I Can Do Better - My Xmas Evergreen Arrangement Decoration

Back in November of 2011 I wrote a Linda's Blog post entitled "20 Years Later and Still As Good As New!" It was about the  BIG artificial wreaths I had bought 20 years before which were still as good as new and which we take out every Christmas to decorate the front of our house.

If you would like to read that post please CLICK HERE.

This year I decided that our farmer's porch area needed some Christmas decorations, too, So we went out on Black Friday, which we hate to do, to buy a fresh arrangement of pine and evergreen branches in a container that would be suitable for the farmer's porch.

I found a container and  arrangement that I thought might work for us and would be visible on the farmer's porch. We have a row of yews along the walkway to our farmer's porch that are about 2 1/2' feet tall so I knew I'd need to put my container on something so it would be seen.

The arrangement container we bought was black in color so we decided to use a plastic black container we had turned upside down on which to place the arrangement.

I also decided that the arrangement I had bought could use more height so I added red berry sprigs and gold painted bamboo to give the arrangement height. It came with one white painted pinecone so I added a trio of 3 Christmas color bulbs and another white painted pinecone for decoration.

I'm happy with the way the arrangement looks on the farmer's porch. It's bright and festive and compliments the wreaths on the front of the house. However, I wasn't happy with the price as I know I could have made an artificial arrangement that would last forever for half the price.

So, I decided that when the floral Christmas stems go on sale at Michael's or A.C. Moore that I'm going to buy some. At the end of the Christmas holiday season I'll remove the dried fresh branches from the arrangement and replace them with artificial evergreen branches. That way I'll already have my arrangement for the farmer's porch ready for next year's Christmas holiday decorating.

It won't be as good a buy as my artificial wreaths were, but it won't dry out and will last 20 or 30 or 40 more years. For sure it will outlive me!

When I put my artificial arrangement together I'll try to create a tutorial for it so you can create an arrangement of your own. So, stay tuned for that.

One of These Days I'll Create an Art Journal

Art Journal Tutorials, Video's, Projects and How-To's

I love seeing beautiful art journals and would love to create one, or two, or three....... It's on my bucket list. When I do I'm hoping some of these tutorials, video's and how-to's will be helpful.

If you love our Art Journals Tutorials, Video's, Patterns and How-To's board please follow our board by clicking on the link above.

For The Love Of Gingerbread Men

There's nothing quite like the smell of gingerbread cookies baking, the scent of Christmas candles burning, and the festive atmosphere of a busy kitchen during the holiday season.

For many, many years my Mother and I would reserve 3-4 days in the weeks before Christmas for our annual cookie marathons. We would spend two days baking cookies and then one day packaging the cookies for our friends, loved ones, and several senior centers and nursing homes.

Every year we would select the cookies we would be baking from our list. For the most part we kept making ones that we knew were really good. Once in awhile we would add a new cookie, but it had to be exceptional to bump another cookie off the list. Sometimes we added fudge and chocolate candies that we'd made. We knew that our cookies were good - how could they not be with many, many years of experience honing our skills? As our list continued to grow we even had people asking to be put on our list. So, of course, we added them and the list continued to grow and grow.

During this period we really took over the kitchen, the dining room, the family room and the sunroom. Let's face it during our cookie marathons we basically took over the house. There were tables everywhere for cooling the cookies or cookies on cookie sheets waiting to go into the oven or tables for the bags of finished cookies. Everywhere you looked there were cookies, but the smell was irresistible.

Of course, the rest of the house had already been decorated with Christmas decorations. We'd have the Christmas music playing in the background and the moods were bright and cheery. After three days of cooking we were always tired, but that never dampened our joy or the festive atmosphere.

One year I thought it might be fun to build a gingerbread house so I bought a kit.  Unfortunately we didn't have the time to fit it into our cookie marathon schedule so it went unmade.  But, I always wanted to make one.

So I started collecting pictures of gingerbread houses that I loved on Pinterest like the gingerbread White House replica, shown in the picture at the top of this post, made by pastry chef Bill Yosses in 2009.

