Some Christmas Craftiness

Since we are a military family, we move often.
That means that our Christmas traditions have to center around what we can do as a family, not so much about going to that "favorite" Christmas shop or show or whatever.
Beside making cookies and putting up the tree, we always find time to do a few crafts and decorate a gingerbread house

Below are a few pictures of the giant paper snowflakes that everyone in the bloggy world seems

You can see the ones that my sister made here.

You can get the tutorial with lots of great pictures at this blog.

I was worried that the weight of the snowflakes would pull too hard and rip where I attached the string, so I decided to sew a quick line.  I figured that that would help distribute the weight a bit better.

The tinsel trees above and the gumdrop trees below also came from Crafty Crow.

I loved the look of the gumdrop trees and thought that they'd go really well with our gingerbread house.

25 Days of Christmas Ornaments

I was out "blog surfing" when I came across a blog doing "25 Days of Christmas Ornaments."

One of my favorite things about putting up my Christmas tree is unwrapping all of my memories disguised as ornaments. So many of them have a story or just remind us of a happy time.

This ornament is from Christmas 1998.
Dan had to go to a three month school in Pensacola, FL and we didn't see any reason why we should be apart, especially over the holidays. The kids were little so we packed them (the older three) all up and moved to a small apartment near Dan's school. In that very short time, we found some good friends, a good church and spent lots of time exploring the beaches. In our "backyard" were tons of HUGE pine cones that just thrilled the kids.
When Christmas rolled around, we didn't have all of our normal Christmas decorations, so we gathered some of those pine cones, sprayed them gold and set them on our tree.
That year we also made popcorn garland and lots of handmade paper ornaments.
Loved that tree.

I keep this one pine cone as a memory of that Christmas in transition.

For a peek into other's Christmas ornament stashes go to 4 the love of family and check it out.

Ghosts of costumes past

Sewing this years costumes made me think about the many costumes that we have put together over the years.
In 2003 our costumes were not for Halloween, but for the "State Dinner" that we attended at Fray's house.

Kevin the emperor of Kevtasia.
(That is juice in his glass!)

Julia, Princess of Pinkbiana
I amazed myself by doing an overlay of lace and putting in a zipper.
I still don't know how I did that!

Quincy, Empress of Palais du Rose
The strands of pearls were hand sewn by my very wonderful friend, K.

Grant, the Emperor of Grantland.
His costume was put together out of old ladies jackets, a table cloth and a sailor hat that K turned into an amazing work of art befitting an Emperor.


2004
Our church had a Halloween Halle-zoo-jah!
The kids were to dress like zoo animals, so we ventured into face painting and made a...

Giraffe
That poncho top got much wear after Halloween. I love a costume that is usable in real life.
I love the way we did her hair to make the little knobby things that giraffes have on their heads.
What are they anyway?

A lion... I love an easy costume!

A paint horse (although many people thought she was a cow.)

And, the Crocodile Hunter! Easy peasy!

2005

A cowgirl, a fairy, Darth Vader and a gentleman ghost.
The ghost was simply a window sheer with a fake mustache and hat. He saw fairly well through the sheer when he was inside, but it was more difficult in the dark. So the girls ended up escorting both, the ghost and darth vader up and down steps and over any tricky obstacles. I think they did pretty well, since no one got hurt.

2006

Julia recycled the princess dress for a party, but on Halloween night she was a hula girl.

We had a theme... A Hawaiian tourist, a monkey on vacation, a hula girl and...
Abraham Lincoln.
Little known fact... Abe Lincoln loved the tropics!

2007

A mime

A vampire
I love the spiders in her hair.

And.... the costume that truly threw me for a loop...

A fuzzy eyeball!
Kid's like Grant really know how to stretch mom's imagination and sewing skills. :)
We still have it in his room acting as a beanbag.

And finally,
2008

A monarch butterfly...
another easy costume, yay!

A leprechaun.
Grant planned this costume months in advance.
This one took a little searching for just the right things, but we found a ladies green suit jacket at the thrift shop. I cut the front panels so that it looked like he had tails and added some gold trim around the edges. The beard was a ZZtop beard that we trimmed down. We rolled up the brown pants and glued some gold medals to piece of cardboard to make his pot of gold.

Quincy made her own zombie costume. No work for mom!

Wow... that was a lot of words, but I had some fun going down memory lane and I hope you did too.