Christmastime Houses

Lindsey and I made Gingerbread houses!  It was her first time ever to decorate a Gingerbread house and I think she did a fabulous job!  We had a great time decorating the houses while Cornbread and Michael Bacon watched some really bad silly movies.  We all ate way too much candy, and had delicious pizza from Filippi's Pizza Grotto.

I used the Elfin cottage pattern from my 1982 Wilton Celebrate!: Christmas book.  I had a batch of gingerbread in the freezer that was left from last year's house.  And I made one batch of the Grandma's gingerbread from my Wilton book.  They both baked up pretty well.  But cutting out the pieces and baking a gingerbread house from scratch is really hard work.  I miss my cast iron gingerbread mold!  Maybe next year...

I've also been busy making more cardboard glitter houses.  The little green two story house is a pattern that Howard from littleglitterhouses.com shared on the cardboard Christmas forums.  I was going to wait until next year to make it, but then he surprised me with an adorable Santa figure.  I thought I should make the little guy a new house and I did the whole thing yesterday.

Howard suggested repainting the Santa and giving him a clear coat.  I did repaint him and add some glitter to his base, but I'm still deciding if I want to clear coat him.  I only have gloss clear coat right now, and Michael says he likes him flat.  Maybe I'll try to find some flat clear coat, but for now Santa has a new home.  Thanks, Howard!

I also made another one of the Urban Debris mini Putz houses for my Grandma's Christmas present.  The vintage-looking tall tree, Santa and silver gift boxes all came from WalMart.  I just hot-glued the little scene on the top of a Christmas tin and I plan to fill it with candy and sweets for her. 

Our Christmas Village Has Been Deforested

And this is the reason. 

 Our darling, adorable little kitten, RacerX has been wreaking havok on the village. He's been very curteous with the houses, but the trees and Santa were not so lucky.  Especially Santa.

This is how the village started out yesterday.  But it didn't last long.  It was soon demolished.

So I put all the trees away in a safe place. And this is how our village looks now.

I'm probably going to be putting the Christmas tree up sometime this week.  I fear for it's safety with these two little guys.

Santa's Got a New Gold Bag

Our Putz Christmas village needed a Santa and sleigh.  I searched all over eBay until I found one that I was happy with.

I chose this Santa because I liked the size for the scale of our village. He's a little big, but he's not too huge. I also liked that he was one of the only ones that had actual brown reindeer. They aren't pictured because they didn't need a new paint job like Santa did. White reindeer have their place, but I think Santa's reindeer should be brown. Santa had seen better days. His paint was badly cracked and peeling and he lost his reins. So I gave him a bath in pure acetone to strip off all the old paint. And I did the same thing with his sleigh.

Then I carefully wiped off whatever paint particles were left in all the crevices and gave Santa and his sleigh a new coat of paint. I'm not sure what the original paint was, but I used Tester's model paints on both Santa and the sleigh. Originally, Santa's toy bag was a very dark, chocolate brown.  But, the set of model paints I was using didn't come with brown and I lean more toward the gaudy, metallic side of Christmas decor.  Luckily the paint set did have a lovely shade of shimmery, metallic gold.  So I painted the toy bag gold.  I love it!

And here's Santa with his all his reindeer:

(this was before Rudolph's time)

I still haven't come up with how I'll replace the reins and I think I need to add some miniature holly and maybe a tiny Christmas tree to his sleigh.  But, for now, he looks much better!

Christmas Putz Village

My very first Putz Village! I'm very happy with it. I'm so excited to finally use the little white plastic tree I got at the $1 and Up store in Escondido. And I think the gingerbread house looks great as the center piece of the village.

I actually had a very hard time forresting my village. For some reason I really thought it needed more trees and I became obsessed. But, I guess everyone else was too, because everywhere I went was mostly sold out of Christmas village trees. I got a couple from Dollar Tree and a few from the Mission-building section at Michael's. And I was just kinda OK with my sparse foliage. But a few days ago I was wandering around Big Lots and I found a 16-piece tree set for only $5!

Even without the lights on, I think the village looks much better with lots of trees!

The first house I made was the picture window house. I made it at the same time that I made the Halloween picture window house. I really like it, but I do I wish I would have listened to Howard's suggestions and started with the begginner cottage.

This is the Peach Beach Cottage from Howard's Sandy Shores Structures. I added snow and lots of glitter and made it a Christmas village house. I made a loofah tree following Papa Ted's new tree tutorial.

The Little Charmer also has a loofah tree in it's front yard. It's by far my favorite house in the village. I pretty much copied Howard's color-scheme exactly.

The beginner cottage is actually yellow with a blue roof, but all the glitter makes it hard to see the colors. The snowman and icy tree are both from Dollar Tree.

