Just a little too much Christmas....

This time last month I had come home to a beautiful arrangement of 3 perfectly decorated Christmas Trees "magically" left in my apartment for me to find after arriving home from work. The Christmas Season was alive and well in our home and I had lots of fun going to various places picking out fabric and supplies to make all my homemade Christmas gifts. As the month wore on, I realized (too late) that I took on way too much and ended up frantically trying to get everything in the mail and wrapped in time for Christmas- I got the job done and was all ready for a nice relaxing week of having the whole last week of December off of work when WHAM I got hit with some horrible sinus/congestion/cold/allergy. It was AWFUL and I ended up in bed the entire week and even missed the New Year's Eve party with my in-laws.

I'm feeling much better except for a residual runny nose and am back at work trying to get back into the swing of things. I haven't iced my legs for my Achilles tendinitis cuz it has been SUPER cold here lately - the other day it got down to the low 60's! (yeah....I KNOW....it's probably colder where you are- but it's been REALLY COLD!)

Anyway, here are some of the projects I worked on for Christmas. I made T-shirt dresses for each of my 5 nieces, 2 sisters-in-law, sister and mother-in-law. These dresses are super easy to make and VERY comfy to wear. You pretty much just cut off a T-shirt to where you want the beginning of the dress to begin and attach a gathered skirt.

Here is Analea and Olena my nieces here in Hawaii- The opened their gifts from me on Christmas Eve at my in-law's in Kaneohe.  I was really surprised at how excited they were to get dresses- they immediately put them on to model for all of us.

This next picture is blurry but you get the idea of what the fabric looked like for the dress I made for my sister-in-law Evelin who is married to my brother (they live in Houston). I also made my nieces Kylie and Mariela the exact dresses I made for Ana and Olena.

I have made several of these kinds of dresses from lots of different colors and one that I wear the most is just like this fabric that I used for my sister Crystal's dress- I love the look of the black and white print, it really reminds me of this dress that my mom wore in one of her old pictures in the 70's- Black and White is timeless.

Speaking of 70's prints I found this really cool print that's kinda a throw back to the old Hawaiin Prints of days of yore- it's a nicely toned down to more "modern" colors though- no lime green for my Sister-in-Law Pohai- she loves pink and this print really reminded me of her.

I made a purple dress for my mother-in-law Joelyn and a red dress for my sister-in-law Chasity. Overall I think they turned out pretty nice, and were fairly easy to make only I didn't budget enough time as I tried to get it all done in between, baking treats, doing our Relief Society Service Project and working full time. 

For my 15 co-workers and my family I made "Boo Boo Rice Bags"- basically I sewed little bags and filled them with rice and dried lavender and sewed covers for the little pillows. You put them in the microwave to heat up for tummy and body or cold feet  or freezer for feverish foreheads. You have to use 100% cotton fabric and thread so they don't melt in the microwave. I meant to take lots of pictures of all the different ones I made and the pretty fabrics I chose but only got a few shots in.



I sewed 3 separate compartments to hold the rice so that the rice and lavendar won't migrate and bunch up in one end.

They are so much prettier with covers but the muslin helps the add an extra barrier. I originally intended the covers to be more like a mini pillow case that could be taken off and washed but the rice bags kept slipping out which made them really akward. The rice bags definately made for some HEAVY gifts- thank goodness for flat rate boxes!



I also found this victorian-ish fabric remnant for $1.99 at the Fabric store and made 4 re-usuable gift bags.

I LOVE the color and it works perfectly for Christmastime.

I made one for myself for my gift for me from me... yeah my gift to myself was  more fabric for future projects! I got the idea for the bags from a blog that talked about family traditions where one family had these fabric bags they made for big Christmas items from "Santa" that the parents could easily slip in gifts on Christmas Eve so they didn't spend the entire night wrapping. The lady talked about how her kids got excited when ever the Christmas "bags" came out each year. I though that was kinda neat - so I have my first Christmas Bag.

So Christmas and New Year has come and gone and now we're back to normal life- can't belieive it's all over with- on some levels I'm glad adn am ready for regular life again, but I miss the closeness that Christmas brings. I ran out of time and hope I plan better next year. I didn't even get out our Christmas letter and didn't send one card :o( but I sure appreciated reading everyone else's cards and letters- thanks so much and Happy New Year!