As I posted earlier, we brought home a small tree to decorate with food for the birds and squirrels. Let me just say that the tree was a huge success with the birds and the squirrels alike! After about a day or so they found the tree back there and we ended up having many visitors. In this picture you can see the little squirrel helping himself to some of the birdseed underneath the tree.

Within a couple of days all of the birdseed stars were eaten off of the tree. Some of them I had to throw away because when we made them we used regular glue on them. When our Firefighter saw that he suggested we use wood glue instead because the birdseed stars might fall apart if they get wet in the snow. I had never even thought of that. So, the birdseed stars that had regular glue on them fell apart while the birds and squirrels were eating them because it was raining and they were wet. The stars that we had made using the wood glue stayed together great. We had some extra stars made up from the last time we did this plus we were able to use the ones that had stayed together on the tree. Before we started on the new stars we had to clean up the old ones off of the ground.

The boys had a good time making up the new stars and they were very excited to hang them back up on the tree. For some reason though we seemed to make a much bigger mess making the birdseed stars than we did the last time. We ended up having to use the hose from the vacuum on the kitchen table and I don’t even know how long it took me to sweep up the floor.

A day or so later I took a closer look at the tree to see if much of the birseed had been eaten yet. Not only was it eaten, the stars were gone! I thought that they fell off of the tree but there were none on the ground. My Firefighter told me that the squirrels had been taking them off of the tree and out into the yard. We were going to go out and look in the yard to see if we could find some of them but then it got late and dark so we were going to go look for them the next day. It snowed! So now the stars are out in the yard somewhere under the snow. The snow is melting already but the grass is very wet and muddy so we will only be able to replace the stars that are still on the tree. I’m glad that the birds and squirrels are enjoying the tree so much but boy can they eat a lot of food!

I hope that everyone had a nice Christmas! We were very busy here over the Christmas holidays. There was lots of last minute gift-making taking place. I FINALLY finished the scarf for my Step-Father. I worked on it whenever I could that week before Christmas and on Christmas Eve, when I was supposed to give it to him, it still was not finished. Fortunately, we were planning on spending a quiet Christmas Eve day at home before heading over to my parent’s house that evening so I was able to spend a couple of hours on the scarf. At that point I was so close to being done. The boys needed baths so while they were playing in the tub I sat in the bathroom with them and worked on the scarf. By the time we were all dressed to go to my parent’s house the scarf was finally finished. I was so glad. I really wanted him to be able to open it on Christmas Eve. He really liked it and it made the knitting well worth it.

On Christmas Eve morning my Firefighter had to run a couple of errands so while he was gone I took the opportunity to finish the two kites that I was sewing for him for Christmas. When we were growing up my Mother had made us a bat kite and a dragon kite. We used to fly them all the time, especially on vacation. Over the years the pattern became too worn to use anymore but she happened to come across it on Ebay so she bought it. I know that my Firefighter enjoys flying kites in the summer so I borrowed the pattern from her and made him the bat kite and a regular triangle kite. I had them almost completed but just needed to put on a few finishing touches while he was out. Fortunately, the boys were playing nicely together and I was able to complete the kites. I made the bat kite out of bat fabric that I bought at Halloween and the triangle kite I made out of firefighter and fire fabrics. Yet, even with buying the fabric over two months ago…I was still finishing the kite on Christmas Eve!!

I was also able to finish Gabriel’s fleece frog robe. That one I actually finished with a week or so to spare. I was happy with the way the boys’ robes turned out and they really liked them.

Finally, I finished two projects for two of my friends. I made them tiny dresses out of fabric which I sewed onto a dress form printed on cardstock. That was my first sewing project where I sewed fabric onto paper. I then attached it to a heavy cardstock glitter paper that can be framed. I really liked how the dresses turned out. Those were two of the first ones that I made and I was happy with how they turned out. They let you play with lots of different types of fabrics and see how they all work together yet you don’t need to buy too much.

Well, those were my handmade Christmas gifts that I could not show you until now because I did not want the recipients to see them on my blog…plus there is always the fact that they were not completed until the last minute. Next year I will do better…or at least I will try to!

Today we went to the civic center to make our annual gingerbread house. I posted here about the Scary Cottaqges that we did in October for Halloween. Today we made the Christmas gingerbread house.

