kattitudes

Here is a great way to welcome a new addition to the family Christmas and the family Christmas tree this year. With a simple name and birthday written on a gender appropriate Christmas ball ornament, you have a wonderful memorial to the moment someone came into the family.

Of course, the store where I saw these wanted forty two dollars for the privilege of having someone else draw a stork on a Christmas ball ornament. Um. No. I can do that myself for a quarter worth of paint and a little bit of effort (and I dare say that my stork might look a wee bit better in all honesty). And if I did not feel confident in my stork ability, I would find the most adorable baby representative clip art that I could and decoupage the dickens out of the ornament instead.

Either way, making a welcome to the family and welcome to your first Christmas ornament is a great idea. Anyone can buy one of those Baby’s First Christmas ornaments, but making your own as a special gift for a new baby in the family or a new member of your circle of friends just makes it all the more special. And it makes a memory for the baby in question to have forever once he or she gets old enough to appreciate the work you put into the ornament.

I have not posted my favorite felt embroidered pillows lately, so I figured I would today. And while I am a little late posting to get this done before Hanukkah began this year, if you are a fast worker, technically it would be possible to get it finished before the end of Hanukkah.

I do love the menorah and the way the felt has been cut and sewn on to replicate the look of melting wax. It is a really nice detail. I have made the photo clickable so that you can see the detail work on the pillow. It is nicely done, and I figure if you are going to try to get one done before the end of the eight days, you are going to need to be able to see the details.

Oh I wish I knew the name of the Etsy seller that made these! Someone sent me the picture in my email and I just fell over laughing. My Mister would probably love these (well, maybe. I do not know if he geeked out that far yet, but it is possible). Personally, I found them just too precious for words.

And I figure they actually would not be too hard to make yourself if you just could not find the seller on Etsy. You can find the general outline of Darth Vader and the Imperial Stormtroopers just about everywhere. Plus, you can just look closely at the photo for the general outline of the embroidery.

If I ever find the seller, great job! These are a freaking riot.

I keep suggesting all these Christmas stockings, throw pillows and so on to make out of all types of felt fabric, which means by now you must have all manner of snips and bits of felt remnants floating around your general sewing area.

If you wanted to entertain the children (big or small), consider using a few scraps to roll together a nice little hat for a few candy canes. It gives them a nice personality and makes them look so interesting poking out of the top of a Christmas stocking.

They are not hard to put together and they do not take much fabric. You can use a needle and thread and put them together with just a few stitches or, because they are so small, you could even put them together with a drop or two of glue.

So I keep seeing these really rather cute garland looking things and I just love them … until I look at the price. Good grief. Thirty dollars and more? Are they high? Again, I go into my “just no” response. Just no. I can make them myself. Period.

I need paper. I like my garlands with a little heft, so I always use my leftover mail boxes and cardboard junk mail that comes into the house for my garlands. This way I am reusing waste paper that would ordinarily be thrown away and I am still getting a good heavy stiff cardboard to use.

I just print out my letters from my printer and tape them to the cardboard and cut them out. Then I use either glitter glue or glitter and glue to completely cover the letters.

I use my eyelet setting tools leftover from my scrapbooking days to make the good reinforced holes for hanging and a ribbon threaded through for the garland itself.

That is it. Instant garland. Last week (or earlier some time) I posted the same idea, but with snowflakes instead. These garlands are really quite easy to make, which is why it surprises me so much when I see these outrageously price tags attached. There is no reason! Save your Christmas budget and make them yourself.

Oh lovely lovely. Christmas is all about dreams and magic and mystery and wonder and fantastical things like this. Wonderful wonderful things like these.

And this Christmas stocking captures some of that magic just right. I just cannot help but hear the Jiminy Cricket song from Walt Disney and want to sing about “When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are, when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true”.

Yes yes, I know that those are little fairies and not Disney crickets running all over this stocking, but still, either way, it would be an easy stocking to duplicate.

Again, it is felt with embellishments cut out in advance. Find a fairy outline that you like in advance and cut out enough to fill your stocking with delight. Remember that you can check the sidebar for embroidery help to get the words and wand sparkles in there.

Now this stocking is just precious. I love the little village. And the cutwork would not take that long to design and piece out. You could design your own little village or even duplicate your own neighborhood or street if you felt like it.

This was made with my current fabric fascination, felt, which of course makes it so easy to put together. Felt just keeps its shape so well, and forgives so many little errors.

I just love the little village church and the village Christmas tree. Now this is one stocking that I think i will be making multiples so that I can share the wealth with friends and family. I just love this idea. Of course it does have that primitive country Christmas vibe going on which I am not so thrilled with, but meh, I still love it.

Boy, if you really wanted to put some work into it, you could make a set of these for the cowboy in your house.

You know, I live here in the heartland of the South. In the very buckle of the Bible Belt, and I gotta tell you, these do absolutely nothing for me. And that is actually a shock to me, as reigning Queen of the stocking obsession.

And yet I know there is someone out there that will see these and absolutely fall in love and want to make them. I say more power to you and definitely go for it! It seems like adding the seam details makes all the difference in this particular stocking (just like it does on the boots themselves).

The stockings are really nicely made, I must admit. I am just not a Southwestern decorating type of person. But all in all, a nice example for those that are looking for this type of thing.

These are so easy to put together, with just a little ric-rac trim and some pom-pom trim. I absolutely adore the different colors used and the deviation from the traditional standard colors of Christmas.

The embellishments are easily sewn either by hand or by machine. And any quirkiness or funny looking bits in the sewing only adds to the incredible charm of the handmade stockings.

I am so in love with the Christmas tree theme and try to add as many trees to my house as possible, without going too terribly overboard on actual trees. I am trying to keep the actual number of trees with ornaments down to a handful, but pull the rest of the decorations around the house together by tying them with a general tree and stocking theme. Love it.

Although I never went into my marriage planning this, I have ended up with new stocking for us each year. It was not intentional. It was the stocking fetish. I still have yet to decide if that is going to happen this year. I have a few contenders, but we are still waiting to see how it shakes out.

Remember when I said that painted Christmas ornaments were all the rage? Here is yet another example. And the prices asked for these things are so incredibly silly. Just bend yourself over and belly laugh silly. I am not paying fifty dollars for something that I can do for literally twenty five cents worth of paint and five minutes of my time. No. Just no.

And if the cost is that high, then I can sit down, paint an entire box of ornaments and start gifting them to my friends. I might not be a Picasso, but I can hold the right end of a paintbrush.

So many of the winter holiday motifs are easy to duplicate. Just check your clipart library in your computer. Which of those do you think you might be able to easily repaint on an inexpensive single colored Christmas ball ornament? Sales on boxes of cheap ornaments are happening now, and you can pick up boxes of these for just pennies.

Consider checking out your clipart collection for easy holiday shapes that you think you could paint. And if you do not think you could paint, do what we did last year. Buy yourself the massive package of permanent marker Sharpies. We went to town on those last year. I think between my baby sister and I, we decorated some 10 to 15 boxes of plain ball ornaments. We had - if you will excuse the expression - a ball!

This is such a pretty ornament and I love the color combination. In fact, I actually like it enough to go dig out all my Sharpies left over from last year and make some for my tree this year. And since these painted ornaments are so popular this year, this concept would be a fantastic hostess gift or Secret Santa gift for you to consider early in the season while your gift recipient has the time to really enjoy your talents.