O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum

The girls get a Christmas tree all their own this year.  I cut it out of felt and they are able to move the ornaments around all they want.  I got the idea from a friend and it is so much fun for them. 

 

I bought a 3' x 3' square of green felt at Michael's and cut the bottom triangle out.  Then, with the two leftover triangle scraps, I made the top half of the tree.  It is held on the wall with double sided tape, which works well as long as little fingers don't try to tug it off.  And when that happens smoothing it back down and sometimes a little more tape fixes the problem.  And my friend tells me from experience that after the first week, they stop trying to pull it off the wall.

 

I started off simple with the ornaments because I wasn't sure how well they would stick to the tree.  The balls are just made from bright colored felt and when you press it against the felt tree, it stays put pretty well.   I was thinking of decorating the balls with glitter, but keeping them plain so far has worked out well.  The girls get to practice their colors with them.  For Miss D every ball is blue and occasionally purple or orange when she feels like changing things up. 

 

Miss T doesn't usually say the colors but she shows a ball to me over and over again so I repeat what color it is.  It is neat to watch them learn.  

 



For the family Christmas tree, I will get one of those little rosemary trees for our table.  We'll be able to use the rosemary for cooking and if I take good care of it (my track record is not great but there is always the hope it can stay alive) we can use it again next year.  We'll save getting a big tree with breakable ornaments until the munchkins are older. 

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving seemed to come amazingly fast this year.  It just flew by.  We celebrated a day late because of my husband's work schedule but it was a nice dinner just the same.  I was worried that I'd spend a lot of time in the kitchen and be tired and stressed about it.  But for some reason this year it was relatively easy to prep and cook everything.

  

The girls loved just about everything except the green beans were a little too crunchy for them.  D loved the mashed potato, sweet potato and pumpkin dish and kept asking for more.  I cooked it in the slow cooker and it was so easy and laid back to do and tasted great. 

We needed something to eat for lunch on the day we cooked so Kevin made our usually pumpkin fried rice dish early in the day.  He added a few more vegetables and some Chinese sausage to round out the dish as a meal and it still tasted delicious as a Thanksgiving side dish. 

We brined the turkey for two days this year because that was how it worked out between shopping for it and lack of fridge space.  It was juicy and tender but not more so than other years that we've done it for only 24 hours.  The turkey had a lot of extra fat on it, so next year we are thinking of trying a free-range bird instead.  I made the orange cranberry relish a day in advance so the flavors would get a chance to really blend.  Next year though I should do two bags of cranberries.  There is just never enough to last through all of the turkey leftovers.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving we went and got our Christmas picture taken so I can get going on hopefully sending out all of the Christmas cards on time this year.  We really only had one smile the whole photo shoot from my serious little girls.  Miss T picked a good picture to do it in though.

Today is the day we traditionally start putting out Christmas decorations.  I'm thinking of at least switching out the fall wreath but I probably won't do much more until December.  

Blankets

The girls have new blankets for the winter! It was my first time making the no sew fleece blanket.  They were quick and very easy to do.  They are pretty warm and toasty too. 

 

 

Found two adorable, girly monkey prints at Joann Fabrics and backed them with pink fleece. 

 

 

The girls point at the blankets and make monkey sounds, silly monkeys.  Now they just have to learn to stay under the blanket at night so I don't worry about them being too cold in the middle of the night.

 

 

With the corner scraps I made little pouches.  Going to fill them with rice to heat in the microwave and warm our hands.  They would also be great bean bags for throwing games.

Here is the belated picture of our Halloween pumpkins.  The left pumpkin is D's foot and the right pumpkin is T's foot.  The girls helped me scrape the pumpkins out and chewed on some of the seeds while they were at it. 

 

 

Birds of a Feather #2

The costumes were basically finished on time for Halloween.  Although I didn't have time to make the felt shoe covers I had envisioned or fix the mistake I made on one of D's wings, the costumes still turned out really cute.

 

 

These are pieces of D's owl coming together.  I used two strips of the tan material for the wings and tied them with brown, tan and off-white tulle like a tutu.  I spaced the tulle loosely though so it wouldn't be too puffy.  I cut the owl feathers from felt.  I hot glued the pieces together and then stitched the spine of the feather in using the stem stitch and 4 strands of embroidery floss.

 

 

  I wanted the wings to be removable because we would be in and out of the car seat.  I attached the wings to her shoulders using snaps and around her arms with tan hair ties.  And this is where I made a mistake, although you can't really tell that one wing is backwards. 

 

T's peacock turned out lovely, and was easier than D's since I copied it from someone's tutorial (see first costume post) except for the hood.  The blue material was also easier to work with than the tan for some strange reason.  The ball point needle thread would not loop correctly on the bobbin thread with the tan material. I had to switch back to the standard needle which made the whole process frustrating. 

 

 

To avoid more problems on the sewing machine, I hemmed both skirts by hand.  I probably should have made the skirts shorter but didn't not want to risk making a huge mistake when cutting it again. 

   

T wore black tights and D off-white and both wore bright pink shoes when we were out of the house unfortunately. I will just have to edit my memory to include the felt shoe covers that were never made.  At least inside they were just in their tights so the pictures look okay.

 
I was afraid that they would try to pull bits and pieces off of themselves and each other and not keep their hoods up.  But they actually liked wearing the costumes.  D did chase T around a little, giggling and pulling her tail, but the tutu held up well.  Anytime either of their hoods would fall back, D would cry in protest and try to set it to rights again. 

We went to the library for knitting and quilting to show off their costumes and on Monday at knitting they were joined by their buddy dressed as a little green alien.  I would have liked to take them over to a couple of the neighbors' houses for Halloween but Kevin didn't get back until late.  Trying to manage both of them and the steep drive way was not happening this year.  Next year will be fun though.