First of advent

Today we celebrated first of advent and it was really nice! We went to church, decorated ginger bread, lit the first candle on our advent wreath ....

(By the way, anybody any idea how one could present those flat huge gingerbread house cookies? I tried to put them on a table that they would stand up - leaning on the wall. Result - they simply break! They are really soft! I find it sad to just eat them ... they look so cute ...)



I also managed to finish the advent calendar for my daughter on time! YEAH! Even one day early - i managed to finish it yesterday evening! :-) I just love it and think it looks great.

I saw some advent calendars like that in online shops and really liked the idea. I found a really great instruction for such a calendar here.
As you can see in the picture I changed some things a bit and used the instruction rather as a guideline. But without it it would have been much harder to do ... and taken much more time I guess ... so thanks Cathy for the great instruction and the nice pictures!

It was actually quite some work and I had to do it all by hand. Since the big red felt was too thick to use the sewing machine ...
I don't even wanna get started on the velcro bits. I would have never been able to sew them on. My husband had to do it. I simply couldn't manage to get the needle through the velcro bit ... So I am not intending to use velcro in my sewing soon again! ;-)
I hope the calendar will last a really long time!!!

Here is a picture of it without the ornaments:


Here is a picture of all the ornaments:




And finally a picture of the tree with the ornaments on it:


There are supposed to be 24 little pockets under the tree where the ornaments are. You take one oranemnt each day out of the pocket and put it on the tree. I didn't bother sewing the pockets yet. Might do it next year. This year the ornaments are just in a big stocking ...

I submitted this post as my "Favourite post of 2008" to Tip Junkie.

Legwarmers

I managed to finish one of the legwarmers. Am totally disappointed! They are too small! My daughter can wear them, but they are quite tight - rather like socks - without the feet. :-(
So I guess I have to give theese away to someone smaller ... I hate the idea of undoing all of it again ...

Advent calendar

I've been working at the advent calendar for my daugther yesterday ... just some impressions ...




And with all the hard work ... ;-) there had to be cookies!!! :-)

Sanct Martin

Today we celebrated Sanct Martin. Of course my daughter and I had made a lantern and proudly carried it this evening! :-)

It was a very nice kid's craft and rather easy. You just need a balloon and put transparent bits of paper on it with glue.



You make a few layers ... and when you're done you pop the balloon. My daughter was very brave and did that herself! :-)


Just put a little handle on it ... and put a light inside ... Done! :-)

Ideas, ideas, ideas ...

For some reason my head seems to be overflowing with ideas and it's getting really hard for me to keep track ...

I put the rag rug project on hold because I ran out of fabric. Until I get more - already informed all the relatives :-) - I will do other things.

I just started knitting gaiters for my little daughter. I had made her some socks a while ago and she actually likes them now. She weares them at night and never gets cold feet. Unfortunately they are a little too small by now.

So I asked her if I should make her new ones ... and she said yes. Unfortunately it usually takes me ages to finish a pair of socks ... So I was afraid that winter might be over or the finished socks won't fit anymore once I will be done ...
That's why I am making legwarmers now. It should be finished faster since I don't have to worry about a pattern. And they will fit longer! Hope my daughter will like them!

I also want to start sewing. I managed to make a baby doll diaper. Gotta make more as a christmas present for my daugher. I think she will love them.
But I also wanted to sew something "real". So to practice I cut out a bag pattern and now I am searching for appropriate fabric to use. I hope to finish the project soon. I'm thinking ... once I am done with the bag I might figure out how to alter the pattern and make a smaller bag for my daugther as well.

Also I want to make an advent calender for my daughter and for my husband. For my daughter I saw a totally cute advent calendar on the internet that I would like to make. Basically it is just a huge felt christmas tree and 24 ornaments made of felt. Each day one ornament gets put onto the tree. I really love the idea! Hope my daugher will love it too - even though it doesn't involve chocolate! :-)
I even found a site were they had 24 (actually 25) different poems/ texts - one for each ornament/ day. I thought that's really nice!
I just gotta get all the supplies - felt and embroidery yarn - and start stiching!

Oh, and I plan to sew an empire top for my daugher. I saw the pattern and completely fell in love with it. I just gotta buy some nice fabric and get going ...

And I also wanted to make some fingerless gloves for myself ... I never tried that yet. But I hate it in the winter, when you're outside with your little child and all of the time you have to put off and put back on your gloves ... blowing the nose, getting something out of the handbag, tying shoes, putting the scarf or hat bag where it is supposed to be .... Adding to that my daughter didn't like it to hold my hand when I was wearing gloves - I always had to put the gloves off first! So often I ended up not wearing gloves at all ... and freezing! I thought some fingerless gloves might solve the problem. And also I think they just look great - AND they are way easier to knit than the ones with the fingers! ;-)

Oh, and I also have a whole shoe box full of glass beads ... and am not sure yet what to do with them ...

I probably still forgot a bunch of ideas ... For some reason when christmas time approaches I feel really "crafty" ... :-)

More pictures

So I took some more pictures of my little witch. This time she was more happy ... :-)
Very important for her was her little pet.




I also wanted to show some pictures from Halloween last year. Since we had invited a few kids we had decorated the flat and also had special "Halloween"food. :-)



I was especially proud of our window treatments. It did look really quite spooky.


For dinner we had pizza, mashed potato ghosts and mummy dogs. You are actually supposed to wrap the dough around the sausages that it looks like little mummys. Unfortunately our dough - we used pizza dough - wasn't really cooperative and kept sliding away. No matter how much you wrapped it around the sausage - as soon as you turned your back it would just slide away again ...

Halloween and other stuff

Yesterday was the big day for the witch costume. Unfortunately when we went outside it was already so dark that we only took very few photos and they didn't turn out too great. If my daughter is cooperative I will try to take some photos of her in the costume tomorrow. But here a few of the witch in the dark.























Because we had guests yesterday I finally made muffins. I made blueberry cheesecake muffins. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture when they were done. :-( And now they are gone already ...


Today we also started packing a shoe box for the campaign "Weihnachten im Schuhkarton" (Christmas in a shoe box). We glued wrapping paper to the shoe box and we also have already quite a few things that we are going to put in the shoe box. Now the box has to dry and then we will pack it.