I also made the church conversion. We're not a religious household, but I do think the church is really cute. So I just made the upstairs window round like all the rest of the houses instead of a cross.

The Bay Window house is so cute! I love the way it sits centered on it's foundation so I put a tree in each corner of the front yard.

Christmastime

Most of my supplies for extra curricular activities are in storage while we're in the condo including my gingerbread house cookie mold. So this year I decided to do it the old-fashioned way and design and build a gingerbread house from scratch. I used a recipe I found online and cut out the pieces based on a paper pattern I drafted.

I won't use that gingerbread recipe again, the one that came with my cookie mold is much better. The pieces weren't as strong as I like and they warped A LOT! But I trudged on. The over-hang on the roof was a little lacking and the front of the house was far from straight.

I did use the royal icing recipe that I always use. And, once it's covered with icing and candy, the house doesn't look too bad. I also bought a box of Pepperidge Farm ginger family cookies and stuck them in the front yard. They're cute, but there is no way they'll fit in their house. :)

We also got the tree out of storage and crammed it in to our tiny little living room. I'm so happy with how our new tree skirt turned out! I LOVE the Alexander Henry Yuletide 2D Zoo fabric I ordered from Etsy. It's the perfect combination of traditional Christmas and whimsy. Plus it doesn't smell like cat pee!

Time for some holiday sewing!

This is Hyde the Thanksgiving Owl. I just stitched him together tonight. I have decided that there are not enough happy images to symbolize the Thanksgiving season. So I'm declaring that owls are now officially added as an icon of Thanksgiving. I used this Carnivore Owl Bag how-to and just made him out of felt. He stands up on his own because he has a Spiderman ziplock bag of fish gravel in his bottom. And we named him Hyde because he's a horned-owl.

Over the weekend I started using up some of my VIP craft panels. I really love using craft panels. They come with all the colorful designs already printed. All you have to do is sew them up and stuff them. I made a turkey for each my mom and Michael's mom. They also have Spiderman ziplocks with fish gravel so they'll stand on their own.

Rudy is also a VIP craft panel. I made him specially for Michael Bacon. He looks EXACTLY like the clamation, politically incorrect, Rudolph we all remember.

(Maybe he'll like Rudolph so much he'll let me have a white plastic Christmas Tree this year)

:)

Just Putzing Around

I've been making little glitter houses (also known as Putz houses) all week! Thanks to the AMAZING how-to's from Howard Lamey and his adorable and educational Little Glitter Houses website. They're only about 4 inches tall and you put lights in the back so that the windows and doors glow.

I remember every Christmas my Aunt Grace would put out her nativity village and I was so in love with it! Gail also has a set of the originals that are so special and nostalgic. I think Putz villages are so beautiful and really capture the spirit of Christmas, so I wanted a Putz village of my own. I'm making a set for Christmas and a set for Halloween. I finished the first house in each set tonight, and I have four more houses under construction.

When I get the other houses finished, I'll post about the completed villages.

2010

Is it really 2010 already?

 

I feel like Michael and I just got back from our honeymoon! The past 6 months have flown by! (there have definitely been more good days than bad)

 

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with Mamma Sheila. She came up and we cooked and ate and had a fun, fun time. She even made it through Bruno, Borat, and Stepbrothers all in one sitting. She laughed her head off and loved all three movies! Then she spent the night and we didn't get up early and participate in Black Friday this year! It was great to hang around the house in our PJ's and have a yummy breakfast.

 

We decided to move into the condo so that we'll be able to get the $$ together to build a house and I knew the big move was coming up quick. Mumsy Trish and Gary were coming for Christmas and I wanted to make sure everything was festive for them, so I decorated the house for Christmas the weekend after Thanksgiving for the first time ever. It's a little early for me, I'd rather wait until December, but I'm really glad that it was done and ready for them.

 

 

We had a great Christmas with them and plan to make it an annual tradition. This Christmas was very "warm & fuzzy".

:)

 

Now we're in the belly of the beast. The tenants are out of the condo and we're planning on moving in this Saturday. They left the place immaculate, but we decided to paint Michael's studio and our bedroom before we move in. So I go over there from work everyday and paint. I should be done tomorrow. Things are looking really nice, I think we'll have a pretty swanky pad once we get ourselves situated.

It's just such a big move, I'm having a hard time seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. But once we get our stuff into the condo, we'll have until the end of the month to get the rest of all our possessions into storage.

 

It might be a little overwhelming right now, but it's a huge help to have Michael by my side; we're a good team. He has a way of making everything work out and I love him all to pieces for it!

