December projects

Every December starts out innocently enough. But soon, something like this happens:

 

 Child brings home paper from school announcing a "trading post" that they need to bring items for. Homemade items, not costing any money, preferably! So I pull out my popsicle sticks, buttons and glue, and next thing you know, we've made about 45 snowflake ornaments. (We first made these for Madelyn's 4th birthday and they cover our Christmas tree and I love them.)

Then, my niece Emery's birthday is December 3rd, and she had worn out the bracelets that I made for her when she was a baby. So I thought I'd make her a new batch:

She loves Frozen, and I made the bracelet on the far right in Frozen colors. That got me to thinking......

Make ALL the Frozen themed baby/toddler/girl bracelets!!!

 

So I did that, plus restocked some of my most popular designs...

 

And then I made even more stuff, because December is my busiest selling time for my etsy shop.

 

 Then, everyone at Mark's work needed treats.

 

 

Then a bunch more people needed treats. (I think there were 83 on the list this year...oy) I made mint brownies, homemade turtles and caramels, toffee, and everybody else got a store bought cookie or muffin mix with a new rubber spatula.

 

In the meantime, I was attempting to make 8 "I Spy" Bags without the kids seeing what I was doing. Ha!! This project dragged on forever. It was very hard to find time to sew when they weren't home, and since my sewing machine is just on the kitchen table....Madelyn guessed what I was up to.

I didn't really know what I was doing, but they turned out pretty cute. A lot more work than I thought, though!

The top three were Madelyn, Luke and Isabelle's; the left bottom went to Hattie, Jack and Gary, and the right bottom to Nathan and Ava, my nieces and nephews.

The kicker came when I decided that we MUST have new stockings for Christmas, because ours were never coordinating (which bugged me) and Isabelle didn't have one yet. I even took all three kids to Jo-Ann by myself so that they could pick out the fabric they wanted, which took an hour and a half and more patience than I really had. I had never made fully lined, big stockings before (I've made tons of mini ones) but of course that did not deter me! Oh no!! I will not be deterred.

So then what happened was that Christmas Eve dawned and I still had not made them yet.

l-r: mine, Isabelle's, Tiger's, Madelyn's, Mark's and Luke's

As you can see, they did get finished, but not until 10:44 pm on Christmas Eve.

Somehow, I figured out how to sandwich some Warm & Natural batting in there and adapted two different patterns I found online to make the fold over cuff method work, instead of doing a detachable cuff.

 

They turned out very cute!

So.....add to that all the normal Christmas shopping and mailing and craziness, throw in a birthday and an anniversary and two 4th grade book reports and a teething baby and that is why I was quite done in come the end of 2014.

Cali trip, days 3 and 4

Days 3 and 4 of our trip, Mark had to be at his medical conference for like 13 hours each day, so I was on my own with the kids. (He has to re-certify his medical boards and this was a study course.) The first day was okay because we could just relax at the hotel. I took the kids swimming and we just hung out in the room and watched TV, etc. We were all exhausted so it was a good break. We brought Mark dinner but other than that, we didn't see him all day.

Day 4, we had to drive Mark back over to his conference again, and then I had to go back, pack up the hotel room and check out. That was a doozy. We nearly didn't get out of there on time because the Red Lion had been hosting two different cheerleading conferences that weekend and there were 700 cheerleaders clogging up the halls and the lobby (we even had one pound on our door at quarter to midnight, thinking they were at a friend's room). We were getting sick of them and their huge hair bows everywhere.

So, we were out at 11:00 am and then had to kill time till 9:00 pm when Mark would finally be done!

Also that morning, I had just found out about a horrible tragedy that happened to one of my oldest friends who grew up with me on my street for 16+ years. She lost her baby girl one week shy of her first birthday in an accident, and I was really shaken up about it. So it was hard to deal with the kids by myself with that preoccupying my thoughts.

I decided to surprise the kids with a trip to the Discovery Cube in Santa Ana.