The boys were very excited about making the gingerbread house. Gabriel was looking forward to icing the house and Matthew was looking forward to eating the candy. Once we opened up all of the toppings we began to frost the house. The houses were pre-built out of boxes and brown paper. To decorate the houses we were given graham crackers, 2 containers of icing, Trix cereal, gum drops, pipecleaner candycanes, Tootsie Rolls, peppermint and wintergreen hard candy, little red bows and mini-marshmallows.

In addition to the houses, there were three stations set up with additional gingerbread crafts. There was one for making the front door, one for making Christmas trees and one for making a snowman. The boys had me make the door and the snowman while they were attaching candy to the house. They were really enjoying themselves and I let them be creative and decorate it how they wanted. The front door was a painted piece of cardboard with a pompom doorknob. I made a beaded wreath to go along with it also. The snowman was made of three pieces of foam which looked like big marshmallows that were held together with icing. There were also tiny strips of fleece for the scarf and black tube icing for the face. A flat chocolate cookie with a mini peanut butter cup on top of it was the hat.

Once the house was pretty much decorated the boys decided to make some Christmas trees. There were paper snow cone cups that we iced with green icing and covered with sprinkles. There were also mini and regular sized ice-cream cones that you could frost with green icing. The boys thought it would be fun to combine the two. We managed to get some frosted trees on the tray with the gingerbread house but the boys had more fun putting icing between the snow cone cups and the ice-cream cones and sticking them together.

In the end we had a creative and great looking gingerbread house that we all totally enjoyed making. I’m just hoping that it will last until Christmas. The Creepy Cottage that we made in October had quite a bit of candy missing from it before Halloween actually arrived. I have a feeling that our gingerbread house may have some bare spots before Christmas arrives!

A few weeks ago the boys and I had made birdseed stars. We still had not hung them up anywhere and I wanted to do that for Christmas. Today presented the perfect opportunity.

We went with my parents to pick out a Christmas tree for their house. Since we have an artificial tree the boys really enjoy the opportunity to go to the tree farm to see the live trees. The weather has been very rainy with no snow so of course everything was very muddy. The temperature was dropping today and it did start to snow so that was fun for the boys. There were some fires in stoves at the tree farm to help warm you up. We all bundled up and went to look for a tree.

The boys were very excited running between the trees to find the perfect one, although I think that they liked all of the trees.

We also made time to visit the tree farm’s resident bunnies.

While we were looking at the trees I saw some shorter trees that I thought would look cute on our back patio with the birdseed stars on them along with some strings of cranberries and apples. While the trees were nice I did not want to pay a lot of money for a tree for our back patio for hanging birdseed. I asked one of the employees if they had any trees for sale that were far from perfect so that I could just use it for hanging birdseed. Plus, being less than perfect, I thought that it would look more natural. As luck would have it, they had a small section of about a dozen trees for $5 and $10. I was very happy!

The boys and I found many trees that we liked but then decided upon one of the $10 trees. I had told the boys what I had planned to do with the tree and they were very happy, especially since they had helped to make the birsdeed stars.

The boys were so excited that they helped to carry the tree and helped the man put the tree into the netting. They then proceeded to help the man carry it to our car. It was too cute!

Once we arrived home they helped Daddy put the lights on the tree while I ran out to buy the Granny Smith apples and fresh cranberries. When I came home the tree was all set to go. Although it was getting late and close to bedtime, we let the boys stay up a bit longer so that we could start to string some of the cranberies and apples. They really wanted to try that as they had never done it before. We kept the tree in the garage since it was warmer in there and then we put the birdseed stars on it. The boys helped to put a couple of strings of cranberries and apples on it too. Gabriel was loving to string the apples so he had a string that was pretty much all apples and only a few cranberries. When I felt how heavy the string was becoming I had him stop and put it on the tree before it became to heavy for the branches.

I thought that the strands were coming out very pretty. I was stringing some cranberries and then would add the occassional apple slice. I had cut the apples using an apple cutter so that sliced it into eight pieces. I then sliced each piece in half and then cut those halves a bit smaller, more like trianges.

In the end, I was very happy with how the strands turned out.

