Unusual Advent calendar

My mother-in-law prepared us an unusual calendar this year:

 24 small boxes

 filled with tiny wooden decoration and one flower bulb! I love the idea! We are supposed to plant them every day and hopefully in the spring we will have 24 beautiful flowers :)

 and here's the surprise - when I planted the first 12 (all at once instead of one a day), I found one small raddish and a teeny tiny potatoe!!

Autumn DIY

Autumn is here, but almost coming to an end! Temperatures are now quickly going down. I almost expect the snow to start falling any day now ;) - I am exaggerating a little bit. It will probably be another month before the first snow fall. Anyway, here are some of the stuff we made last year. I had not got around to showing you then, and since this year we are not making much because N. is in the Kindergarten, why not finally show you these? 

All you need is:
- pipe cleaners
- acorns, conkers, wood...
- wooden beads
- a glue gun
- some yarn
- anything you want to use for decorating

It was a lot of fun to make all those guys and N. was proud to have a little present for all the members of her family and her best friends. And I was happy to be able to use (and get rid of!) the stuff the children had collected in the forest!

Sewing for a wedding - part 2 (felt decorations)

Sewing for a wedding, here we go again. Still no clothes to show you, I need to blur some of the pictures and also to see if anyone took a picture of my family on the wedding day ;)

Today, I'm showing you more "felt art" among other things!

My sister who got married, M., wanted a photo-booth. She asked her three sisters to be in charge. That was a lot of work, team work, but I think we rocked it.

M. (I have two sisters whose name starts with M :-p ) has always been good with drawing and painting. Look at what she made:

 She painted on table oil cloth. Iron Man is stapled to a wooden frame (he is about 2m tall), and Marilyn is attached to a photo-screen support (she is about 1m70 tall).

The frames were painted with small white butterflies. Butterflies and the colour blue were the theme of this wedding. M. made the frames herself, giving them different shapes and sizes.

B. is a lot into small DIY at the moment, she made the props:

I need to ask her for a better picture, or to link you to her blog if she puts the pictures up. This one was taken at night, so the colours do not strike out.

She used small wooden sticks and thin DIY foam. The picture really does not do her work justice, so I'll have to replace it as soon as possible!

 [Edit: Found a picture B. had sent me while making the props. It looks a lot better than mine.]

And I am more at ease with a needle, so here is my contribution:

 People seemed to rather like our ideas and work, but mostly what was most rewarding was the groom's reaction to the Iron Man prop ;)

Unfinished Projects...

Yencamade posted an article recently which was showing some of her unfinished projects and somehow that made me feel so good to know that somebody else out there also had many plans but not enough time to complete them all! Then I thought, why not show mine and make it work as a motivation to finally complete them? In my case it is partly lack of time (for most projects), partly laziness (for some others). Let me take you through the list:

- The Baby book project which I started in 2011 before my first baby was born, you can see how far I got there. Baby n°2 is to arrive soon and this book hasn't got any further... Let's see if I have time to get working on it before Christmas, but I doubt it. Some others things are first in line!

- An album gathering all the cards, emails and text messages we received for our daughter's birth. I figured out Little N. might like to have a look at it when she is older, especially since all the cards are particularly pretty! That one is almost done, I just need to go and get a refill for my printer cartridges.

- For years and years I have been collecting receipts, tickets, photos, leaflets etc. in order to make "Holiday booklets" ... Well I have a huge box which has been sitting in the entrance for ages and is just screaming for a bit of attention. I guess I really should get on with it sooner than later, but probably again not before 2013. 

- A small embroidered cloth. Actually this is not really MY project as such and it is probably the oldest of the unfinished projects!! My Grand-mother started it as a young woman (if memory serves), she passed it onto me when I was about 11 or 12 years old (now about to turn 28!) and I have been busying myself with it from time to time since then. I wonder if I will ever finish it, or if I will also pass it onto my daughter or, who knows, my grand-daughter!! I feel no pressure about finishing this one though, I love taking it out from time to time and enjoy the feeling that I am using the same technics, fabric and even some of the thread that my Grand-mother used. It brings back lovely memories. 