Every time I visit my Gingerbread Houses Pinterest board I fall in love with all the houses there. Each time I think I've settled on a favorite I scroll down and see another.  I just can't decide.

I would still love to make a gingerbread house. If I do make one maybe some of the ones on my Pinterest board will provide me with inspiration. I'd have to make a simple one as some of the elaborate ones definitely require a great deal of skill and really are food works of art.

Gingerbread Houses & Tutorials, Video's, and How-To's For Making Gingerbread Houses

I have always loved gingerbread houses. The more elaborate the bett.er I hope you find the pictures, tutorials, video's and how-to's helpful in your gingerbread house creating.

If you love my Gingerbread Houses Tutorials, Video's, Patterns and How-To's board please follow my board by clicking on the link above.

Shelf Sitting Primitive Andy - With Blue Plaid Shirt! Stump Doll

"Annie - With A Red Bow!" and "Andy With A Blue Plaid Shirt!" are adorable shelf sitting primitive raggedies who just love hanging out in  any primitive home.  Whether they are alone or paired together they make an adorable primitive decoration.

"Andy - With A Blue Plaid Shirt!" is a self sitting raggedy boy stump doll with a cloth body, an embroidered face, and a full head of raggedy red straight hair which he cannot keep controlled under his Sculley cap. He is wearing his denims, and a checkered shirt decorated with 3 large buttons. He is coffee stained throughout.

I think I'll make him a free e-pattern so stay tuned.

My Ho Ho Ho Santa Beaded and Buttoned Cross-Stitch

There is nothing I find more relaxing than cross-stitching.  Given that I've been blogging about my cross-stitch projects for years now it should come as no surprise that I created another Christmas cross-stitch.  This time I decided to do Ho Ho Ho Santa - Cross Stitch Kit from Mill Hill that had a lot of the background unfinished.

The Ho Ho Ho Santa - Cross Stitch Kit pattern uses full counted cross-stitch and beaded half stitch as well as beads of various sizes for emphasis and depth. The pattern also calls for certain areas of the perforated paper to be left untouched as the background. In this case they were leaving sections of the brown perforated paper background untouched.

I decided to frame my finished cross-stitch picture in the Mill Hill Wooden Frame, 6 by 6-Inch, Holiday Red, which is shown in the picture above.  It's a 6" x 6" handpainted red wooden frame without glass.  Unlike the shadowbox frames I had been using more of the perforated paper would be seen surrounding the cross-stitch picture.

The pattern called for a green frame and certain areas of the perforated paper to be left untouched as the background like the picture shown below:

However, I don't like seeing the different perforated sections in the background and since a lot more of it would be exposed with this kit and frame I opted instead to finish all of the background.  This time I decided to finish the inside square background, background behind the white decorative stitching on the top and bottom of the picture, two rows to the right of the lamp post and two rows to the left of the picture just before the garland with two strands of DMC brown embroidery floss #420 sewn as a half cross-stitch.

I had decided to square the edges of my picture and decided to create a contrast in the mat area next to the frame as I didn't want to finish this with brown embroidery floss.  So I combined single strands of DMC embroidery gloss #16021 and #505 together and sewed them as a half cross-stitch using the two strands of floss. I stitched several rows of the green combination floss around all the edges to make sure the perforated paper would not be visible once my cross stitch picture was inserted into the wooden frame.

I also decided to once again utilize the rectangular wood frame jig that my darling husband built for me that I could tape the edges of my perforated paper to. The wood frame jig is a rectangular embroidery hoop of sorts, but without bending the perforated paper. He had made it out of 1/2" x 1" pine wood strips with an adjustable center strip that I used for this 5 x 5 square design.

I wasn't happy with the way the street lantern was going to be finished so I decided to add a half cross stitch to the background behind the street lantern and used 2 strands of white DMC embroidery floss for this.