 

The Bacon family Christmas Angel

I finally finished the Current Treetopper Angel tonight while we watched the disturbing Dexter Thanksgiving episode. I wasn't too sure about the colors I chose at first, but Michael says they're pretty. :)

She'll take her place on top of our little tree in a couple weeks.

The Current Tree Topper Angel Round 3

 

I spent the entire weekend working on one of these angels for our Christmas Tree. This is my 3rd round of making one and it's a LOT of work!

My mom bought two of these kits back in the 80's when they were originally released. Then a few years back I found one on eBay and purchases a 3rd kit.

(Here's another eBay auction)

Her first kit, I put together for her when I was in High School, and she still puts it on the tree every year. A few years later I thought it might be cool to make her second kit for myself and I just glued rainbow-colored feathers all over her. It was a very cheesy 90's rave looking angel. The rainbow feather angel probably spent the remainder of her days in a landfill...

So, this weekend I decided that I should put the 3rd kit together. The kit really just includes the printed fabric and instructions. You have to embroider, stitch, and/or decorate her however you want. I like the embroidered/ribbon look which is what I did for my mom's angel.

This weekend I got as far as finishing most of embroidery on her dress and halo. This week I'll work on her wings and her face and hair. I'm hoping to have her completed by Thanksgiving.

Then we'll have our own hand-crafted Bacon family Tree Topper Angel.

Getting Ready for the Holidays

I'm really looking forward to the Labor Day Holiday weekend. 3 days off work means lots of time to sew and work on some holiday-related projects. My main project this weekend will be starting some Halloween sewing. But that information is top secret until a later date...

Also, Michael got me set-up for maintaining the Halloween website all by myself. He set-up all my info with Joomla and I've been learning so much my brain is a little tired. I'm very, very slow at it, and I can only work on it a little bit at a time, but I'll get the site up and running soon. As soon as I get it presentable, I'll put a link up for all the party people to go check out the site. But in the process, I got Photoshop on my computer and my wonderful hubby found a really cool fashion design program for me called Virtual Fashion Pro. And I can't wait to play around with it.

Last Christmas, my mom gave me her old nativity set because she got a cool new fancy one. Her old nativity set was the one we had for most of my childhood. It's a ceamic set from Pic N Save, and I love it! I know it seems strange that someone like me who isn't the biggest fan of religion is into the nativity. But for me it's like a fairy tale. At christmas my mom read me the story of the baby jesus just like she read to me about Cinderella and The Princess and the Pea. For me it was just a story. And I had no problem with jesus and santa claus sharing a holiday just like Easter is all about bunnies and eggs. The two don't naturally go hand in hand except at those holidays. Anyway, I used to spend hours when I was a little girl playing with the nativity figures. I would rearrange them and set them up for jesus' birthday as if they were on a stage. Her nativity set didn't come with any kind of a stable so I made one over the summer.

While I was looking around online for stable ideas I learned a lot. I always thought that the manger was the building that they slept in. You know, like the song "Away in a Manger". But the manger is the wooden trough that cows and livestock eat out of. The manger is the little wooden bed that jesus slept in. The building is usually either a stable or barn. Sometimes you'll see the term creche. And I thought maybe creche was another way of saying stable or barn, but I found out that it refers to the whole scene. The figures all arranged in display is called a nativity creche.

Well for our nativity creche, the stable is made out of manila file folders cover in strip paper mache and then textured with paper mache pulp. I used hot glue to add some Sheet Moss (sphagnum moss) to the roof and Spanish Moss (which is not a moss at all) to the inside floor. It's not lit in the picture, but the inside of the stable has a battery-operated light in the ceiling. I did this by putting a battery-operated tea light in the space between the roof and the ceiling with it's little plastic "flame" hanging down through a hole in the celing.

I also found an amazing set of Mars Attacks! string lights on eBay that I can't wait to put on our Christmas tree! I got two sets of them, and I think our Christmas tree will look beautiful with little plastic light up Ack Acks and flying saucers.

A Christmas Doll For Elliott

I found this retro doll pattern at Joann during the Veteran's Day sale. It's Simplicity 2729, a reprint of "learn to dress" dolls from the 70's. I'll post my pattern review with more details soon, but this is a really great pattern.

I named him Herbie How-to-Dress. Herbie has snaps on his shirt, buttons on his overalls, and laces on his shoes. I know Elliot isn't quite ready to start dressing himself, but Herbie can just be a good friend until he's ready.

I gave him a red shirt and plaid overalls because it looks like something Elliot would like to wear. You can trim his hair if you want because it's the same length hair as the girl doll, but I thought his hair looked good long and shaggy.