And now, finally the rest of the list with pictures, that will be more "fun" to actually visualise them:

- Third oldest project, a knitted scarf. Rather not-so-great colours but well I was 15 years old when I started it. Even if those colours are still among my favourites, they are not the ones I would pick for a scarf today. Nevertheless I am absolutely determined to finish it some day. I started it the year one of my brothers was born, my mother laughed and said that maybe I would finish it for MY 18th birthday, now I am wondering if I will finish it for my brother's 18th birthday! Not that I intend to give it to him, I will keep it, but that sets a sort of deadline: 6 years to go ;-) YES I CAN!

- I guess I do not need to explain what I intend to do with that one. I just need to get on with it. Any ideas about the background colour that would fit best to all the masks?

- A pile of clothes to repair, baby clothes. I have started getting on with that pile and have made fair progress. I just need a little more courage to brave the remain of it! It goes rather quickly because the repairs are only minor ones, but seeing that big pile on my sofa just tends to put me off.

- I very much prefer looking at my sewing-basket. I cannot say much about it, but there you can see future Christmas presents!

- A cushion made by my Grand-mother. I had to wash it as shaking it by the window was not enough anymore to get rid of years of accumulated dust. The problem is that the filling material used for the cushion did not stand it (it was hand-wash thouhg), so my mother-in-law carefully separated the embroidered top from the rest and now it is up to me to find a new fabric and a new cushion in order to re-assemble the whole thing. The back fabric used to be brown. I wonder if I should keep the colour or choose a new one.

- Two of my old dolls, the one on the left is my very first one and she is also turning 28 soon. She still looks pretty good, but her body is weakening in some areas, mainly close to the arms, legs and head. My plan is to make up a new body that I would put on top of the old one as there is no way I would dislocate her and risk not making things right! The second doll, well... the problem is with the hair, I need to find a way to make it look acceptable. Then only my daughter will be able to play with both dolls.

 

 - Of those two I cannot say much as they are intended as presents (almost a year late now), so I leave it to you imagination to guess what the final result will be. Hopefully I can show you after Christmas.

 

- More baby projects: a hat which I started in February I think, I can still just add a ribbon and it is done... Will try to do that in the next two weeks. And on the right is material which I wanted to transform into another mobile. Let's see how it turns out!

- Another old thing: the top part of the lady was the figure on top of the cake at my Christening! I've kept it all these years and when I was about 12 or so, my mother and I started trying to put something together to make her a dress and transform her from being a mere bust, into being a standing figure. It is rather sad to have to admit that the only thing left to do is to hand-sew the purple fabric! I am now aiming at finding a little bit of time in the next weeks to finish this and proudly put it on my bedroom shelf (I cannot expose it anywhere else considering once again the fabrics I chose back then!)

- And to finish with (although I am sure I will find some more when I get on tidying my DIY cupboard), the latest thing I've had in mind: Little N. is starting to eat alone (oh joy!). I already bought an oil-cloth for the table which renders the cleaning after each meal much easier and faster than with normal table cloth! And I bought an extra small piece (of a different colour), a cheap towel and velcroband in order to make her a new looooong bib. The ones I have are very good but they do not cover her legs which currently often end up being full of mash, or whatever we had for lunch. I probably should start very quickly as my girl is showing more and more signs of independance which means that the mess is just going to grow.

And that's without counting the patterns which I bought earlier this year to make pretty dresses for my daughter, the many pieces of fabrics which I have both under my bed and in the cellar, and the cushion pattern which I just bought online from OneInchWorld (check it out by the way, Katherine has loads of brilliant ideas!).

How about you now? What are you unfinished projects? Do you have many? Would you show them to us and make all of us feel less bad about them? ;-)

Some links to share

Sorry for the lack of recent articles, I have a few things to post about but little energy and time these days... Baby N. is turning into a toddler and is very keen on having her mummy to play with her (or most of the time rather be her cushion!). I promise I will write something soon with pictures :)

In the meantime have a look at those two links:

This first one, Neverseconds (my husband came accross it while reading the news), is not related to DIY or sewing but to food. A young british girl (9-year-old) is holding a blog about her school meals... Rather sad and shocking in my opinion!

This second link , Childsown,  is a great concept! Parents send their childen's drawings which are turned into toys! That is a great inspiration, cannot wait to see if I can do something similar when my girl starts drawing, that would be such an original toy!

I love that one by a little 2-year-old Kaylee:

Isn't that sweet?

That's all for now, I will write again soon.