All the best intentions....

As I said in my last post, I had so much I wanted to get done for Christmas this year but I only managed in the end to get a little done. Oh well, the good thing about Christmas is that the next one is only 12 months away....

I did get all my Christmas shopping done and wrapped, travel plans arranged and booked (no chance of snow related delays here) so the major things are ticked off and all is well. But this year I wanted to get more into the Christmas spirit now that Anna is cottoning on to what it's all about, and I did want to make some child friendly Christmas decorations for the tree, using this tutorial:

*image from retro-mama.blogspot.com

I bought some blue and white felt, dug out some buttons from the stash but this is as far as I got:

Hmmm, maybe I'll finish them for next year! In the meantime, unbreakable baubles from Ikea came to the rescue.

I also planned to make some wristlet style zippered purses for the carers at Anna's daycare centre instead of giving the standard chocolates or gift box of sweet smelling toiletries of which they must get heaps. Wristlets are very simple to make and there are loads of tutorials out there like this one. I went through my stash and pulled out some pretty fabrics, linings, zippers and even embellishments and this is what I came up with:

Success you might be thinking? Well sort of - I think these two are gorgeous, but I was planning to make seven of these! I ran out of energy and time to make any more, so instead went and bought seven boxes of chocolates. Life is too short to spend time sewing for people you are not sure will like what you've made. I think I'll give these two to my mum and sister instead.

This is starting to sound like another 'oh dear' post isn't it? But wait, there's more! When I'm away from my sewing machine and fabric I still have to keep my fingers busy, so I get into papercraft in a big way. Seriously, in my office I quite the collection of origami since I like to fold paper when I'm stressed or bored (beats mediation) and I have access to an endless amount of paper in the office. I found these cute paper partridges in little bird cage decorations available for free download at this site. All you have to do is print, cut out and glue, and you should get this:

But I only managed to make two from the eight I printed (I was making these at home and two year olds + paper = disaster), and even those two look a bit, well, if I'm being honest, crap:

And my final best but failed intention: I bought a gingerbread house kit from Ikea because I knew I wouldn't have the time to bake gingerbread as well as assemble and decorate one. All I can say is thankfully the kit has an expiry date of August 2012, so there's always next year!

I did manage to get a little Christmas frock done for Anna in time for Christmas (no less!). It's just a simple a-line shift dress that is fast becoming my TNT pattern (McCalls 5916) for her since I've made it several times before.

My very talented photographer friend Vanessa and I set up a Christmassy photo shoot to take some photos of our kids and we tried so hard to get them all smiling or at all least looking in the same direction but it was absolute chaos to say the least. There were a few funny photos to come out of it though!

Merry christmas everyone, hope you have a lovely holiday season. Thank you all for reading along with me this year, and leaving wonderfully supportive, helpful and funny comments. I'll be back in the new year.

*Yes that is my christmas tree, minus any handmade decorations.