BOO to you

The best thing about October, aside from the hot chocolate weather, is Halloween. It is the best gift to kids you can give. Think about it - they get to dress up and get free candy. It is a nice way to start the holiday season, give them something fun before all the more formal family get-togethers.

I couldn't resist making a fun door decoration to celebrate. These cute little characters were designed in craft felt and stuffed lightly to give them some dimension. They are stitched to a piece of doubled organza ribbon and accented with orange and black 1/4" ribbon.

I probably should have taken the time to stitch the facial features and letters, but I was really trying to keep it simple. (I've been sick for over a week and dealing with a couple of migraines, so some slack should be given.)

To keep it simple, I used puffy paint. This was probably not the best idea. the cat's smile is a little lopsided, and so is the bat's fangs, and my letters are less than perfect. But to be honest, that doesn't bother me. I like the flawed, handmade look. I don't make things to be picture perfect or look like they belong in a magazine. The imperfections make them special and mine, and so I always encourage new and novice crafters to embrace the imperfections and learn from them, but don't stress about them!

A Welcoming Thought (Or a Wreath Alternative)

 This is the time of year that we are supposed to be taking stock of our blessings, thinking about warmth, family and harvest. At least that's how I feel. The holidays are fast approaching and with family stopping by more often, I wanted to start decorating for the season.

There are tons of wreath tutorials and some really beautiful designs out there for this time of year. Don't believe, go look at pinterest. Personally, I'm not a big fan of wreaths and with my screen, they are hard to see. Plus, I don't have that much room to store them. So I decided on an alternative.

I started with this free template from BHG.com for a pillow. I loved the look of it but wanted to personalize it a little. Rather than enlarging as directed, I printed it out on a single piece of paper and cut the pieces out of craft felt. There was the main orange background, a yellow-orange body and the brown stem.

With a pencil, I free handed some lettering and the swirly-curlies and then hand stitched the beads down. For a little extra touch I outlined the stem in the same gold beads as the swirly-curlies and used a pale green ribbon to hang it. There is no stuffing or stiffener to this at all, just basically two layers of felt.

It looked a little plain on my 70's-tastic front door, so I added the fall leaf wreath from yesterday's post to it. My DH gave it his stamp of approval, so it will be up for a bit, until I get my Halloween door project finished...

Fall Leaves For the Home

Fall and spring are my favorite times of year. I love watching all the colors change and transition. Even though all the leaves on my trees are still bright, vibrant greens, I know the changes are coming. The days are cooler, the nights are getting chilly and I'm starting to crave hot chocolate.

Since the leaves outside aren't changing fast enough, I decided to make myself a little bit of fall for the house. Using templates I found on My Cute Stamps, I cut my leaves out of brown, red, orange and yellow craft felt. I added some gold glitter puff paint for the veining and contrast. (Besides who doesn't love a little glitter when it won't rub off on everything!)

The biggest problem was figuring out what to do them. My first thought was a fall table runner or something decorative over my front door. I decided the best thing, given my limited time, was to stitch some 1/4" ribbon to the back (it's a nice pale green) and make a garland.

Yes, my picture is horrible, but I blame time constraints at the moment. Eventually I will update with a better picture.

At any rate, I cut one of each leaf out of each color and ended up with a total of 16 which were then alternated along the ribbon. I hand stitched it because I was watching E and A and couldn't get to my sewing machine. Realistically, using the machine you could easily connect as many as you want in very little time.

Now to figure out what to do with it.

A Somewhat Vintage Touch in the Dining Room

 I make no attempt to hide my love of all things vintage. I love classic movies, big band music and the way a home used to be run. I think that is my I love my mother- and grandmother-in-law. They do things a little more old fashioned. It's because of them I have learned to can vegetables and fruits (grandma told me last weekend about how they would can beef and when you opened that on a winter day, it made the best beef and gravy to have with potatoes), I've learned to sew, and I've been striving to make things myself. Back in the day, people made things to last, not be disposable. Plus I'm cheap.

If I can make it and it will save me money, that's what I do. That includes laundry soap, dog toys, blankets and clothes, home decor and now a basic necessity: dinner table napkins.
I realized I didn't think that much about putting paper towels on the table with the meal, until I had to spend the money to buy more. I had an epiphany: why am I spending money on something I am just going to throw away!?! Cloth napkins just make more sense - I do laundry anyway so what's a few more pieces of cloth to throw in?

So I dug through stash and found the above remnant. I love it! It looks great in my dining room and I already had it. Then I went to Pinterest, and started searching for a good tutorial on how to make these. I found this one on tiny rolled hems, and since it had lots of pictures, I used it.

It was about 29"x44" and I cut out six 12" squares to start with. I also set up my ironing board so that as I finished a seam all I had to do was swivel around, press what was needed and get back to sewing. Even with that convenience, it still took me 30 minutes per napkin!

I am so happy with the end result though. The only difficulty I had was with the last couple of corners. It caught frustrating trying to get the machine to move the material when starting at the edge of like six layers of materials. You can see how small the hems ended up being, and how pretty they look on my new tablecloth.

With so much fabric in my stash, I am wanting to make a lot more of these. I am anxious to try a mitered corner for some. (And I really want a bunch for holiday meals!) But that is a project for another day - I have lots more sewing to get done before the holidays...

