Christmas Eve Eve and More

This is the first time I think we've ever had one of our amaryllis bulbs blooming for Christmas.  Usually, if we were lucky, we would get a flower about a week to two weeks after.  So, HWNSNBP must have calculated this correctly this time.  I only hope I wrote down the date he planted them on my calendar for reference next year.  This was a new bulb and we picked it because of the stripes.

I loved how the sun came through the window to illuminate part of the tree on Christmas morning.

A fuller picture of the tree.

This is my lemon tree temporarily located in this part of the room.  I hung my garland from Nanette in the Netherlands and the new ornaments that I had made this year including all those gnomes.  GS2 helped for about a quick minute.  I have three other trees I'll post pictures of soon. 

These were the best presents under the tree this year.  We were able to get together on Christmas Eve Eve.  The weather held out and even though there were snow flurries, it wasn't bad enough to deter the kids getting here with their families.  Rachel and her family stayed overnight and left early Saturday morning.  These little guys were great.  They played well together and we even got them to sit at the table and eat with us. They only had one dust-up but no harm was done.

I don't remember what exactly was happening here but it just cracked me up with the look on HWNSNBP's face and the way the boys are standing.  I think he was trying to put batteries in a new toy and they were a little anxious.  Though it may look like it, there was no yelling involved.

I had a few ornaments that I had saved for the little ones to put on the tree and forgot to do that when they were both here.  So I gave GS2 the chore the next morning and he obliged willingly hanging all but one of the 6 on the same branch.  And with such concentration.  

More pictures to come.

Merry Christmas 2022

Christmas blessings to all - far and near!

Santa's Helper in the Woodshop

HWNSNBP, aka "my elf" as I used to refer to him when I was working, got a request from our` daughter for a project from his workshop - a coffee table. She gave him the basics - size, style, color, etc.  He spent many hours on this beauty.  Picture is taken at our house in front of our tree but it was delivered as a surprise mid last week.  We coordinated with our SIL so he could turn off their doorbell camera and meet us at the house during his lunch break to help get it into the house.  Needless to say, she was definitely surprised and extremely pleased with the results.

He made night stands couple of years ago for her that are similar but each time he claims to learn a new skill.  In this case it was the way that he installed the drawer.

I asked him to help me out with a little project too.  It involved cutting these wooden triangles from some scrap wood he had that I subsequently painted and turned into......

These gnome ornaments. They're hanging off of the metal mesh pencil cup that's atop the checked cup just so you know there's no body to them.  I only wanted a couple of triangles and he gave me 14 so I have a whole family of them.

There's another woodworking project in the works but I can't show that off yet.  

A Busy December Beginning

Yikes, it's almost the middle of December and I haven't posted anything this month yet.  I feel like for every step forward I take this month, I'm taking two backwards.  Things are getting done but I think I need a little escape time from what has to be done to what I want to do.  I know it will all shake out in the end.

There were more cards to be made before they went in the mail and I was able to come up with a couple of quick (or so I thought) designs that I could duplicate.

Having these buffalo checked card bases really helped.  On the first two I used a square of glittered paper that was actually a set of small gift cards from IKEA I purchase a few years back.  I wasn't going to use them in that respect so I used them to back the puffy mason jar snowglobe stickers that I also found in my stash.  Some little bits of die cut greenery in the corner and a quick little sentiment completed these in little time.  Die cutting the greenery took the longest.

This one took a bit longer because I chose to color the Unity snowman and also because I decided to add that die cut bow made from glitter paper.  I spend the most time preparing the paper for die cutting as I've found out that the die works much better on glitter paper if you remove a layer of the backing. But that backing was really on there and took quite a bit of effort peeling it apart.  Die cutting the foliage also took a while with all it's delicacy.  But I was pleased with the outcome and was glad to be able to make a few of them. 

I still had my circle punches downstairs and thought I would try reusing some brown packing paper to make an ornament that I saw recently.  I punched sixteen 2 1/2" circles and folded them in half.  Then I used Tombow multi mono liquid glue to first glue the folded circles once in the middle.  Then I started to layer them together adding two lines of glue - one near the top and the other near the bottom so when you pull the last one around to meet the first it looks like a honeycomb ornament.  The paper was wrinkled from being used, but it didn't affect the look of the ornament. I had some lengths of jute twine in my stash and used that and some leftover round beads to make the hanger for the ornament.  I managed to get enough circles out the piece of paper that I had to make 3 of these.  

I don't know why, but from the bottom it reminds me of a pine cone.

Another ornament I tried my hand at was this quilled star.  I found a youtube video with the instructions as recommended by another blogger that I follow.  I have several quilling kits with the tools needed to do this - a quilling comb and a needle tool, but I did order the gold gilded paper strips that I used for the center of the stars.  This is really not that hard to do.  What helps is having a glue bottle with a fine tip like the Bearly Art Precision Craft Glue.  The bottle of glue comes with a special cap that you can used to interchange the specialty tips with.  There is a fine tip and a very fine tip long with a cap and a pin that can be used to clear any clogs in the tips.  It is recommended to rinse out the tips after each use which I remembered to do.  

There seemed to be a plethora of Advent calendars advertised this year.  I've got several that I was gifted along with our family one that HWNSNBP and I have continued doing even after the kids have grown up.  A blogging buddy of mine has gifted me the Jacquie Lawson Sussex Advent calendar.  This is an interactive calendar that I've uploaded to my laptop that not only gives you a special scene to celebrate every day but is full of other activities that are a lot of fun.  This year there is a little elf hidden to find each day also and there are games too, like card games, jigsaw puzzles, etc.  

HWNSNBP gifted me (after I hinted about it for the last two years) the XO Marshmallow Advent calendar that has a different flavored marshmallow for each day.

And I gifted myself the Unity Stamp Advent calendar this year.  

A fellow stamper was nice enough to create and share a pdf chart that you can use to keep track of the stamps.  I'm looking forward to using these soon.

I like to open the "doors" of the day while I have my cup of Chai tea after I eat my breakfast.  It's a nice way to get the day started.