What I gave for Christmas

Now that most of the Christmas presents have been opened, I can show you all but one thing I made (my side of the family is getting together New Year's Day for our Christmas celebration, so there's one gift I can't share just yet).

For my mom, I made a ripple afghan just like the ones I made for Emily and Abby, only bigger:











Then I made ripple scarves (just five rows of a ripple afghan pattern ... quick and easy!) for my mil (blue and pastels), sil (orange and green) and niece (black and pink):







For my other sil, who lives in Florida so has no need for a scarf, I made some nesting bowls:










I had so much fun making and giving these gifts! Now I'm thinking about some stuff for next Christmas, starting with new Christmas stockings for all 4 of us. I need to start on them now because I know what a bad procrastinator I am ... if I don't start now, I'll find myself this time next year saying I wish I'd made those stockings LOL! So I thought I'd try to make them now and then I can put them away with the Christmas decorations and not have to think about it anymore ... we'll see how that goes ....

My girls' painted ornaments for 2007

I'm lousy when it comes to painting pretty pictures ... I can slather paint all over a page and make a cool background, but to make an actual picture, no way LOL! But my mil is an amazing artist ... she paints designs on ornaments and they sell like hotcakes. And, lucky for us, she started a tradition ... as soon as my girls were old enough to hold a paintbrush (and do more than just stick it in their mouth, of course LOL!), she had them paint an ornament every year at Christmas. And this year was no different ... yesterday, they painted these masterpieces:

The brown bear angel was done by my 9 1/2 yo dd Emily, and the pink bear angel was done by my 5 3/4 yo dd Abby. Aren't they fabulous?! And they are done completely by them with no help from grandma at all ... really! The girls tell her what they want to paint, and then she paints one with them ... she does a step on her ornament, then the girls copy her on their own. It's neat to see the improvement from year to year. Maybe after the holidays I'll take pics of their past years' ornaments as I take them off the tree and post them ... they really are amazing!

A sneak peek under the Christmas tree

I've been spending my free time working on various Christmas gifts, mostly crochet, but also a sewing project or two. While I can't post any pics of the completed gifts yet (definitely don't want to spoil the surprise LOL!), here are pics of some of the things I've been playing with:




















I'll post pics of the completed projects as soon as I can. In the meantime, I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!