Happy New Year!

Tick-tock says the clock,
it's twelve of the night.
The New Year's here
and the stars are bright.

The old year's gone,
he's tired and worn.
Christmas is past,
the tree all shorn.

The star-children come
in the dead of night,
like three Wise Men
bringing the light.

Tick-tock says the clock.
The New Year's come.
Good Year to you all
until the next to come!
- Elsa Beskow

We wish you all a joyous and peaceful New Year!
I'll be back Monday with more of our handmade holiday, carrying on with our celebration of the twelve days of Christmas.
All the best!!

Happy New Year!

WIP Wednesday: Christmas Past

A photographic journey of some of the things I finished for my family's handmade Christmas.


Last minute angel tree ornament


Catnip and wool mice for the kitties


K's doll bed pillow and mattress (Oh, how I love this little red riding hood fabric!)


C baby's gnomey, gnomey, gnome hat (to match C's gnomey, gnomey, gnome hat)


K baby's gnomey, gnomey, gnome hat (to match K's)

Lastly, C's doll bed quilt. It has it's imperfections... oh yes, quite a few, but overall I am happy with how it came out, and most important C loves it! Thank you to my dear friend Marina for her inspiration and reminding me that you can never have to much pink!








C inspecting and pointing out everything she sees

Finally taking on this mini-quilting project has given me enough confidence now that I look forward to doing more, and I am kind of left wondering, What was I so afraid of ? I actually just ordered some beautiful fabric from Anna Maria Horner to make a simple patchwork quilt throw for our couch. Let's hope this confidence sticks with me for that...

I plan on sharing more of our handmade Christmas in posts to come!
Happy Creating!
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I almost forgot to mention, a new online magazine about Waldorf at home called rhythm of the home, I have it listed under the websites we love section, but you can also see it here.

WIP Wednesday: Christmas Past

Wishing you all Joy and Love!

This post is a bit later then I planned on, but I wanted to wish you all a joyous holiday!
I also wanted to share a couple of glimpses of our Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. The pictures themselves are not the greatest, there was a lot going on and not much time to concentrate on photography, but I have to share them none the less. It was a nice, quiet, simple Christmas, just like we wanted.


Christmas Eve


Some of the 'name tags'. Since the girls can not read, we did symbols to represent them. K's gifts had bugs (she's our cuddle bug) and C's gifts had bears (she's our koala bear).


Our angel tree topper made by ZooLooNaturals


Christmas morning


K reading to K baby in their matching 'gnomie hats'



Lastly, the only picture I took of our advent spiral. This was, obviously, from December 1st. I wish I had more. When we lit all of our candles on Christmas Eve, they set off our smoke alarm scaring our poor girls, so no photos then! Note to self: Disconnect smoke alarm in dining room next year...

Hope you had a great one. I'll be back to more regular posting this week. Wishing you all the best!

Wishing you all Joy and Love!

Light

I love the beauty of the light this season brings in such a time of darkness.


Our Solstice lamp




Silly faced girls in awe


The fourth light of Advent


Tree lights, even more beautiful when blurred



We have all been busy little elves these past few days but I had to stop by to wish you all a Happy Winter Solstice!

Wishing you all light and warmth.

Light

WIP Wednesday: The Countdown Begins

Packages on their way out

I don't know where the time went but somehow or other I only have a little over a week to finish up the girls presents. I cut way back on what I wanted to make them. My tired body is warning me to slow it down a bit and do less, so I have to listen unless I want to be sick for Christmas...umm no! I am realizing now that I don't need to make everything at once. I had plans of stockings, a tree skirt, knitted items for their dollhouse... but then I came to the realization that I can just do a little every year. It doesn't NEED to be all at once. Yes, it's true, I'm trying to bring my obsessive behaviors into check. Probably about time, huh?!



The quilt is slowly coming along, I have had to rip out more than enough stitches to count but I think it will be done by Christmas. I am beginning to wonder though if I may have *gasp* chosen too many pink fabrics for it. I think we all know of our love for all things peachy pink but this may have gone too far...



A couple of weeks ago I got the most beautiful yarn in the mail from Three Irish Girls. The picture does not do it justice at all. It is a heavenly peachy pink colorway that just screams to be knit up. It was a limited edition and I am so very thankful to Kyrie for e-mailing me about it. She knew I would love it, and boy, was she right! I think it is my absolute favorite colorway. Sadly, I only ordered two skeins of it and I am kicking myself now, I could just see entire wardrobes knit up for both K and C out of this. *sigh* For now I will be content with knitting a neighborly out of it.