As of bedtime, the boys talked us into keeping the tree in the garage tonight so that they can make more cranberry/apple strands tomorrow for the tree. They really want to help move it out to the back patio with Daddy once it is all finished. Fortunately, it is a short little tree so it should be fairly easy to move to the patio, even with the decorations on it. This is as far as we got tonight with the decorating.

I will post a picture once we have it completely decorated and set up on the back patio. I hope that the tree will last for awhile since it will be outside so that we can continue to add to it and replenish it as the birds eat the food throughout the season.

As promised, here is the beaded snowflake ornament project that the boys made at Holidayfest.

The kit contained the following:
3 pipecleaners
1 ribbon
42 clear beads
42 light blue beads
24 dark blue beads

To start, you twist two of the pipecleaners together in the center to form an “X”.

Then you add the third pipecleaner by twisting it over the center of the “X” and arranging the arms of the twisted pipecleaners into a snowflake design.

Now you are ready to put the beads on the snowflake. There were enough beads in the kit that we received to put 7 clear, 7 light blue and 4 dark blue beads on each arm of the snowflake. On the one that I made I put them in the following sequence to make them even: clear, light, clear light, dark (repeat one more time); clear, light dark. You can use any color beads or any amount of beads that you would like but I just used the beads in our kit. Here is what the snowflake looked like after I had put all of the beads on it.

At this point, you can choose to continue to add more beads or have this be the finished size of your snowflake. Since I used up all of my beads I stopped at this point. I then cut down the pipecleaners so that there was just enough at the end of each arm of the snowflake so that I could bend the pipecleaner tip in half and push the tip into the top of the bead so that the beads did not fall off. I did this to 5 of the arms on the snowflake.

On the final arm of the snowflake I trimmed the pipecleaner down just a bit and then bent the pipecleaner end in half and placed the tip of the end into the top bead, the same way that I had with the others. The only difference this time is that I made the end of the pipecleaner more into an open loop. Then I simply put the ribbon through the loop and tied the ends of the ribbon together and then hung it on the tree.

This has been such a busy month. I have been working on Christmas presents and am finally making some headway. I completed Matthew’s robe and the fleece blankets for both of the boys. I plan on starting Gabriel’s robe tomorrow. I am starting to make a little bit of headway with my Step-Father’s scarf. I have also almost finished the two projects that I’m making for Tom. I will post those after Christmas since he reads my blog.

The other day the boys were wanting to craft so I brought out these foam gingerbread kits that I picked up a year or so ago at an after-Christmas sale.

I had to help the boys put the houses together. They were a bit too difficult for a 3 and 4 year old to put together. The pieces of the gingerbread house had tabs on each of them that all interlocked.

We found that we had to be a bit gentle with the houses or they would start to fall apart. I ended up putting some glue along all of the tabs so that, once dried, the house would stay together.

All of the decorations for the houses had sticker backs so we didn’t have to use glue on them. I was glad but I think that the boys would have preferred to be able to use glue. I helped Matthew put some of the decorations on but Gabriel wanted to do his on his own. Once Matthew got the hang of the decorating he only wanted help with peeling off the sticker backs.

Gabriel had me wipe off the glue that I had put on his gingerbread house to hold it together because he thought it would be more fun to decorate the house and then take it apart and then put it back together. So, I wiped off the glue and he has been having fun building and rebuilding the house.

It was nice to take some time out of the busy Christmas schedule and just spend some quality time with the boys. They really enjoyed making the foam gingerbread houses and I enjoyed spending the time with them and seeing the excitement on their faces. They are still enjoying the houses. Matthew’s has stayed together with a few new deocorations added and Gabriel has rebuilt his house several times.

I’m finally getting some of my Christmas gifts made. Time just seemed to get away from me this year. I finished both fleece blankets for the boys. I made Winter Frogs for Gabriel.

I made Winter Monkeys for Matthew.

Matthew’s robe is also completed.

Tomorrow I will start on Gabriel’s robe and I am STILL working on my Step-Father’s scarf. I have a feeling that I will be knitting that scarf on the way to my parent’s house on Christmas Eve! Or else he will get it wrapped up in a box with the knitting needles still attached. Hopefully though I will get it done.

I will be posting more projects soon. I just got so far behind on my Christmas gifts that I had to get working on them.

Time to get sewing!!