Elliot wasn't quite interested in Herbie at first. But then Jess made him clap, and Elliot decided to give Herbie a chance. After a couple claps Elliot was grabbing Herbie by his hair and looking for more clapping. :)

Herbie turned out a little bigger than I expected, but I think he'll be a fun doll for Elliot to play with. Boys do like dolls too even if they need to call them action figures. :)

 

Christmas Sewing Catch-Up

Christmas was great this year!

Michael and I managed to stay healthy (last year we were sick for nearly 2 months), and we both got lots of great gifts. Too bad someone hit his car in front of my Mom's house and just drove off on Christmas Day. Well, what goes around comes around...

Anyway, now that gifts have been given and we're all getting ready for the new year to start, I can start posting some of my sewing projects. Early in December we had a wonderful dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Castillo. Alex and Kimbra had their house decorated beautifully for Christmas and Michael and I took them some more ornaments for their tree.

Since this was Alex and Kim's first Christmas as a married couple, I made them a "Our First Christmas" ornament out of the wonderful Los Novios fabric.

They made a really great dinner with roast beast and potatoes and veggies. Kim made some wonderful homemade biscuits and she out-did herself with the spice cake for dessert!

 

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Last weekend we put up all of our Christmas decor. Once again I pulled out the junky $15 WalMart tree and thought that maybe it was time to replace it. But once all the lights, garland and ornaments are on it, it looks pretty good. You can see Michael's custom robot stocking that I made for him last year, and our tree skirt that doesn't actually go all the way around because apparently I forgot how to do simple geometry. We even saved the Christmas slug last year and it went up in the window again this year. I love all of our silly Christmas decorations, even our weird, mismatched nativity set. This year Michael added an angel. No manger scene is complete without a Lego Spock angel.

 

 

I also put up the Christmas decorations at work. When I moved over to the big building almost 7 years ago, I found lots of strange stuff thrown in the darkroom. There was a fluorescent pink little kid's BMX bike, a ceramic jack-o-lantern, about 15 ancient computers and monitors, and a box of Christmas decorations among other non-biology lab related things. So I started using the Christmas decorations. There was a little tiny table top tree with lights that blink amazingly slow and funny Styrofoam decorations, lots of fake plastic holly candle rings that I think someone was using as wreaths, little rocks painted like christmassy animals, and two of those old fuzzy felt stockings from the 80's that have Santa screen printed on them. I used to tape the stockings to the fume hood like it was a chimney, but I don't do that any more. Now I just put the little tree on top of my balance with the rock animals sleeping underneath it. A couple years back a work-study student made a star for the top of the tree with a piece of construction paper and a wooden applicator. Everyone that comes into my lab loves the silly little tree and asks who painted the rock animals. Christmas time in the lab is fun.

 

The John Wright Gingerbread House

 

I just couldn't wait any longer, I made my gingerbread house this weekend! A couple years ago I got the John Wright gingerbread house cast iron mold for Christmas. One side of the mold makes a traditional log cabin style house, and the other side makes a Victorian house. But I never got a chance to use it because my cute little mama kept getting me those neato complete kits.

 

This year I finally told her that I want to use my mold. I decided I would make the traditional log cabin style house for my first time using the mold. I went to Dollar Tree and found all kinds of gingerbread house candies and I planned out how to make candy windows with a real light inside. But I ran into all kinds of challenges. In the middle of actually baking the pieces we found that we had a pond in our backyard because the sprinkler system had a major leak (for a couple days). Then, I tried to make candy windows and I completely did it wrong. So the sides of my gingerbread house actually have melted candy all over them. So I piped lots of icing on the walls to cover it. Then when I tried to assemble the house both side walls fell and smooshed my pretty icing job! I finally got the house together and the roof on and I realized that I bought enough candy to make at least 30 more gingerbread houses! Wow, did I learn a lot!

 

But, the house is cute, I really like the roof and the chimney. And you all know how I love a challenge. I can't wait for next year's house. I have lots of gingerbread house type candies in the freezer and now I know how to install candy window panes. :)

 

Here's another picture with the lights on.

 

First Christmas Gift Done!

 

Last night I completed my first Christmas gift for this season! I made a Ruby Doll for my Grandma. Ruby has turned into quite a sensation with the online sewing community. She even has her own Flickr group. In case you haven't heard of Ruby, she's an adorable little soft doll that was offered as a free pattern from the very talented Jhoanna Monte Aranez at One Red Robin.

I love stopping by the Ruby Flickr group every once in a while to see what kind of cute Ruby creations people have made.

My latest Ruby is a Christmas Angel for my Grandma. I added some sequin holly berries with felt leaves, I stitched some beads and sequins on her green shirt to give it some sparkle, and I gave her wings with a little bow-shaped button in the center.