Oh, What Do You Do In The Wintertime?

I'm sure you all know my feelings about winter. It has been crazy cold here. And dry. And static-y. So, being indoors ever so much more, I decided that instead of being a lazy bag of bones (that's what my dad would have said), I started some crafty little projects. I thought I would share them with you. Please hold your "ooooohs" and "aaaaahs" until the end. Thank you.

First off, while we were out at Kade's parent's house, his dad printed out some of our family pictures onto canvas for us. They turned out awesome! We printed them on a really big printer and stretched them onto an 11x16 frame. Instead of scattering them throughout the house, I wanted to make a display. I just needed a little something to fill in some extra space. I made this:

I wanted it to look like the wood fence behind us in our pictures, so I painted it the same color of tan, and antiqued it around the edges. I think it worked. Here is the final display hanging in our front room:

Fun, eh? As a side note, I would like so say that I am very glad a have a few skillz with man tools. In fact I love tools, particularly my power drill and my ratcheting screwdriver. I think one day when we have $, I want to buy a table saw so that I don't have to ask the boys at Home Depot to cut my pieces of wood for me. It makes me feel so lame. And also an air compressor so I can use a nail gun and a staple gun. Kade on the other hand doesn't possess the desire to develop those "man skillz," which is ok, because he brings home the bacon. He did, however, earn 2 man points the other day for getting the panel off the furnace so I could change the filter.

Ok, for the next project, let's move to Ailee's room. I hadn't put anything on the wall above her crib...I was waiting for the perfect decor. Well, I was at Hobby Lobby (my new love in life), actually looking for the things to make my "family" sign, when I stumbled upon these big chunky wall letters. And better yet, they were on sale for $1.50 each! Yeah! Originally, they were just plain white. I painted them pink, then I used one of my favorite stamp sets and stamped them. I was hoping the brown ink I used would show up a little bit better, but it kind of went dull as it dried. Oh, well, I still like them:

I thought the "L" was the cutest.

Now that she has giant letters hanging above her crib, maybe she will finally learn how to spell her name. This next project I found online. I'm one of the Achievement Day Girls leaders, and we wanted to do an activity with service. So, we made these way cute and easy Santas. They were simple to make. You just need paint, felt, cotton balls, a nose, and eyes. I think in the original design they were made out of tin cans, but I had a bunch of empty formula cans I had been saving (apparently for this), and I wanted to be able to pull the hat off. We filled them up with little papers that had ideas for service over the 25 days until Christmas.

I still have a few projects in the works. I'm making Maryn a sock monkey for her stocking. She loves monkeys and I found the instructions online. They aren't hard to make, they just take time (lots of stuffing and hand sewing). I'd post a picture of it, he sure is cute, but Maryn always looks at our blog, and I'd hate to spoil Christmas for her.

We finally finished our Christmas decorating on Saturday. I'm kinda lazy this year so I didn't even put out all of our decorations, just the big things. My Christmas Pyramid from Germany and my nativity set are my favorites:I love the easy detail of the pyramid. It reminds me so much of our time in Germany. I used to have candles for it, but apparently our attic gets really hot in the summer. Oops. It took me a few years to accumulate the different pieces to my nativity, but it was so worth it. I love the simpleness of the figures, and the few, yet expressive, details.

I'm glad the Christmas season is here. Much more so than last year--I guess it helps that I'm not pregnant and sick. In fact I have this wreath on my front door that I made last year. It's pretty, but every time I look at it, it makes me physically ill. It triggers my memory of being nauseated. Secretly I hope that somebody steals it off of my door.

Merry Christmas!