christmas colors.

I used 5" x 5" pinked fabric pieces to give some fun color to the tree.  I wish I had bakers twine to tie around the lollipops, but yarn works for now.

Now the kids are even more excited to count the days 'til Christmas!