I had learned from previous mistakes that I needed to draw diagonal lines to locate the exact center of the perforated paper and also drew diagonal lines across each corner of the pattern to get the center point as well.

While the end results of this design were wonderful some things in the kit and in the instructions could be improved upon so I'd like to offer the following constructive suggestions:

The cross-stitch chart was in black and white as was the floss color code and symbol key. Both were easy to read and very clear. While I had no problem with the chart and keys I did have a problem with the way the DMC floss was presented. All of the floss was tied together in one big knot so you had to separate the floss pieces yourself, sort them, and try to interpret which color belonged to which floss # and symbol key on the color chart. If you only have a few colors to deal with this isn't a problem. However, if you have several different colors to choose from that are close in color then interpreting the chart can be tricky. You may assign the wrong color to the wrong symbol if the colors are too closely aligned.

As I have done with other cross-stitch kits I've completed I had to design my own thread color sorter and symbol key. I took a piece of thin cardboard and cut a 1" x 9" long rectangular piece out to use as a thread sorter. I then punched 11 holes in my cardboard strip in which to tie each of the different colors. Just above the hole I wrote the DMC floss # and just below the hole I added the respective cross-stitch symbol. I then inserted the floss threads that went with that # and symbol through the hole and tied them in a loose knot. This kit could be much improved if a thread sorter with respective #'s and symbols was provided.

The kit included a small gold bell and two buttons - a present and a star.  The gold was fine.  The two buttons were okay except they were each glued to a small piece of cardboard which did not easily come off and the glue used had hardened and extended over the sides of the button.  It was very difficult to cut with scissors it was so hard. I managed to make it presentable enough to use in my picture. I have found over time that the buttons used in the Mill Hill cross-stitch kits are usually of poor quality and the worst parts of the kits. Sometimes I use them sometimes I don't.

The wooden frame came with a 6" x 6" cardboard mounting board for the picture but had no back so I I decided to cut a 6" x 6" white foam board as filler for the back. I also cut a piece of heavy decorative paper and taped it to the back of the picture with double sided tape to finish the back of the frame.  The frame could be hung as a picture or stand with an enclosed dowel peg used as an easel and I opted for the latter.

My results with the totally finished background, square edges, and red frame is shown below:

Despite the relatively small issues I had encountered with the kit I was happy with the way my Ho Ho Ho Santa turned out.

It took me 24 hours to complete this picture including the framing. As always, my comments are meant to be constructive to enable future purchasers to benefit from my experience and to enhance their ability to create a wonderful little cross-stitch design.

Christmas Bells Are Ringing!

When it comes to Christmas crafts I can make them any time of the year and have done so many, many times.

Christmas has been one of my favorite holidays for decorating since I was a young girl as it was a tradition in our house to make a new Christmas decoration each year.  Of course, when I became an adult with a house of my own I wasn't limited to just one new decoration each year.

Given that I never create anything in moderation I've made many, many, many (better make that many more than I can count) Christmas decorations over the years.

I was always finding Christmas decorations that I wanted to make all during the year and was saving them in a folders here and folders there.  Of course, the folders got too big and too numerous so I started saving some of the decorations I wanted to make to a Christmas Tutorials, Video's, Patterns and How-To's Pinterest  board.  There are more projects on my board then I'd ever be able to make in my lifetime, but at least I now know where to look.

Christmas Tutorials, Video's, Patterns and How-To's

I hope you enjoy some of the Christmas crafts tutorials, video's and how-to's I have found.

If you love my Christmas Tutorials, Video's, Patterns and How-To's board please follow my board by clicking on the link above.

Who Doesn't LOVE Heavenly Angels?

Over the years I've made many angels of different forms and shapes.  Some were wooden, some cloth, some animal angels, terra cotta angels and mixed media angels.  I've even made a cross-stitch angel which is shown in the picture below:

Each and every one of them I have loved making.  After all who doesn't love heavenly angels?

So, of course, I created an Angel Doll & Craft Tutorials, Video's, Pattern and How-To's Pinterest board so you could make some angels of your own.

