This post is going to be everywhere as I'm just making a single post for all the Christmas fun we made this year....Are you ready for the ride?
To start we'll begin with a couple decorations I made for the season. (Not that we really needed anything else - but it was my birthday and I spent my money on it. I was happy.)
Here are my Christmas people:
Now the sales girl made a comment about the soldier and said not many people buy the soldier. I didn't say anything to her because it was BLACK FRIDAY and the place was PACKED, but I will share my reason with you.
Years ago, when I was a little girl, I remember my Dad making this soldier out of flower pots. It was awesome and I was in love with these cute little soldiers. Plus seeing my Dad doing something so creative was interesting. So I've had a place in my heart for soldiers for years!
The elf was just cute and Santa well - it's SANTA!
And not that it means anything, I just thought it was cute so I also bought this:
Next comes the neighbor gift.
I'm usually the girl who has tons of cool ideas for gifts to give the neighbors BUT Christmas comes and goes WAY TOO FAST and before I know it the neighbors are forgotten. This year I was going to be better and I made my mind up to do so.
So shortly after my birthday I made Eric take me to The Wood Connection. I knew exactly what I wanted to do and darn it all I was going to make neighbor gifts this year!
This is what I made:
I do like some better than others, but I won't say which way is which.
And guess what? I realized I forgot 4 of our bestest friends in the neighborhood. Who does that? Me! So, it was back to The Wood Connection so I could finish up with these:
Not sure I'm as crazy about the color combo of these ones, but at least one of the families really liked the coloring and it went GREAT in their living room.
Because I didn't keep busy enough with little individual letters, I gave myself more work to do.
Both my Daddy and my Father in Law are BYU Cougar fans and when I saw these letters at The Wood Connection I knew I had found THE PERFECT Christmas gift for my Dad's. These are their 'Y's':
I laughed because both men asked what the twine was for. Men just don't get the whole 'making things a little more cutesy' aspect. I just didn't feel it was complete until the twine was put on.
For my uncle I did a subway art thing. He's had a difficult life, so I wanted to put words that would uplift him and memories that made him happy on it. I think it made a real impression with him:
My older brother recently moved to France to teach. He wasn't able to come home for Christmas and my mom wanted to do something for him, but didn't know what. I had the BRILLIANT (LOL) idea to have each family member say a sweet something or other on video and I would compile it and email it to him. This is that video, but you have to promise not to watch anything but me at 5:46 and the little kids starting at 9:05.
(I should've told my little brother - who took over videotaping for my snippet - to zoom out...You're getting a lot of chest coming at you from me...Uh, yeah. Sorry about that)
For my mother in law I got inventive. Sort of.
I saw this picture where the person was in black and white and there was bookprint lettering in the background. I LOVED the look and wanted to do a similar thing. Well, I don't really have any old books to scan in and so then I thought of using music. It worked out well.
Then I had to figure out how to get the image just right. Well I never got it in black and white EXACTLY, but I did figure something out and I loved it. So I kept with it.
I apologize for not really having any sort of tutorial in place for this, but if I get a request for a tutorial I will gladly do one....
Here's the completed picture:
Anyway, so I had planned to print these off and stick them in a frame, but when I was at The Wood Connection I saw a different way of displaying them that I liked A LOT better so I went with it.
This was a SIMPLE project. I painted the back and sides of the wood block, with very little paint on the front (the picture will cover the majority of it):
Then I mod podged the pictures to it. I painted the little bauble thing to put in the top, tied a ribbon around it and it was complete:
Such a fun, easy, but wonderful gift.
Now this gift was the same as the one for my mil, but it was made for my brother in law's on again, off again girlfriend. They were 'off' when we last heard, but last year was the same story and she showed up on Christmas and we had nothing for her.
This year I wanted to be prepared. So, I made her a quick little scrapbook page thing to put on the block. It was cute enough.
Sadly, she didn't show up this year and they may be done for good, but either way I can still keep this in my home as this girl was such a pivotal person in our lives.
