For the Farmgirl at heart

Everything farmgirl, vintage, handmade, homemade, fabulous and fun!

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!


Love, Moo, Toots and Me!

Handmade Mermaids

A few months ago I found the directions for these cute little handmade mermaid dolls from Wee Wonderfuls and found a free tutorial.  Of course, I can't find that tutorial now so I just posted a link to Wee Wonderfuls so you can see all of her wonderful stuff.  So creative that one.

So after deciding that I just had to make them, I, well, made them.  Actually, I waited until closer to Christmas, since I am really trying not to give the girls gifts just because.  So I bought the fabric, followed the directions that I had printed out weeks before and worked on them slowly.  S-L-O-W-L-Y.  I had to wait until Moo was asleep AND Daddy was home to hold Toots, since she is not a big fan of sewing machine noise.  A little bit here, a little bit there and some sewing machine problems (I still have no idea why the machine decided to change tension on me in mid fin) I finally finished late night Christmas Eve.

Cute, right?  The one with the blue hair belongs to Toots and the pink belongs to Moo.  They came out pretty good, if I do say so myself.  And I was afraid that I would have spent all that time on them and nobody would want to play with them, but Moo seems to like them well enough.  Toots is still not too interested in dolls, but she did carry it around for a while. 

Mermaid in stocking.  They were just too cute - no wrapping required.

Seems to be enjoying her new mermaid.  Here you can see the size, perfect for little hands.  Not so perfect for bad eyesight and hand sewing.  It was about 50% machine and 50% hand stitching, and my big meaty hands are not meant for delicate stitching!  But in the end, it all worked out and now the girls have some cute little dolls.  Moo even asked if I could make her another one so her mermaid could have a friend.  I think that means it's a hit.  I told her I'd make her one for her birthday (in March) and that she could pick out the fabrics.  She should have loads of fun with that project!

Making Ornaments with Moo

Moo and I decided to make some ornaments after seeing Meg over at Whatever with her SUPER cute flower pearl pin ornaments.  So we headed out to the craft store and picked up one of those bottles of scrapbooking flowers, pearl headed pins and I already had some styrofoam balls from some other project.  I put the bits in a crafty tin (a plastic muffin tin) and we got started!

Moo picked out the colors, we both used pink flowers since one of those jars could easily cover more than two balls.  Then she picked pink pins and I picked white.  I just thought it would be nice to have a little contrast, but it turns out one box of 100 pins covers basically one ball - depending on how many flowers you try to stuff on there.

I was a little worried at first and hesitant to do this craft with Moo, since it does use long head pins and it requires a lot of patience, which Moo doesn't really have.  I finally figured that we could just stop when she got tired of it and pick it up again later.  And I had her put the ball in one of the open spots on the craft tin while she was sticking the pins into it, so she would be less likely to stick herself.  As you can see, she really enjoyed herself.

She was extremely careful and placed each flower on the ball in just the right spot before pinning it in.  We discovered early on that it is kind of hard to remove the pins once they have been pushed in.  I was worried about how easily they would come out - I didn't want them to just drop out on the floor with the baby running around, so I tried it out.  Pretty hard to pull them out when you are really trying, so that was good.  It's also harder than you would think to push them in there.

Moo really concentrated and kept at it until her ball was totally covered.  I was very surprised at how focused she was on this activity.  Probably due to the fact that every two seconds I was telling her what a good job she was doing, how pretty her ornament was looking and how grown up she was to be using very sharp pins so carefully.

Her focused face.  I don't see it often, had to capture it.  By the way, she is still in her jammies since this was about 9 a.m. but she had to "fix her hair".  This is how she did her hair for the day.

The finished product.  Very cute if I do say so myself.  Sorry it's a little blurry, I was using the bad camera and had to turn the flash off since it just whited everything out.  The flowers came in a few different shades of pink and some had glitter on them.  Moo loved her ornament and was VERY proud to show it off.  All in all it was a great project that we just might do again in a different color.  Thanks Meg for the great idea!

