Deck the Halls With Hand Sewn Balls…

Deck the Halls With Hand Sewn Balls...

The kittens decided that our little Christmas Tree was the best thing since sliced bread. It lasted in our living room for all of 6 hours before Chris woke in the middle of the night to a number of suspicious sounds and found all 12 pounds of Dexter precariously perched in the top branches.  Now the traditional tree is in our bedroom and I never see it. To compensate for my sad Christmas Tree-less living room I decided to fashion a faux tree on the wall with lights and then hang all off the felt ornaments that I made this year on it. I realize that the whole thing is beyond tacky but at least I have some semblance of a tree to look at, and thankfully the kittens don’t bother it at all.

Deck the Halls With Hand Sewn Balls...

An Attempt At Crafting

An Attempt at Crafting
I will happily bake and cook my little heart out but I find it next to impossible to get into traditional crafts. I’m a failed knitter, embroiderer, and decoupager. But when I stumbled upon these adorable Felt Christmas Ornaments the DIY bug somehow thoroughly infected me yet again.

Felt at Play Time Crafts

After consulting the craftiest person I know on where to buy felt I took a little trip to Play Time Crafts in Arlington. The store itself was on the same mess level as Old Navy gets during a Black Friday sale but they had absolutely everything you could possibly want from stamps, to beads, oodles of ribbon, party supplies, and a rainbow array of felt. Instead of traditional Christmas colors I chose turquoise, magenta, lavender, and pink for my ornaments and then found several spools of matching ribbon.

Felt Christmas Ball

This evening I attempted to sew my first ornament. It took me a little over an hour. I ended up having to use a martini glass to trace circles onto the felt. The finished product is a bit lopsided and you can unfortunately see all of my stitches but all-in-all I’m pretty proud of myself. However, I think it looks fairly good since I’ve been known to send shirts to the dry cleaner if I need a button sewed on.

Tomorrow my friend Kristen is going to give me some pointers on how to polish the craft project. Hopefully the next one will be a tad more attractive. At this rate though it will probably take me until Christmas to finish the 12 ornaments I’m hoping to make, but I’m determined to finish every single shabby one.

Don't Quit Your Day Job

Christmas is Over When I Say it’s Over

Toaster Ornament

I’m not ready to give-up my pretty little tree yet. I’ve managed to taper off the constant Christmas music playing, as well as delete all of the holiday themed movies and specials from the Tivo, but I just can’t take down the tree. Maybe this weekend? To further aid in my Christmas-is-over denial my friend Carrie sent me these fabulous kitchen themed ornaments. They are so adorable that I’ve decided they can’t possibly be put away after New Year’s Day. They have to live on the baker’s rack, hanging next to the LED stars that I also refuse to put away during the year, forever and ever. This is a doubly perfect place for them since Carrie has claimed on more than one occasion that she’s going to move in with CK and I and live on that shelf.

Kitchen Ornaments

The Official Christmas Ornaments of 2008

Pike Place Market

Every year I buy a new ornament for the Christmas tree. For some reason I have a lot of ballerinas which is really strange since I’ve never taken a dance class in my entire life.

During the first Christmas that Chris and I celebrated, after we moved in together back in 2006, we each picked out new ornaments. I selected a cozy kitchen scene to celebrate my foray back into blogging via ErinCooks.com and Chris picked out a snowboard. The poor guy dreams of the fresh powder in Utah like Blair Waldorf dreams of Manolos and diamonds.

Bainbridge Island Ferry

Last year we settled on a David Ortiz ornament to celebrate winning free furniture in the Jordan’s Red Sox World Series contest. Much like Ortiz’s on-field personality, this ornament literally dominates our tree. I swear all you see is Big Papi. He completely outshines all of the other glass balls and tchotchkes in his vicinity. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if I came home from work one day and the ornaments were smashed half way across the room.

This year we chose ornaments that would remind us of our fabulous trip to Seattle. Now we’ll never forget all of the delicious meals and food we ate in and around Pike Place Market, or the eventful ferry ride over to Bainbridge Island when a mischievous bird gave me an extra special “welcome.”