Merry Christmas!

Dear Shayne,

Sorry for the double-post of these photos (also found on Kaesea's blog), but I could not resist. Gotta show off the cute little Santa hat I made for my boy:


Kaesea says: Merry Christmas!

I made this little hat with felt and a disassembled cotton ball. I feel certain I have some other fluffy white stuff to use around here, but I just couldn't pull it together. So cotton ball it was!

After Kaesea's serious "portrait photo," I asked him to say cheese:

HA! This photo cracks me up!

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas, Shayne. I got many crafty gifts that I'll show you in the next few days. In the meantime, I'm going to hang out with my family and a delicious glass of eggnog. Mmm!

love,
kelly

Christmas cards

Dear Shayne,

As you know, I have spent most of 2009 clinging to the face of the earth by my fingernails, holding on for dear life as the world spun crazily by. At least, that's how it's felt. The highs have been very high (Getting married! Yay!) and the lows have been very low (Sick kitty! Boo!) I'm hoping that 2010 evens out a bit for us.

Meanwhile, as the holiday season approached, I realized I needed a basic card if I was going to get them out at all. I'm pretty pleased with the final result:


I found the silver envelopes in the discount bin at Paper Source a few months ago, so that was the start (bonus: the early decision not to make our envelopes, which I have crazily done in the past.)

Back again to PS a few weeks ago and I found the lavender flat cards and the purple and silver paper -- I cut that into strips, used a snowflake punch to cut out the snowflakes (this was pre-Cricut, of course!)

The white snowflakes were kind of blah, so I used a silver stamp pad to add a little sparkle to the edges (not sure if you can see that in the photo, but it's there). Then I wrote our holiday messages on the cards and popped them in the mail. Done!

These were the least labor-intensive cards I have sent in a long time and I even liked them, which was a surprise. Not too elaborate, but I think they turned out pretty cute.

Hope you're having a fantastic holiday season!

love,
kelly

I got a Cricut!!

Dear Shayne,

I got a Cricut for my birthday from Bill! YEAH! I've spent the last few days mesmerized by the 1.2 million YouTube videos that show you all the amazing things you can do with this beastie. Wow, what a world!

It's been a busy week, so I haven't done anything super snazzy yet, but I did take the opportunity to decorate Bill's gifts. Here's one of them:


(AKA: Best. Husband. Ever.)

Hope you're having a merry week!

love,
kelly

Felt magic!

Dear Shayne,

The process of turning loosely knit wool fabric into wool felt is called fulling or, more commonly, felting. It's so cool, it's like magic.

A couple of Christmases back, I made my mother's husband (Hi, Jeff!) a pair of slippers using this process. After a couple of years of hard wear, he's worn a hole in them and he needs another pair. I'm happy to oblige -- I love it when something I've made is so well loved that it gets worn out.

First, I loosely knit a gigantic pair of the slippers:


How gigantic, you ask?


Jeff's feet are not, in fact, 15+ inches long, as the tape measure shows these are. Here is a photo showing the pre-felted slippers I have just knit, compared to his old slippers (in the correct Jeff-foot size):


Next, I throw them in hot water in the washing machine with a pair of jeans to rough them up and a bit of dishwashing soap. In about 30-45 minutes, voila!


See? They've shrunk down to be the same size as his original pair:


Hopefully, he likes these as well as the originals. I like the new color, but am somewhat suspicious of that fuzziness.

Meanwhile, I took the hole-y pair home to see if I could repair them:


Since felt is basically magic, I've got some ideas that might take care of it.

That, however, will be a post-Christmas activity. (Anyone else in a blind only-ten-days-til-Christmas full on panic right now, or is that just me?)

love,
kelly

PS -- For anyone looking to make these slippers, I used this very popular pattern from Fiber Trends.

Socks and Cupcakes

Dear Kelly,

Did I mention that Jenny moved closer to me - our houses are now exactly 20 minutes apart, so there's been quite the increase in crafting.

Yesterday we sewed slipper socks out of this cute thermal fabric - I don't remember what I originally bought this fabric for, but they're super comfy!



After dinner we baked cupcakes - yellow cake with mini chocolate chips mixed in. I have eaten way too many.



This was all on top of cleaning my kitchen and starting to clean up/organize my dining room. There's even talk of painting the powder room soon.

Love,
Shayne