Friday, December 16, 2011

Teacher Gift Idea

If you have a teacher to give a gift to this Christmas (or this would also work for an end of the year gift), then have I got the gift for you!  The Teacher Survival Kit!  I saw something similar to this on a few blogs and thought I could tweek it to fit Moo's Kindergarten teacher - who is a Saint, by the way!

You just get a jewelry supply organizer, tackle organizer, anything with a bunch of small cubbies in it that closes securely, then go to town filling it with things you think your teacher would need and appreciate!  I went with a red, white and black theme, but you don't have to use a color theme at all.  I just liked the look of everything matching.  I went with Sharpies, pencils, large and small paper clips, binder clips, rubber bands and magnets.  I also added a headache medicine (after a day with 30 5 year olds, I would need those), some chocolates (because they are yummy!), some breath mints (mainly because they were red, white and black) and some heart stickers because she gives the kids a sticker when they are leaving if they were good in school that day.  An easy way for the parents to see if they kid acted up or not. 

Then I got a cellophane bag and some ribbon and there you have it!  I also added the apple post-it dispenser because she is ALWAYS sticking post-its on everything and every teacher needs an apple for her desk, right?  So cute.  This gift was not too expensive to put together, but making two or more would be more cost effective, as I was left with a bunch of paperclips and chocolates and such that wouldn't fit in the bins.  So make one for each of the teachers in your life and spread some love this Christmas!
P.S.  All items used in the bins were purchased at Walmart, as were the bins themselves.  The decorations and the fancy pencils were from Michael's craft store. 

My Little Cowgirls

Moo in my hat and Toots in her old one.  Toots saw Moo wearing my hat, pointed to hers and said "at?"  So I got the old one down and as soon as Toots put it on, she wouldn't take it off.  The same can be said for Moo, who refused to take my hat off for the rest of the night.  What silly girls!

Operation Christmas Child - Building Boxes

 So a few weeks ago I wrote a post about Operation Christmas Child, then I started having problems with my computer - iPhoto specifically.  But now I'm back and I think I have the problem figured out, so let's get on with the show!  Operation Christmas Child, as you can see, is something Moo and I like to do during the holidays.  I slowly gather things all year long (note the small plastic tubs) when they go on sale or when I find them at a good price.  Socks, school supplies, toys, books, stickers, anything fun.  Then in November, we get to pull those boxes out and build our gift boxes.  I also collect shoe boxes during the year to pack our gifts in (note the large brown box full of shoe boxes). 
 Moo grabs a shoe box and goes down the line of tubs, filling the box with all sorts of goodies.  I should point out here that each tub has a different focus.  One has socks and tee shirts in it.  One has hard candies.  One has hair brushes, headbands, clips and the like.  One has stuffed animals.  One has school stuff like crayons, pencils, sharpeners, stickers, paper.  One has soap and washcloths.  You get the idea.  So Moo gets to pick things from each bin to fill up a shoe box.  Then she does it again until we are out of shoe boxes!

The last step is for Mommy to wrap the boxes and for Moo to draw pictures to send with her boxes.  This year she drew a picture of herself with what she imagined the person getting the box to look like and wrote "I love you" on each.  She said she wanted them to know that she was sending them a present because she loved them.  So cute.  Then we close them all up and take them to a drop-off location.  This year it was at the Crossroads Church, not too far from our house.  When I printed out the labels on-line, I also signed up for notification when the boxes were delivered so we could find out where they went.  And I just got notice that they ended up in Malaysia.  They sent some photos of kids getting their boxes and it was great to be able to show Moo just how happy her boxes made those kids.  If you are looking for a way to make your Thanksgiving or Christmas a little more meaningful, look into sending a shoe box to a child in need.  It's a wonderful thing to teach your children how to appreciate what they have and realize that not everyone is so lucky.