Other projects I crammed in

I somehow did all of these in the last week and a half before Christmas. You know, aside from the seven batches of fudge, five dozen dipped Oreos, Borax crystal snowflakes and Mini stockings of Happiness I'd made in the previous week and a half. Then there was the usual busyness of normal life, and Christmas shopping and wrapping and trips to the post office and parties, parties, parties.

Let's just say that at the end of every night, I felt like I'd run a marathon. I'm still recovering!

Anyway.......

 

This was actually a very easy project.

I didn't know what to get my G-ma Murset, because she's 95 and lives in California. But one thing she does do is send out a ton of cards, and she had already been pestering me to make some cards with my pictures on them to sell. 

That's something I'd like to pursue, but for now I just made her a batch. I used a dozen pictures I took from Zion National Park, because that's her favorite one to visit. I've been trying to build up my portfolio of national parks. Hopefully this year we can go to Capitol Reef or something.

 

It's hard to take pictures of pictures, btw, especially when they're glossy.

So all I did was go to Jo-Ann and bought these nice, high quality blank cards and envelopes, and stuck my pictures on with scrapbook (archive safe) sticky tabs, and wrote my name on the backs.

 

Then I wrapped them up with a set of postage stamps. She was thrilled!

About a year ago, I had bragged on here that I'd already made rice bags for various church friends/neighbors/family for Christmas. So I thought I was sitting pretty having all those made 10 months early. 

Well. Enter Thanksyodermas. Usually, we only see Mark's folks around Christmas, and so only worry about having gifts for them. But when they decided to have Thanksyodermas, suddenly I needed to have something to give to everyone! So that ate up my pre-made stash of rice bags. 

I ended up sewing a dozen more (I think I had 14 in my initial stash), so that we could cover all our bases (and the one on the bottom a friend of mine paid me to make). Everyone seemed to love them, and luckily they are not hard to sew.

 

 When I cut out the rectangles, I think I did 10x11 inches, and each one took about 2 lbs. of rice. Pop it in the freezer for a cold compress or in the microwave for a minute and you're good to go! I used mine for a heating pad last night because it was about -15 °. No joke.

Then,

 

 Madelyn's friend Emma was jealous of Madelyn's mermaid costume, so her mom paid me to secretly sew Emma one. She bought the fabric and got me her measurements and at some point I finally found time to sew it. I actually had to make two tops because I cut the first one too small. Now I have an extra top (and an extra tail from another project). One of these days I'm going to show you my other mermaid creations! If I ever get caught up on this blog.

Then,

 

Remember this lovely picture from 2:00 am on Madelyn's birthday? I was sewing MORE mini stockings of happiness!

If only I didn't like so many people.

   

I ended up making some for everyone on my side of the family, plus some for friends. They are just SO CUTE!

 

  

This pic doesn't show all of them. I think there were 24. Sheesh. And I wanted to keep them all!

 Did you notice the Doctor Who stocking? :D

 

 I had my sister Megan this year for Christmas, and she is super nerdy like me, so I went with a Doctor Who theme. So much awesome. I made that bookmark!

 I'd saved the packaging from our sonic screwdriver because it had the marvelous logo and then half of David Tennant's face, which I wasn't about to throw away. So I got some black glittery paper and stuck the images on either side, then had it laminated at Staples. They were giving me some very queer looks. Apparently they do not get jobs like that very often.

I also got her a TARDIS blue hoodie and purse (both from Target), and a replica of Rose's Union Jack t-shirt from the episode "The Empty Child". I found it here on amazon.com and really need to borrow it sometime....

Anyway, Christmas Eve morning, I tried to bleach a little TARDIS onto the pocket, and it didn't work! I was using straight bleach and did three applications, and it turned the fabric DARKER! What sort of bizarro, alien fabric is this?!? I am still baffled.

Also, speaking of Megan,

 I wanted to commemorate her glorious turn as the Snow Queen in The Nutcracker. It was her first pas de deux and a big deal. So I ordered this porcelain ornament from amazon, and was sad that it came broken!!! (I still need to file a complaint with the seller...) I found everything but the thumb, and didn't have time to order another one, so I just worked with it.

(And btw, I did this Nov. 30th, I just forgot to post about it.)

 I got out my trusty paints, Super Glue, nail polish and glitter and gave her a custom paint job to fix her arm, darken her hair and make her tutu white like the Snow Queen's.

It was such a fun project and Meg was excited that it looked like her.

 Christmas Eve morning, I made 5 containers of what was supposed to be homemade cheese balls, but ended up being more like soft cracker spread. I was using my own recipe and it was pretty untested. It didn't turn out quite as good as I'd hoped, so if I end up figuring it out, I'll share it with you. I have plans to use mine for filling in my Savory cream cheese chicken puffs, instead of on crackers.

And last but not least, the night before the night before Christmas, (aka Dec 23rd), I made some chocolate dipped cinnamon bears. Oooooohhh my.

 

I just melted a package of dark chocolate candy melts in a bowl, dumped in a package of cinnamon bears, and then fished them out with chopsticks.

  They were so, so good. I wish I had some right now. Think how great they'd be for Valentine's Day!

Oh boy, more holidays coming up.

Let's all take a moment and be grateful that we won't have to do anything fancy for MLK day next week.