Holy moley….it’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to update my blog. Christmas kicked my booty and I still feel like I’m catching up on some things. I do have all of our Christmas decorations down, however, I am still working on putting our regular decorations back up.
Anyway, I thought it would be fun to do a giant Christmas update. I’ve been dying to share all of the projects I tackled. I really, really love making gifts for as many people as I can. It just takes a lot of time. Some Decembers, Christmas almost feels like a full time job. But I still love it and as long as I’m able, I’ll hand make at least some part of our Christmas every year. It’s just part of who I am.
Christmas Pajamas
I made Christmas pajamas!! I make them some years, but not all. I have been dreaming of sewing matching Green Bay Packers pajamas for all of us. I’m pretty sure this is the only Christmas that I will do this, though. NFL fabric is not cheap! I also wanted coordinating t-shirts to go with them, but not matching. So, I bought some blank jersey shirts off of Amazon and used heat transfer vinyl cut on my silhouette to make the designs. Now we all have comfy clothes to sit and watch our favorite team play (too bad they had such a bad season this year.)
I bought the flannel fabric to sew the pajama bottoms from Joanns. I realized after starting to pin that I accidentally ordered 1 yard short. I was pretty devastated when I realized that Joanns was out of stock with no estimated restock date. I ordered 12 yards originally, so I decided that I could probably squeeze that extra yard out. Instead of doubling the fabric over like the instructions on the pattern stated, I just cut each piece individually and puzzle pieced them all in. It took my HOURS to get everything cut out and I was sore for days afterwards. All that kneeling down and bending over just about did me in. I think I’m getting old! Haha! But I cannot even tell you how relieved I was that everything worked out!
Ornaments
I also made a ton of ornaments. I think I counted 56 in total by the time I finished. I made some for all of Dave’s teachers, our kid’s teachers, cousins, and my visiting teaching sisters. I started with clear glass ornaments and glittered and put vinyl on them. I’m still finding glitter around the house from this giant project. But they turned out so pretty! I was sad to give them away!
These are the ornaments for Dave’s teachers. I ordered custom vinyl from Sparkleberry with the school mascot on it. Then I added each of the teachers names and 2017 on the back.
I wrapped them up with a couple of bars of handmade soap (that I also made). A lot of work, but I think they were a very personal gift that hopefully all the teachers loved.
I also made Dave’s secretary this wreath. She is a HUGE Chicago Bear’s fan. I took process photos so I’ll share a tutorial very soon.
These are ornaments I made for my visiting teaching sisters. I may have to make more of these next year. I ran out of ornaments so I didn’t get one for myself and I love how they came out!
I also made personalized ornaments for my nieces and nephews.
And my favorite ornaments by far were the ones I made for our kids. They were tricky and none of them came out perfectly. But I wanted ornaments that represented something that each of them loved during the year. I haven’t jumped on the ornament a year bandwagon for my kids, but I’m thinking that it may be a new Christmas tradition at our house…
Custom t-shirts
Okay, this is the last thing I’m going to share, I promise! I know this is a photo heavy post. But hopefully this explains why it seems like I dropped off the face of the planet during the last month or so! Haha!
I obviously didn’t get enough of the heat transfer with our Green Bay Packers t-shirts and decided to make each of the kids two more. I tried to find something personal for each of them.
These are Bria’s. Bria LOVES music. The first one is kind of an inside music joke because technically you need to read music to get it. It says “Without music, life would BE FLAT”. Get it? The second shirt I made for her is kind of a running joke in our family. It fits Bria’s 14 year old personality perfectly!
These are Max’s shirts. He was the hardest to design something for. I wasn’t sure if he would get the reference in the first t-shirt, but I finally decided he would be happy with the MAXIN part either way. So far he’s worn this to school a few times, so I guess I didn’t miss the mark completely! The second one I made for him because he loves, loves Phineas and Ferb. He is always quoting from it and talking about Dr. Doofenshmirtz -inators. It will be a sad day in our house when either Netflix stops carrying Phineas and Ferb episodes OR Max decides that he’s too old to watch anymore.
These are for Logan. He will eternally be our Stitch fanatic. He dreams of living in Hawaii and I think he’s seen the movies at least 100 times each. I love it! I also made Logan a Batman shirt and it may just be my favorite of the entire lot. It just cracks me up! I won’t take the credit for coming up with the wording myself. I think I saw about a million different versions on Pinterest when I was searching for t-shirt ideas.
Anyway…that’s in for our homemade Christmas last year. I promise I’ll be around more regularly going forward. I have a few tutorial posts that I want to share very soon!
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