Christmas Ornaments with Children's Drawings

I love Christmas ornaments. After seeing a friend's tree recently, I admitted to her that I have an embarrassingly large amount of them.

I love how each ornament seems to capture a moment in time (hey, blog name!), and memories are strongly attached to them.

I love making ornaments, too!  I think that's my bigger problem (if you can call it a problem!) with ornament quantity...I love to create, create, create!

I saw these recently on Pinterest and totally wanted to make some embroidered ornaments of the kids' drawings:

source

I think I will sooooo do this some day, just not this year as I have been busy working on two big surprise fun projects for people for Christmas. :-)

As time was ticking, I saw these at Jo-Ann's:

You better run to Jo-Ann's and grab some for this project before they are gone!  I think they've been marked down 70% this week. They had these flat circles, globes and light bulb-shaped plastic ornaments. So cute to fill with anything that can fit in there!  But drawings...drawings is what I wanted...

Set your compass to 1 3/8" to draw circles that will fit perfectly inside (1 3/8" is the circle's radius).  Cut out the circles. 

Have your kids draw pictures on the circles. You can include two drawings in each ornament. I had to glue the circles together since my kids used markers, and marked really really hard with them, and the markers bled through the paper. Be sure to include your child's name and the year! 

Next, loosely roll your circle paper and shove it down the hole on top of the ornament. Okay...gently shove? Fill with sequins, glitter, and whatever else you might want to use to decorate your ornament on the inside. We also glued and tied a ribbon on the top. :-)

Done!

"A Christmas hydra"

"Christmas trees with their Christmas patterns"

Rudolph!  Of course...a deerie!

These will be so fun to look at year after year.

Is there any coincidence that Emory's is the most shaken up ornament with glitter all over the sides already? No...he already tossed it across the room twice before it made it to the tree! :-P Good thing they are plastic!

Megan's Memory Quilt

So I made this quilt...the biggest quilt I've ever made...in less than three weeks time...for this customer...who was a total stranger (well, a friend of a friend)... and then I forgot to share it on Facebook and the blog.  Whoops!  Guess that's a good sign on the old social media health-o-meter. ;-)

Megan gave me a box full of her old favorite tees and some fabric scraps which ended up being perfect for the backing and binding.  She handed me some super fun tees to work with---so colorful!

Sorry for the blurry pics

I forgot to write down the finished measurements...but I know I  measured it when it was finished.  Brain?  Brain???  Hello, are you there, brain?  It is safe for me to say that this is a twin-sized quilt, as it used up all but a few inches on each side of some twin-sized batting.

Here is the back:

The backing fabrics included quilting cottons and upholstery fabric...some lighter stuff, and some heavier stuff (how do like those technical terms?). The maroon text fabric featured on the top left of the backing was fuzzy feeling....and I learned from Megan that she got it in Italy!  The bottom right fabric was used to recover some furniture, and the light green fabric to the left, Megan used in a business suit she made.  How fun to have those things all included.

Hey look---I'm standing on a stump!  And it's really cold!  And windy, too!

Here is a closer view:

I think between the time I had it finished and delivered it, we had about zero days of sunshine.  Makes for dull photo shoots with your quilt.

For the quilting, I did a loopy thing throughout. So much fun to quilt!

Typical:

This quilt was a fun one, and it came together rather smoothly. I hope that means I'm hitting my quilting stride in which the whole process has become easier for me...maybe? :-)

The Art of the Brick

The boys were off school on Friday and Nick happened to get home early, so Evander and I traveled to the Mansfield Art Center to see Nathan Sawaya's exhibit, "The Art of the Brick." 

It was super cool and super inspiring. Evander kept saying as we walked through, "I need more bricks!"

Nathan Sawaya left an unrewarding career as an attorney in New York City to build Lego sculptures. :-) He purposely uses ordinary Lego colors to instill the thought in people that they can build sculptures with the Legos they have at home.

The exhibit was small (and I will share it all, so if you want to see it in person and not be spoiled, don't look!), but there was also a room filled with Legos for building!  We spent about an hour and a half in each place.

Here is Sawaya's most iconic piece titled, "Yellow":

Another Nathan Sawaya icon is Hugman. He makes these and places them throughout New York City to put a smile on people's faces.  He has also placed some Hugmen all over the world including Akron, Ohio! (I'm not sure why he isn't hugging something in the picture that accompanies that link...)

To see Hugman in action click here! :-D

Hugman

We went home and started building our own Hugman...but this is as far as we got:

Pantsman by Michelle and Evander :-P

Some of the pieces were paired with a portrait, depicting the Lego sculpture in every day life.

A towel and flip flops:

A tree:

A dog:

Dog with a dress form torso in the background

Clouds:

Clouds with a bucket in the background

Railroad tracks:

An umbrella:

And a dress:

As we walked through the exhibit, Evander reiterated that he needed more bricks...like it was an emergency!  We wondered how many pieces were used in each sculpture, and how much they might weigh...

Evander telling me about the pattern :-)

Evander took note of a block he'd never seen before on this sculpture (I think they were small, gray windows. Evander thought they should be airplane windows):

The Brick Artist himself!

Evander definitely enjoyed the exhibit...but he was really excited to spend time in the play room.  I got a kick out of watching him interact with the other people in the room---especially a smaller boy there with his grandma. He took care of that little boy, bringing him all of the pieces he needed...letting him play with our creations---so sweet. :-)

My contributions:

I'm so happy that we had the chance to see this exhibit....but we need more bricks!!! :-P

Hallow-rain

For the second year in a row, we've had a bummer of a Halloween.

Last year, our inland region experienced Hurricane Sandy's high winds and crazy rains, postponing Halloween to a Saturday afternoon.  Trick-or-treating in the daylight was just not the same.  There weren't as many people handing out candy, either...which really is fine (less sugar consumption), but still a bummer. We didn't light our jack-o-lanterns and milk jugs because they couldn't be seen.

This year...it was raining...and it was windy.  Weather people and moms alike were urging municipalities to postpone Halloween again, but many hard-headed people in charge said no. Safety-wise, it ended up okay (I can say that after the fact, since nothing happened...but something could have happened, you know? Broken tree limbs anyone?).  It poured and it was terribly windy...and I stayed on the porch passing out candy.

Evander went as a Minecraft creeper (painted by me! :-) ), Emory was a Ninja Turtle and Marin was Super Girl (thanks to Cousin Anna's old costume!).

The best pic I managed to get of all three :-/

Evander's costume was ruined by the rain, and only one out of three of our kids made it beyond our little street.  Poor Evander and Marin hit a hot shower as soon as they came in the door. I couldn't keep a match lit to light the jack-o-lanterns or the milk jugs. :-(  How miserable.

Prior to trick-or-treating, our friends invited us over for dinner, to get the kids together, and to just be excited about Halloween together. :-)  Good food, good friends and good fun!

All of the kiddies! 

Two creepers!  SsssssSSSssss

The loot:

Too busy to pose for a picture by his candy. ;-)

Seriously, I checked the weather records and it has never rained on Halloween night like it has for the past two years! >:-/ Here's to next year!!!