Advent Calendar Pieces

We finally got the ornaments sewn up for our handmade Advent Calendar.  Here are the felt ornaments to hang on our Advent Calendar next year!  Brace yourself for the picture overload. They are so cute, only 2.5 inches big, and hand and machine-sewn.  They are made with felt and embroidery thread- that's it!

 We created each one of these without a pattern. They are freehand cut,hand and  machine stitched together. Details are hand-embroidered.

 We had so many great ideas for ornaments that we just couldn't stop at 25.

 They are all so adorable.  The children are going to love finding them in our calendar pockets next December!

 Kenna and Quinn's stocking.   I wonder if we'll need more stockings in the future? :)

 Closeup of the Pointsetta, the Star for the top of the tree, some holly, and a mitten.

 Amazing little drum!

 My favorites are the soldier and the fireplace. Look at his tiny belt, and his chin strap!! Also in this picture is a cup of cooca and an ice skate.

 The fireplace has a ton of tiny details. Look at the tiny fire!

 Frosty, reindeer, a "jingle bell" and the drum.

Candle, gingerbread man, cardinal, sugar cookie

With these ornaments finally finished, I feel like our advent calendar has transformed into an instant family heirloom.  Might be planning on making three more- for our cousins, and possibly a few to sell for 2012!

Paperless Christmas

 Felt bags instead of wrapping paper, anyone?

 How about bags mde from old t-shirts, and embellished with felt?

 Not a gift under the tree wrapped in paper! My handy husband Bill sewed up some felt bags, and I tucked in our gifts and tied them up with ribbon. 

 This gift (k-cups for Bill) came in this brown bag, so I just prettied it up with a ribbon.

 Bill and I didn't want to buy anything special for this project, so some of our bags are yellow felt, as opposed to more "christmassy" colors. I didn't mind one bit. :)

 I even grabbed some scraps of fabric for some gifts, and wrapped them up!

 Stockings are filled by Santa at our house, and of course, those gifts are "wrapped" by the stocking, so no need for anything else!

Santa left some gifts unwrapped, like our coffee maker, and Kenna's CitiBlocks. He even played around with them and built a tower!
After gifts were open, I folded all of the bags, tucked them and all the ribbon into one of the largest bags, and, well... that was it! Wrapping with fabric was fun and easy, and so good for the environment. Next year we are going to try and have a completely handmade Christmas (only some items were handmade this year, but they were the favorite gifts!). We did have a plastic-free Christmas, though. I should take pictures of all of the amazing wooden gifts the kids got. No promises...

Advent Calendar

After a bit of a scramble, I finished our family's Advent Calendar late on November 30th! I decided to hand-cut and hand-sew everything, which definately slowed me down! Add to that Thanksgiving craziness, two sick kids, and "finals week" for my husband, and we can officially declare the completion of this project a MIRACLE!

It's completely made out of felt, plus 25 small white buttons. Each pocket will soon contain a small felt ornament- one to hang on each button (thanks, Grammie!)!  In the meantime, I cut up some felt circles and we are buttoning those to the tree each day, and they sorta look like Christmas lights. (that's how I'm selling it to my kids, and they LOVE it!)

The calendar is suspended with a tree branch, and some ribbon. I love it so much! I handcut each number, handsewed everything down, and came up with the tree design on my own.

Kenna is so thrilled with it. Each morning, we button on a "christmas light", read the note telling us about our craft for the day and any special activities we will be doing (Christmas parade, visit Santa, go to train show, take holiday pictures, etc), and I have also put in some stickers, a couple m&ms, and tomorrow there will be a mini candycane.

  Here it is with all of the simple little "lights" I hastily made once I realized making tiny felt ornaments in time was not gonna happen. Wait until you see the ornaments we are sewing up for next year!

Felt Map- Birthday style!

I made a felt map for Kenna a couple weeks ago. She is going to LOVE it.  Meanwhile, we got invited to a birthday party for a sweet 3 year old girl, and the theme of the party??? DORA!! So of course I had to make her a map, too. I found this book- Dora's Birthday Surprise, and opened it to see what the Map had to say.

Map directed Dora and Boots to Acorn forest, the blue Troll Bridge, and then finally to Rainbow Mountain.

So, I got out my felt and some scissors, and made the three destinations to go with some others I had already made.

Troll Bridge. (I wish I had made a troll, too. I ran out of time.)

Rainbow Mountain. I made them two pieces, so she could take the rainbow and use it alone. I kinda hate the mountain, but I was copying the picture and was in a rush. Ahhh, well.

Now the Birthday Girl can read her book, and follow along with her very own Map. Yay!

Felt Microphone

 After watching several episodes of Little Einstein, Kenna declared she wanted a microphone like Annie.  Watching the Thanksgiving Day Parade sealed the deal, since she saw lots of performers singing into microphones.  Since we are vegetarian, our Thanksgiving turkey was actually a "ToFurkey" and did not require a whole lot of prep work. (it was yummy, thanks for asking!) The lack of prep is why on Thanksgiving morning I sewed up a microphone for Kenna, instead of slaving over the stove (*not that I was the one cooking anyhow, since I DON'T cook.)

