Christmas 2011. . .

i cannot believe that Christmas is already over!

it all happened way too fast.

time spent with family and friends has seemed

to whiz by over the past week or so, & i cannot believe

that i have to go back to work soon!

booo.

overall Chrismas 2011 was great:)

logan & i pretty much followed the same schedule as last year.

we went to my annual family christmas party held at

my brother's house in spanish fork.

my niece, alli loved being part of the Christmas nativity.

she was the proudest Virgin Mary i've ever seen.

Christmas wouldn't be complete without some

good ol' fashioned Christmas baking, so I made some

cookies to take up to my house on Christmas Eve.

The mix actually came from a box (shh!) but they

turned out really good!

the box mix made these amazing salted caramel chocolate cookies.

i also bought some peppermint kisses and threw those on top

of one of the batches i made.

they were delish and i bought the mix at costco

just in case you are wondering.

Christmas Eve spent at my house was fun, but i must confess

it was a bit odd.

my older brother and younger sister were spending Christmas with in-laws,

and my youngest brother is on a mission in Russia.

this was the first Christmas none of them have been around, so there

was a little part of me that felt like Christmas wasn't real

because none of them were there.

BUT we did get to Skype with my brother Christmas morning!

it was sooo good to see his face and hear his voice!

he is doing great in Russia and is loving the experience he's having there.

after talking to James we opened presents and ate

amazing berry french toast made by my mom.

my mom's Christmas wish this year was a dog.

she has been a little lonely ever since my dad and her

became empty nesters last summer.

she has been joking with my dad about getting a dog lately.

half of her is serious and the other half just likes the idea of it.

my mom says she wants to "dog-share" with someone.

she has it for one week, someone else has it for another week, etc.

the idea is insane but i'm pretty sure she is dead serious about it.

anyway, we thought it would be funny to get my mom a dog

for Christmas.

not a real dog of course-my dad would have flipped.

but the one we got was pretty convincing:)

i brought it up after everyone opened their gifts in one

of my mom's purses.

it's the kind that barks and moves when you pet it.

she basically died when she saw it but

she may or may not have taken it to church with her later

that afternoon as a "joke".

she loved that dog like it was real.

logan & i decided to open our "big" presents from eachother

down at his parents house later that night.

we left my house in the late afternoon & got to his house

just in time for Christmas dinner.

it was fun having 2 Christmases in the same day again!

this year i told logan i wanted a print of the slc temple

where we got married.

i had seen a few on etsy that people made & logan

assured me he could make one that looked even better.

i am happy to say that he did.

the greatest thing is that the white temple is glued

onto the glass, leaving me with the option to change the color

of paper behind is as often as i want!

it now lives in our kitchen and i LOVE it.

as mentioned last month, i started working on a "secret" project

for logan for his Christmas gift.

as i already mentioned, the surprise was somewhat spoiled and

logan may or may not have found out what i was making him. . .but

he acted surprised when he opened it to make me feel better.

i decided to make logan a quilt for Christmas.

he didn't necessarily ask for a quilt, but i thought he would

appreciate the time and effort put into his gift:)

i got the inspiration for the quilt from this image

i found on Pinterest:

i love the color combination with the yellows and subtle

grey/blue tones that make the quilt more "boyish".

logan really loved the quilt:)

i may or may not have also been excited to display the quilt

by getting some new bedding.

i saw this image on Pinterest as well and fell in love with

the idea of white bedding with a pop of color from a quilt:

the bedding was purchased and now logan's quilt is

displayed on the end of our little bed.

seriously, our bed is so small.

after the hustle and bustle of Christmas was over, i got

to catch up with some of my best friends.

i really miss seeing them:)

we went to hires and ate greasy fries and chatted the night away.

this Christmas season was pretty amazing.

great food, great family/friends, great gifts, and

a great time to remember the true meaning of Christmas

and celebrate the birth and life of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Bring on the new year!

these are a few of my favorite things. . .

cozy fires.

a fridge full of christmas cards.

making invitations for family christmas parties.

snowflake making.

door decorations at work.

christmas cadbury eggs.

gift wrap.

ugly sweater parties.

monogram ornaments.

peppermint sugar cookies.