Angel Doll & Craft Tutorials, Video's, Patterns, and How-To's Board

I hope these tutorials, video's, patterns, and how-to's are helpful.

The Sneaks Family

It's always a wild and crazy scene at the "Sneaks Family" house with four young boys running around so you can imagine how excited they are by the release of their e-patterns and birthday party products. They can't sit down.

"Stealin Base Devin Sneaks"is a master at stealin base. You might think he's just on 1st base and then the next thing you know he's on 2ND and then 3RD. He's there in a split second and slammin into the base before the opposing team knows it. They don't get much faster at stealin base than "Stealing Base Devin Sneaks!"

"Stealin Base Devin Sneaks" is an 8" cloth and sneaker boy doll from The Sneaker Series.  He has a cloth head with an embroidered face. His face is outline embroidered and he has huge brown, black and white satin stitched embroidered eyes. His eyelids are satin stitched with cream embroidery floss. His nose is back stitched embroidered as are his mouth, eyelashes and eyebrows.   His cheeks are blushed pink.   He has thick, straight brown yarn hair under his red cap.

He likes to wear his sneakers facing forward and his head facing forward so he can get a jump start on stealin the base. And, of course, he always carried his favorite bat with him.

"Slammin Ryan Sneaks" just loves to hit it out of the park. He's trying for MVP of his little league team and practices batting constantly. He's so into slammin the ball out of the park that he's often heard saying "It's a home run! Way to go Slammin Ryan!" in his sleep.

"Slammin Ryan Sneaks" is a 9" cloth and sneaker boy doll from The Sneaker Series. He has a cloth head with an embroidered face. His face is outline embroidered and he has huge brown, black and white satin stitched embroidered eyes. His eyelids are satin stitched with cream embroidery floss. His nose is back stitched embroidered as are his mouth, eyelashes and eyebrows.   His cheeks are blushed pink.   He has thick, straight brown yarn hair under his red cap.

He likes to wear his sneakers facing forward so he can slamm the ball whenever he gets a chance. And, of course, he always carried his favorite bat with him.

"Nicholas Fast Ball Sneaks" just loves to hit it out of the park, too. Only he specializes in slammin the fast balls. He's always practicing at the batting cages with the machine on the fastest setting and has such a good eye for timing the hit that he can look away and still hit the fastest ball thrown at him. They don't get any faster than Nicholas. He's slammin fast!

"Nicholas Fast Ball Sneaks" is a 9" cloth and sneaker boy doll from The Sneaker Series. He has a cloth head with an embroidered face. His face is outline embroidered and he has huge blue, black and white satin stitched embroidered eyes. His eyelids are satin stitched with cream embroidery floss. His nose is back stitched embroidered as are his eyelashes and eyebrows. His cheeks are blushed pink.
His smiling mouth is outline embroidered and is stain stitched with pink embroidery floss. He has thick, straight brown yarn hair under is blue cap.

He likes to wear his sneakers facing forward and his head facing forward in order to see that fast ball coming straight at him. And, of course, he always carried his favorite bat with him.

"Home Run Brian Sneaks" only wants to get a home run. And, he doesn't really care how he goes about doing that. Stealing base, bunting, hitting it out of the park. It doesn't matter if it's him or his teammate who gets him to home base just as long as he gets there. He just loves the thrill of running over home plate.

"Home Run Brian Sneaks" is an 8" cloth and sneaker boy doll from The Sneaker Series.  He has a cloth head with an embroidered face. His face is outline embroidered and he has huge blue, black and white satin stitched embroidered eyes. His eyelids are satin stitched with cream embroidery floss. His nose is back stitched embroidered as are his mouth, eyelashes and eyebrows.   His cheeks are blushed pink. He has curly blond yarn hair under his blue cap.

He likes to wear his sneakers facing forward and his head facing forward in order to hit that ball out of the park for a "home run." And, of course, he always carried his favorite bat with him.

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