It came out adorable, with some felt, polyfil, and a little hand-stitching.  Kenna LOVES it and has been singing into it constantly (even at the dinner table.) She also experimented with holding it up to her ear, "So you can hear me better."  She melts my heart!

I'm the Map, I'm the Map, I'm the Map!

Finally! A break from the non-stop custom orders from the last month or so... and just in time to start working on some Christmas gifts!

I'm pretty sure you know "Map" from Dora the Explorer. If you don't, consider yourself very, very lucky.  If you do, I apologize for the stupid song now running continuously through your head.  My sweet Kenna is rather taken by Dora and friends. We watch very little television, so Dora DVD's are a real treat for her.  Recently, Kenna has taken to wadding up any paper she can find, calling it "her map" and stuffing it into her little backpack.  She sings the Dora songs, she pretends that Swiper is lurking around every corner, and calls Daddy Boots more often than not. ?

 So yeah, making her a Map is a no-brainer gift! I haven't seen anything like this around, so I just kinda winged it. I wanted the map to roll up and show his face, and when it was unrolled, I wanted the three destinations to be interchangeable. I grabbed some felt and got to work. I have to say I am in love with this project, and know Kenna will be, too!

 Here's the map. The only thing glued down is the road. You can see a small square of scratchy velcro I handstitched on so that the map will stay rolled up.

 Then I got to start making the "destinations". First, through the flower garden...

Then hike over Big Mountain!

 Go around the Red Barn!

Here are three destinations, laid out on the map- flower garden, wooden bridge, dark cave.  :)

 Forest, alligator lake, big mountain!

Park, pumpkin patch (in honor of our two recent trips there... I just knew Kenna would love this...) and red barn.

When I finished making the pieces for the inside, I quickly cut out Map's Face. Because he is a cartoon, his face is completely outlined in black. To mimic this, I simply cut two layers of felt. I think he came out pretty adorable!

Here's the whole set. I am sure that when Kenna gets ahold of it, she will ask me for some specific things to add, and I can't wait! I plan to make at least one more set for an upcoming 3 year old birthday girl who loves Dora, too!

Felt "Build a Jack-o-Lantern"

AKA Halloween Tot Trays, Week 4.

I hear you now, complaining that after four weeks of Halloween activities, there has been NO FELT???
  My favorite medium is felt!! I sell felt items. I give felt items as gifts. Everyone is making felt "build a face" Jack-O-Lanterns.   What gives?
Well. Have no fear.  There was felt.  :)
 I just forgot to post about it, since I actually made this game for Kenna last year. 

 Such an easy project- one piece of felt to make a giant pumpkin, and glue or sew on a stem.  Then use a piece of black felt to get creative with different features.  There are a billion felt pieces to choose from, as I went a bit felt face crazy, but here are Kenna's favorite faces. Worried pumpkin at the top. Happy in this one!

 And the one that makes her explode into giggles- The "daddy face".  She insisted this guy needed a mustache, despite the fact that her Daddy has NEVER had a mustache.  Weird.

 I only put out a few options a day, and rotate them each day. Otherwise all the facial feautres would overwhelm Kenna.  (Did I mention that I have made waay too many??)  The strange little bits at the top right are eye brows.  They are silly!

 Aside from our felt pumpkin game, we had even more fun with our awesome spiders that I purchased a couple weeks ago. I set out the pole part of our Rainbow Stacker, and an assortment of spider rings.

Kenna's job was to lace all of the spiders onto the pole. I have to say, the fit was PERFECT!! A little tight, but not too tight. She had to really work to center the ring over the pole to get it on.  She LOVED doing this.

 Kenna crammed over 20 spiders onto the pole, and then pulled them off and did it again. What fun! Gret fine motor work, and also hand-eye coordination.

 Another activity I set out this week was a "small space" activity.  I put out a breastmilk storage container (Love these things!) and some spiders. Kenna had to really poke and prod them into the container, and then use an awesome finger grasp to get them back out. She enjoyed this as well.  I didn't have to give her any instructions- it was like that container was screaming for spiders- she saw the tray and started stuffing!

Since it is 41 degrees out today, Kenna washed our pumpkins in the laundry room. I gave her warm water, an ikea scrub brush, and two of our pumpkins.  She loved it and was very meticulous about scrubbing them, including their "bottoms".  She wanted soap in the water, so I squirted a few pumps of our foam dispenser, which has castille soap and water in it.  (Castille soap is totally green and foams really well. Plus it is uber-cheap to refill our soap dispensers, since a tiny squirt is all you need.  Oh, and if you haven't switched to foam with your toddler, consider this your wake-up- DO IT NOW!! Foam is a thousand times less messy than goopy, slimy, impossible to wash off hand soap.)

 I didn't get any other pictures of this activity, because right after I took this, I had to throw the camera down and pull Little Man out of the bowl of water. ( He had been sitting across from kenna with a pumpkin and his own scrub brush to amuse him, but alas, the water was too tempting.) Awesome.

Halloween is tomorrow!! Hooray for Trick or Treat!!