merry christmas!

now all we need is some snow. . .

full blown christmas mode. . .

i am painfully aware of the fact that i haven't

posted anything about my thanksgiving.

i promise i had one.

and i promise it was good.

i realized that i literally took like 3 pictures that day

and i have also been a little lazy :)

here is a picture of my glorious plate of food as proof

that it was indeed a day filled with family, food & laughter:

now that december is finally here, the theodore house

has basically been filled with jolly holiday music

and the christmas candles have been blazin.

i've been in the process of completing a few projects

over the past week or so.

one project includes making some christmas invitations to

an annual family party, & the other is a big fat secret.

more on that later;)

the other project i have been working on was finished last night & i

couldn't help but share because i am grinning from ear to ear

now that it's complete!

i had been wanting to make a 'merry christmas' banner for

a while, & yesterday i finally had time to do it!

here is my step-by-step process because i'm

sure you are just dying to know how i made it:

materials needed: newspaper, 1/4 yard of burlap, letter stencil,

red & green paper, twine, & a pen.

you also need a sewing machine, scissors, a ruler, a safety pin & glue stick

but i forgot to include those in the picture.

oops.

i started by deciding what shape i wanted the pieces

of the banner to look like.

there are a million shapes you could use: square, triangle, etc.

i decided on a shape that i don't know the name of. . .but it's cute.

i had logan make a template of the shape so i could use it

to trace all of my burlap/paper with.

i enlisted him because he is better at drawing shapes than i am.

just being honest.

after i had my shape cut out, i used it to trace out shapes

from the burlap.

'merry christmas' has 14 letters, but i traced 15 shapes so i could

have one to practice on.

heaven knows i would need a practice piece.

i cut out all my burlap shapes and then i was ready

to cut out similar but smaller shapes from paper.

does anyone know what this shape is called?

it's like a square & triangle combined??

using a similar but smaller shape, i traced the

red & green paper 15 times.

depending on the color order you want your banner

to go in, you might have more red than green or vice versa.

i wanted more green in my banner but you can literally

create whatever pattern you want for the letters.

then it was stencil time!

the stencil part is what took the longest.

i found this stencil and really liked the letters because they weren't

totally cutesy looking.

do you know what i mean by cutesy?

i'm not the biggest fan of swirly twirly letters-i wanted mine to

look more solid so that's why i went with this stencil.

it was a little tricky as you can tell because the letters are in sections.

this meant i had to cut out each piece and glue them individually

onto my red & green shapes.

it turned out just how i wanted it to though-so it was

time well spent in my eyes.

i really liked how the newspaper letters turned out.

they gave the letters a little more dimension but still looked

clean & simple which is what i wanted.

you could use any color paper to stencil your letters, but

newspaper is a good & cheap idea if you have one laying around.

after a few hours of cutting and gluing letters

it was time to sew!

can i just tell you that i have literally overcome my fear

of the sewing machine?

i don't know why i was so scared to try and use it to make

crafts-but now my sewing machine is like by BFF for reals.

first step is to take a piece of burlap and fold down

the top about 1/4 inch.

then take you letter and place it on the front of the

burlap piece, making sure the tops align.

then just align the burlap and colored paper, making sure

to sew down the folded piece to create enough space

for your twine to string through.

sew each letter individually & start lining them up.

i'm not going to lie, it's pretty exciting as

they start to come together.

after you've sewn each piece, it's time to string

them all together!

cut a long piece of twine & tie a safety pin on the end.

take each letter and string the safety pin

through the loop you created after sewing.

the safety pin helps a lot while stringing.

it gives the string a little more weight and just makes

it easier to push through the loop.

nbd that i initially tried to string the letters onto the twine

using nothing.

i was making pretty intense/annoyed/loud sounds each time

the string would get stuck in the middle of the loop.

logan walked over, assessed the situation & gave me the

safety pin idea.

bless him.

after you've strung all your letters, it's time to hang it up!

now all of our christmas decorations are complete!

we bought a tiny tree from the dollar store the other day & found

a tiny star to go right on top!

total cost of tree & star: $3.00

total cost of banner: $10.00

our first christmas decorations: priceless.

merry christmas!