Life sized model of part of the Endeavor space shuttle 

 What sealed the deal was the Mythbusters exhibit! Madelyn is a mega fan and she was beside herself to see all the cool things they had built on display. That's their duct tape plane (which did in fact fly).

And their backwards car (testing whether a '70s sports car is as aerodynamic backward as forward, with the engine transplanted into the trunk). Coincidentally, I just found out that Kari, Tory and Grant are leaving the show! :(!!! I am super bummed about that!

Adam and Jamie's work uniforms

Mechanical shark (testing if you can punch a shark in the eye while in its mouth)

That's Luke butting ahead of everybody to test whether you stay drier walking or running through the rain...

Luke was a RASCAL this whole day. He was so excited and overstimulated, and he was having a great time, but he kept disappearing into the crowd every time I turned around. I literally lost him half a dozen times, and then would lose Madelyn too, when she went looking for him. This went on for more than five hours. I was super frazzled. It was so crowded and loud the whole time. Ugghhhhh.

This swing is supported by phone books with inter-lapping pages. The friction is enough to hold several hundred pounds of weight.

 Madelyn lying on a bed of nails

"Surely this is the longest day of my life...."

The science center closed at 5:00, and so we still had four hours until Mark was done. We went and brought him dinner and then drove back to Anaheim for the next two hours. We went to the Anaheim Garden Walk (outdoor shopping center) for a stroll.

 

 We found a shop called Geeky Mamas, and it required a great deal of self restraint not to buy everything! Madelyn got a Sleeping Beauty/Doctor Who t-shirt and Luke got a Minecraft toy. It was a fun store.

At 9:00, we finally went and picked up Mark and then I had to drive about 45 miles in crazy LA traffic to my grandma's house in Sherman Oaks. We got there at 10:30 pm and got to bed about an hour later. Phew!!!

April jewelry and free shipping for Mother's Day!

Making a bunch of jewelry was not something I had planned to do this month....but I got a couple of custom orders and so ended up making quite a bit.

These were a couple of custom flower girl bracelets I made. And since I had extra glass pearls left over, I made these:

Ashlyn baby bracelet

...and a bunch more baby bracelets to give away to various preggie friends.

And while I was at Jo-Ann's, I saw a package of owl charms and so decided that I must make some earrings! (Earrings like this take about five seconds to make.)

 

Sadie the Screech Owl earrings

Pippa the Pygmy Owl earrings

Bree the Boreal Owl earrings

I spent a lot of time on Google images looking at owl species trying to figure out which kind these all were, and let me tell you, looking at that many owls at once makes you realize how weird they are.

Then I also made these, to use up the last pair of ear wires:

Red Tiger's Eye earrings

Then I got a big custom order from a lady who wanted me to replicate a pearl jewelry set I already had for four of her bridesmaids. It was a LOT of work. I had to track down some pearls that were similar in color and size (since I couldn't even remember where I got the first ones) and had to shell out all sorts of money and time and effort to make it all. 

And then she nitpicked about the necklaces, because the original one was a tiny bit more tiered! She wants me to remake them! Well, I can't, since I bought out the entire stock of my supplier's 7-8mm peacock pearls. She still has yet to purchase the things I made for her.

After this experience, Mark wisely recommended that I not take any more custom orders for a while. Because y'all...I've had to work with a lot of brides...and they be crazy.

I don't even know how many pearls this is, but I had to buy seventeen 15 inch strands, and I used up an entire 30 foot spool of jewelry wire.

Four 3-stranded necklaces

Four 2-stranded bracelets

And four sets of earrings. I had to sift through alll of the pearls to find pairs that were a good match in color, shape and size.

I had a tiny handful of leftover pearls, so I made these:

 

 Petite Blue Goldstone and Pearl bracelet

  

 Nicolette silver and pearl pendant and earrings set

 Some more baby bracelets for my gift stash...

And I found another cute pack of charms that I used to make these earrings:

 

 Golden elephant earrings

 Hamsa earrings

New Delhi elephant earrings

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