I didn't plan on adding to my knitting list but I just had to knit this up. It's coming along rather quickly. Knitting really is a big stress reliever for me, so needless to say, in this last week before Christmas I have been picking it up a lot. I am not planning to have it done by Christmas but if I do then it will be a gift for K. I even found some cute squirrel buttons to go on it.

With the holidays quickly approaching I may be a bit more sporadic with posting on here. I will take each day as it comes and go from there. I hope you all understand.

Happy creating!!

WIP Wednesday: The Countdown Begins

The Third Light of Advent, St. Lucia Day AND Giveaway Winner!

Wow, that's a lot to cram in to one post, huh?! I will try to keep it all short and sweet!



The third light of Advent is the light of beasts,
Light of hope that shines in the greatest and the least...



Sheep appeared and circled our Advent wreath to represent the animal kingdom.




We added our animals to the manger. Currently, the only animal we have for our Nativity is Mary's donkey (look here to find out why our set up is small).



K added her own decoration to our Advent wreath to celebrate St. Lucia day (which was also yesterday). It's a picture Mel of Haddy2Dogs gave her at the Winter Faire.

Santa Lucia, Thy light is glowing,
Through darkest winter night, Comfort be stowing,
Dreams float on wings of night, Come then the morning light,
Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia

-Traditional Italian

Our St. Lucia day was a bit of a mishap but I think the girls still enjoyed it, nonetheless. We made the St. Lucia buns recipe found in 'The Waldorf Kindergarten Snack Book' but I forgot that recipe was made for a classroom of children, as well as a few adults, so we had quite a lot of dough to work with. Then our dough didn't rise so our buns came out pretty dense. Oh well, lesson learned for next year, right?



Our needle felted St. Lucia (by Haddy2Dogs) stood beautifully on our nature table. She will be hung on our tree later today.



K wore her beautiful St. Lucia crown (again by Haddy2Dogs) all day long dancing around singing 'I'm St. Lucia!'. I had a hard time getting a picture of her in it, unfortunately. She has been acting like her mama lately, not wanting to be in front of the camera.

Ok and last but not least the randomly chosen winner of the knitted fruit basket ornament is:

Kimberley Lynch

Congrats Kimberley! Please e-mail me (farmergopi@yahoo.com) your address and I will mail it out ASAP! Those extra chances really do help!
Thank you to everyone that entered, I truly do wish I could knit one up for all of you. I read every single comment posted and wow, your kind words mean so much to me and truly inspire me. Thank you! I hope you enjoy the pattern and please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. Please e-mail pictures! I would love to see them.

Thanks again! I hope you all have a wonderful week!

The Third Light of Advent, St. Lucia Day AND Giveaway Winner!

Little Miss Pigtails

Where did my fuzzy headed baby go? I swear it was only days ago that she came into this world and now look at her!

C sees K with pig tails all the time and so badly wants to be just like her. I tell her over and over that she doesn't have enough hair to use hair ties yet, after all, everyone in my family was a baldy as a baby - even K didn't get a lot of hair until she was almost four.



My little one is not defeated that easily, oh no, she is my baby warrior. She pushes her stool up to the bathroom counter to get the hair tie box, pulls two out and hunts me down saying 'gack, gack! gack, gack!' (her word for hair tie) then points to her hair and says 'tie. tie!'. In my head I am thinking there is no way this will work but seeing those big innocent blue eyes looking up into mine, I knew I had to try (really, how could I not? Could you deny a sweet little thing chasing you around the house saying 'gack, gack' over and over again?!) I sit down on the floor and she immediately charges and flops her self into my lap handing me the 'gack, gacks' en route. I start to gather half of her hair and wrap the tie around once; there is a glimmer of hope! I wrap it around four or five more times and it stays! I do the same on the other side of her head with the rest of her hair... Holy moly, it works!! C stands up feeling her pig tails while giggling with delight.


Gangsta C

She runs back and forth from me to the mirror with the biggest smile on her face, and I just melt. This is what childhood and life in general is all about - simplicity; finding happiness in the smallest things in life.
I swear I learn more about life from my girls than from any other source. They really do open my eyes each and every single day. I hope I am somehow returning the favor to them.



Thank you, for being so patient and understanding with your Mama, my wise little ones.



Wishing you all a wonderful weekend! I'll be back Monday with the winner of the knitted fruit basket ornament. Last chance to enter!

Little Miss Pigtails

WIP Wednesday: No Margin for Errors

Let's start out with a little holiday cheer, shall we?
My knitted fruit basket ornament pattern is supposed to be revealed on the Living Crafts website sometime today. I'll come back and post a link here as soon as it's up.



K wanted her doll house to be decorated for Christmas so I added some trimmings on the roof. I hope to make more things to go in the dollhouse like a knitted Christmas tree, but this month is flying by much too fast!



