Posting Again, and New Project

So I know I haven't posted for a long time, I was going to do monthly pictures but then I got hit by a car and by the time I got back on my feet, I felt like I was way too late and just decided that one year of pictures was good enough.

Now I am just wanting to post just to kind of keep a diary of my life. The projects I am working on, the things I do with Liam and our family, and it will force me to take more pictures of everything and to do more fun things so that I have things to post about. I don't plan on having any schedule but I will try to post once a week, maybe.... we'll see.

I have been doing projects at work lately. I made a felt board for Liam and had so much fun picking out the projects and making them all. I ended up doing a build your own snowman, where everything is removable execept the eyes and the mouth, so he can put all the pieces back where he wants them to go.

Then I did a bunch of Christmas shapes. I figured it would help with new words and learning about Christmas and honestly they were just so cute and fun I couldn't help myself. That is how I ended up with 14 of them.

The next ones I did were the 5 Little Snowflakes. There is a cute poem/ rhyme that goes with them.

One little snowflake with nothing to do,
Along came another and then there were…two!
Two little snowflakes laughing with me,
Along came another and then there were…three!
Three little snowflakes looking for some more,
Along came another and then there were…four!
Four little snowflakes dancing a jive,
Along came another and then there were…five!
Five little snowflakes, having so much fun!
Out came the sun, and then there were none!

So I did the 5 different snowflakes which were kind of crappy to make considering I didn't think through cutting the holes in the middle of the felt but I figured out that if I cut through a piece of the snowflake to get to the center to cut the piece out and as long as I glued carefully, it is barely noticeable. Also it is for a 2 year old that doesn't really care.

Last but not least, I did a Christmas tree with different color shapes for him to decorate it with. But it didn't seem Christmasy enough so I decided to have Christmas lights on each one (in a different color of course) to give it some more holiday cheer.

Making the board was the easiest part of the whole project, I just stapled a piece of felt onto a canvas and voila, felt board. There will be no picture of that though because since I have done it, my child decided to draw on it with chocolate milk and I haven't had a chance to clean it yet.

I eventually plan on getting a cute trunk thing from Michaels (already found it, $19.99) and paint it for him to keep all the baggies of felt pieces in but I wanted to make sure that he liked them first before I spent more money.

About 3 weeks before Christmas I started seeing some cute advent calenders on blogs I read and it got me thinking, I could make one of those. Of course not for this year but if I start it now, I know it will be done in time for next year. And next year he might understand what is going on a bit more. So I started Googling and found all sorts of wonderful inspiration.
　

http://eatpraycreate.com/2012/11/felt-christmas-tree-advent-calendar.html 

 

http://projectsforyournest.blogspot.com/search/label/Christmas%20advent%20calendar 

 

 http://www.makelifelovely.com/2012/12/diy-felt-advent-calendar.html

 

http://www.familyeverafterblog.com/2011/11/sew-along-part-1-pottery-barn-advent.html

 

As I looked at these and read how they did it, I kept seeing that a lot of them talked about how they handstitched everything, now I can sew by hand but I am not necessarily very good at it. It is the knots and tying off that gets me. Normally when I have that sort of stuff to do, I make my mom help me but then on one of the inspiration ones they had a stitching tutorial. (http://projectsforyournest.blogspot.com/2009/10/stitch-101-basics.html) So I decided to give it a shot and handstitch all of the pockets.

They didn't do only Christmas colors for the pockets so I tried to do a variety. I got my missing colors, cut out my pockets and arranged them so I didn't have similar colors next to eachother. I then picked out a font (well I emailed my roomate asking for a good font), printed out the numbers, cut them out and stitched them onto my pockets.

　
Then I looked at my list of ideas for decorating the pockets and assigned one to each pocket. Which was harder then I thought it would be because I would assign 2 pictures to one number and not realize it, so I would have to go back though and see what I messed up. This is my final list.

1.Candy canes
2. Gingerbread man
3. Ornament
4. Stocking
5. Wreath
6. Christmas lights
7. Birthday cake
8. Snowflake
9. Bell
10. Starry night
11. Star
12. Holly
13. Ice skates
14. Presents
15. Poinsetta
16. Snowman
17. Penguin
18. Sleigh
19. Ornament 2
20. Reindeer
21. Mittens
22. Stocking 2
23.Christmas tree
24. Snowy night
25. Santa

That is all I have done so far, as I get further I will update more. I know this project will take forever so it might be a bit but I will get it done before next Christmas.