Decorating for Christmas

Slowly but surely it is starting to look like Christmas around here!

Hubby hung the Christmas lights on the house last week & I hung up the wreath on our door.

I had hopes to get three stockings knit up by now but it hasn't yet.  Maybe next week?  Last night I got around to making this crochet star garland, though, and that is a decoration crossed off the list!




We're planning to pick out a real Christmas tree this year so EJ has the full holiday experience.  It should be up by this weekend and I'll update with a photo when we do.

What decorations have you put up?

Christmas Crafting: Knit Gifts

This year I loved the opportunity to knit a bunch of gifts for the some close family friends. Here are just a few of the knitted gifts they received:

Mittens

He modeled his pair and I made a few pairs for the shop.

Hand Towels

This was a host gift to a very close friend of my husband's. I made this the weekend we stayed with them.

Washcloths

One of many custom orders for co-worker gifts. I always love seeing the colors come together!

Hand Knit Socks

This beautiful variegated blue sock is one of six pairs in progress. These will be a post-Christmas gift.

More Mittens

The latest gift, fresh off my needles are these adorable little mittens for my cousin's daughter.  I made them start to finish on Christmas Eve.

More to come as we celebrate with other family members.  :)

New-to-Me Typewriter

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I found this mechanical typewriter on the side of the road about 3 or 4 months ago, next to a house I was babysitting for.  Well, it's taken a while, but I was finally able to break it out of its case & sit down to type something.  I found extra recipe cards while cleaning & unpacking the kitchen & decided to type up some of my regular recipes to go in my new recipe box, a shower gift from my sister.

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I probably would have typed all night but I ran out of recipe cards.  And you can see from the first picture I have quite a lot more than just 5 recipes that need typing up nicely.

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So the next thing to do is take some of my stashed cardstock and cut it up into 3x5 recipe cards. ... I'm thinking of decorating them with little doodles by colored pencils... if I can find the craft supplies box I usually keep them in...

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Send your snail-mail address to knittedhome[at]gmail[dot]com and I'll enclose one of my typed recipes in a Christmas card for you to enjoy.  Merry Christmas!

Homemade Christmas

I've never been that excited for Christmas the last couple of years because it's always snuck up on me and I was always too busy to really get prepared for the holiday.  I didn't have time to decorate or go shopping for all my loved ones & made me irritated for holiday season (which I hated, and made me even more upset).  And then working in retail where Christmas comes before Halloween, I *really* hated the holiday season.

So imagine my surprise when I find myself starting to think about what I want to bake for Christmas Eve dinner at my grandfather's house.  Or how I want to decorate the mantel (because we have a house now!).  Maybe it's a combination of our first Christmas married, and our first Christmas in our new house & my not working in retail anymore.  I even find myself thinking about Christmas decorating and it's not even Thanksgiving yet!  Yikes!  I used to hate when people would do that before Thanksgiving and now I'm one of them! haha.

So in the spirit of preparing & getting excited for the holidays this year, I thought it'd be fun to dream a little about what a homemade Christmas would look like in our new home this year.

This year I want to focus on making some Garlands...

             
The paper garlands would be fun projects to do when babysitting.

lots of Ornaments...
(both made by my husband and I if we can organize an afternoon to do some crafting :) and I'm sure the kids I babysit would love to make some ornaments with me)



     
 Painted ornaments (Local Craftstores have these ornaments kits)

   

Can you believe these are crocheted?
Where do I find a pattern to do this.  These make awesome Christmas gifts, too.

   
Ornaments made from origami.
Now I have another reason to hang out with my dad. 
I don't know how I could replicate these, but I just
LOVE the colors!  If I went with tradition ornaments, this is what I'd get.


Wreaths...
This would go well with that silver tree skirt (below).




My favorite, traditional & simple wreath.


Stockings...
(I've been wanting to knit our own but with all the gifts I still have to make, I doubt I'll have enough time to get them completed for this Christmas.  Maybe next year)

    
I'm a sucker for the traditional with only a touch of new.

and since both my husband and I are really excited to have a real Christmas tree, we'll need a tree skirt of course!

This tradition red & white skirt is what I had envisioned.


I didn't even think about knitting or crocheting one.

This one would be very sophisticated
for those holiday parties.
What are you planning for the holidays?  Or are you too busy like I used to be in the past years?

Progress on the Homemade Christmas List

Nothing new to post about the shop since last week. But the homemade Christmas presents list are starting to get crossed off and I can see the light at the end of the (quickly ending) tunnel :) Four presents in different stages of progress & two more to start.

Bonus: I already have four presents wrapped & all my Christmas shopping (minus ONE present) is DONE! :-D yay!

This is the first year I've been this ahead of the game, so I'm allowing myself a little pride in the fact, hehe.

How is your holiday shopping going?