K is working on candy cane presents to mail out to family and friends. She loves this project because they are done so quickly.



Holiday cards for those near to our hearts but far from our reach.



Popcorn strung on our tree. I underestimated how long this project would take! I have been working on it during C's nap time for the past three days and only have about 1/4 of the tree done. At this rate I think I'll have it done by Christmas Day! K keeps telling me to hurry so we can put our ornaments up. Patience, dear child, patience.

So now that I have posted about our holiday cheer, I need to post my personal holiday woes.



I suppose I should start with a little background information. My MIL bought the girls cute little doll beds for Christmas. I knew the girls would love having a special place for their favorite dolls to sleep at night, so I was excited for them to get these beds. Then I had the idea that I should make bedding for the beds (to make it look nicer and more personalized for the girls, and to prevent the wool mattress and pillow from getting dirty). That's fast and easy sewing, no issues there, but then I decided since K has a beautiful doll quilt (made by Ram in the Thicket) for her doll, C needs one, too. I have wanted to try my hand at quilting for a long time so what better time to make one, right? I grew up sewing, conquered and loved industrial sewing machines, majored in fashion design...but yet I have always been afraid of quilting. There just seems to be no margin for errors in quilting, and my usual sewing style of not following rules and patterns exactly doesn't seem to mesh with that. In an effort to work through my fears I found a simple quilt pattern in an old issue of Living Crafts and decided I would try it. I found the perfect fabrics for it. Of course they were out of print/hard to find fabrics so I literally had a piece of fabric from a cut up pair of pajamas (the gnome print) and the last yard available pretty much anywhere of some cute hedgehog, squirrels and toadstools.
Fast forward to the present
I have been putting this project off for months and finally last night I made myself start on it. The first thing I did was cut to size my main piece of fabric that is for the back and trim of the quilt. Remember that saying 'measure twice, cut once'? Well, I didn't. I majorly messed up cutting that piece of fabric and now I don't have enough. It was the last yard, too so there is no buying more. Hanging my head in defeat and munching on peppermint bark for comfort I sewed up a quick pillowcase for C's doll bed just so I could get something accomplished. Then I saw K's doll quilt out of the corner of my eye. Looking it over I thought maybe, just maybe, I could use that as a guide and wing it. I took measurements and cut out my strips for the sides, then left off there. I am hoping, no praying that I can do this and get it done in time for Christmas. I have a feeling this will be all I am working on from now until then. Keep your fingers crossed for me and if you have any quilting pointers you want to share, I am all ears! Now back to winging it.

Have a great Wednesday everyone! Don't forget to enter for your chance to win one of my knitted fruit basket ornaments, time is running out soon.

Happy creating!

WIP Wednesday: No Margin for Errors

The Second Light of Advent & St. Nicholas Day

The second light of Advent is the light of plants,
Plants that reach up to the sun and in the breezes dance...



For the second week of Advent we added pine cones to the center of our wreath to represent the plant kingdom. K had the honor of lighting the candles as we read our verse and sang our song, and she blew them out at the end of the night, too.



We added trees and pine cones to our manger scene. We don't have nativity trees yet but these will do. We only have a few pieces for our nativity and plan to buy a few more every year until it is complete. That feels appropriate to me as it goes along with the patience and anticipation of the Advent season.


Our Advent calender
Since this is the week of the plant kingdom we decided to get our tree. I know, traditionally, you are supposed to wait until after the fourth light of Advent, but this is the first year we are having a 'real' tree and I didn't want to make the girls wait any longer. Maybe next year we will wait until the fourth light but for now I am just going with the flow and with what feels right for our family.



Sunday was also St. Nicholas day, which is always an exciting day in our house. We read one of the St. Nicholas stories before bed the night before and the girls put their shoes by the front door with carrots for St. Nicholas' donkey.



As you can see I had to undo the velcro a bit on each of my girl's shoes to fit the clementine, golden walnut, honey stick and small gift.



Our St. Nicholas decorations were very simple this year. We had our usual St. Nicholas figure out on our night stand so the girls saw it right away upon waking, and we added a couple new items as well.


St. Nicholas candle found at the winter faire made by Buzzhandmade


St. Nicholas ornament by Mel of Haddy2dogs

If you desire to, you can see our last two St. Nicholas Day celebrations here, and here. We, once again, missed celebrating with our wonderful friend Tiffeni.

On a side note: I can not believe all your kind words on my ornament. Thank you so much! I don't even know what to say!!
Remember you have until St. Lucia day next weekend to enter to win!

I hope everyone had a wonderful celebration (if you celebrate these holidays) and weekend.

Wishing you all lots of warmth!

The Second Light of Advent & St. Nicholas Day