Outside the Cookie Cutter

 Every year I like to make some sort of new ornament for our tree. Since I've been fascinated with felt this year, I decided that would be what I would use.

I knew I didn't want to do the cookie style ornament that are so popular in felt. Of course the idea I had wasn't too far off from the cookie idea.

What I did was take my felt and some of those inexpensive, big plastic cookie cutters and cut out two of each, stacked them and sewed them together.

For the candy cane, I opted for some bling and used some red rhinestone cup chain. It glitters so nicely in the light. I really like the non-traditional look of the candy cane. Rather than the normal spiral-inspired stripes, I chose to simply outline the whole cane.

As for my star I went for a more classic look with the string of small pearls surrounding the set white start and then the entire outer border.

Personally, I really like the way these turned out. Tweaking a basic idea to create interesting new pieces. Felt cookie cutter ornaments made to look like frosted cookies have been done a million times. But my adding a pinch of ingenuity, I've made something different, classy and timeless to hang on my tree.

With the simple tweak of an old idea, the creative possibilities are endless and I look forward to making more!

Decorated Dining

 I don't have a fancy-schmancy dining room that I can keep pretty for special occasions. Nope. I have a single dining room that must function as such on a daily basis.

Does that mean I can't decorate it for the holidays? Absolutely not!! :)

My wonderful mother-in-law gave me some adorable quilted place mats as an early Christmas gift. I love them and could not wait to get them on my table. You can see the little Santa's that offer their jolly laugh.

To complement the Santa's, I wanted a centerpiece that could continue the holiday spirit. I took my glass cake plate, filled it with glass bulb ornaments that I made a couple years. They remind me of oversized candies. 

This is a really simple way of bringing your decorations to a functional area without impeding on the space. If you don't have a covered cake plate, use an over-sized clear bowl. If you don't want to take the time to paint ornaments get some inexpensive bulbs from your local dollar store in colors that will compliment your decor.

Considering this is the only holiday I really get excited about, I love it when I find a new way to add some cute decorative touches to the house. I get even more excited when I can use supplies I already have in the house. It just proves that you really don't need to spend a lot to create a beautifully decorated home.

Greetings on Display

 With the holidays quickly approaching, we will finally start receiving something other than bills in the mail! For a long time, I would just display cards on whatever flat surface I could find and figure that was good enough.

This year, I decided I would actually make a card holder. Best part? It did not involve my sewing machine. I can't technically call it a no sew project because there was a little bit of hand stitching, but nothing really challenging.

I started by using fabric glue to adhere the silver ribbon to the wider red satin ribbon. Once that was dry, I got out a few wooden clothes pins and, on the back of the red, I glued down one side of the clothes pin. Next, I held the pin open, spread some Fabri-Tac and pushed the ribbon in to the open pin and let it close. This created the wavy look to the hanger and made a soft place for the cards.

Finally, I made the red bow for the top of the hanging out of the same ribbon that is behind the silver. I attached it to the front at the same place as a small split ring I had in my jewelry supplies.  At the bottom, I added three little jingle bells to add a little bit of weight to help keep the ribbon hanging straight.

Since these pictures were taken, I have filled the baby up. You will definitely want to pay more attention to what you are doing than I did. I accidentally my bow and hanger to the wrong end. It does work for me, so the only issue this created was the cards don't hang below the clothes pin. For me it's not the end of the world, but if I was to make another, I would make sure I put it together the right way!

Anyway, I think this is a nice way to highlight the cards that we receive, especially considering how popular picture cards are getting to be.

Holiday Door Valance

 I always loved those paper loop chains that kids make. They are just cute and make me think of childhood. So this year, I decided I wanted to try to adapt one of those chains to fit in with my decorations.

I opted for red and white felt for the loops. Staying with my buttons these for the year, I stitched buttons on to the red loops where the ends meet and used them to close the loop. I kept the white loops simple and just stitched them closed.

We live in a split level house, so when guests leave they will see this cute chain suspended over the door. I didn't want to just do loops, so at each end I staggered ribbon. Jingle bells and acrylic "lights" are tied to the ends of the ribbon streamers.

This is just another cute, fun decoration that can be quickly put together in an evening. I really love the childlike quality to these decorations. For me, Christmas has always been about kids and that wonderment that comes with this time of year. And my favorite decorations reflect that.

Let the Merry Begin!

Thanksgiving in my house means two things: A huge family dinner and time to decorate for Christmas. I don't take out or put up decorations until the day after Thanksgiving, that's always been our tradition. This year that has gotten tweaked a little due to a major home improvement project. As I type this, my wonderful hubby is finishing putting in the last of our beautiful new laminate wood floors. It's been a long week working on this, but the end is in sight and I'm so happy to finally have pretty new floors. My house should be all put back together and decorated by the end of the week.

One of the new decorations that will be up this year is this felt wallhanging. This is a really nice project to do with kids. While you are weaving and sewing the red and white background, let the kids decorate the tree with dimensional fabric paint, beads, sequins, buttons or whatever else you have handy.

This year I'm in love with buttons, so I stitched buttons around the border and used them as embellishments on both the tree and around the tree. The colored chain that hangs on one side added some nice texture and tied in the chain used to hang it. The chain can easily be substituted with ribbon. In total, this little project cost maybe $10 if you have to buy all the supplies, much less if you only need to get felt. It would be a nice activity for little ones, as I did with my granddaughters, sure to make memories that will be cherished every year when you take it out.