Gifts: Kitchen Tools for my Girlfriends

One of my favorite Christmas events is a lunch with my girlfriends to celebrate two of their birthdays (on the same day in December) and exchange small Christmas gifts. It's always fun to try and come up with something high on style but low on budget. Lately I have been leaning toward the utilitarian.

A couple years ago I gave Method handsoap dispensers in a great bright green color tied with red ribbon. Last year it was a Crate&Barrel white with snowflake diecut napkin holder with red napkins. This year it's more Crate&Barrel: Red silicone and stainless steel spatula and snowflake diecut pancake turner wrapped in an IKEA dishtowel. I was happy to find this snowflake ribbon at Target to match.

I feel like Santa with my bag full of gifts! And how great is this vinyl Santa bag! Got it at the grocery store and I love it. Not only do I have Christmas gifts and birthday gifts but a baby gift too. Very fun.

Craft: Personalized Stationery Gifts

My good friend, and daughters' nanny, Sue, shared this cute idea for a personalized gift. These cards, made by ..., come with white inserts. I picked the papers for the covers at my local scrapbooking store and punched out the initials there too.

Making handmade gifts is one of my favorite parts of Christmas so I couldn't let this one go by without doing something. I am going to give them to my sisters and use them for teachers' gifts too. Plus I made some for myself.

(So funny! I was just thinking, "what's wrong with that picture?" I pasted on the "j" backwards! Ooops!)

Sewing: Camo Splat Mat for a Boy

I don't know what it is, but I've always loved camouflage, even had a camo bathing suit when I was in jr. high and I still think it's great.

I found this great oilcloth at Denver Fabrics and thought it would be great for a baby boy--splat mat, bib, bag, wipe holder, etc. A good friend of mine, Jenni, just had a baby boy so I thought: splat mat!

I took some red seam binding and used it to finish the edges. I love the look! I've used oversized rick rack on oil cloth for tablecloths and I may prefer this, and it's all the better for a boy. Plus I love the red and blue contrast.

More seam binding for the "bow."

Hope they get good use out of it.

Christmas Card 2009

I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted for our Christmas card this year, which is typically a problem. Whenever I have something in mind it seems I can't find it.

I hunted through all the options I could think of for cards you can customize with photos, letterpress cards, all sorts of things but couldn't find it. So many of the photo cards are looking the same to me. I wanted a three-panel with an vintage, not country, but classic look. I wanted a color palette to complement our family photos (rare, and fun, as it turned out, for us to have family photos--thanks to Jennifer Fauset) so I was thinking cream, brown, dark red, maybe some green.

Finally, on Design Mom, she mentioned a resource for photoshop templates one can download, and I found that Legacy Digital Design also does custom designed cards, and reasonably! Hooray! I absolutely love the custom design process and Jill was great to work with. After explaining what I wanted she created this beautiful design to work perfectly with our photos. I am so happy! It was a Christmas present to myself. Next best thing to designing my own (maybe next year?). My sisters both ended up getting their Christmas Cards through Legacy too.



I really love Christmas cards with photos, especially family photos (more fun to see the whole family in my opinion), but I also like them to feel like Christmas. Hard to find designs these days that do both. I actually kind of miss the old boxed Christmas cards like my mother used to send out. She would hunt and hunt for the message that felt right to her. It was more about the greeting then, finding something to express your feelings about the holidays. I think we've lost a little something the way things have gone.

So anyway, our card this year, with greeting and photos--best of both worlds.

Painting: Phoenix Landscape with Resting Zoe

I was able to take the afternoon off work and go paint instead and I FINALLY finished this painting I started long ago. I have loved the idea of doing something like this for years now--I love this Carob tree in my in-laws back yard. Our sweet dog, Zoe, isn't doing so well lately and I love the mental image of her resting in the sun on the lawn under this tree. I thought it would make a nice little composition. However, I must resolve, again, to not paint such small canvases. I really don't like using such small brushes.

I used a glazing technique, both warm and cool, to finish this. Something I was able to do since it had sat around for so many months. I don't use glazes very often so it was fun to do. I realized I really needed to push the values much more than I had--darker upright tree, lighter landscape in back. I am much happier with it now.

Nothing like a Christmas deadline to force the time for painting. I decided to finish this and give it to my MIL. I hope she likes it. A bit risky to give a painting again this year. Hopefully they won't think, "are we going to get a painting every year?"