my Christmas wreath

feliz navidad!

Christmas bird

I love having an embroidery machine.  It saves me a lot of time and money when I need something done.  Here's a little something I threw together last night in an attempt to make my kitchen a little more Christmasy...

oscar loves Christmas lights!!

peppermint + chocolate = a winning combo!

peppermint and chocolate is one of my favorite flavor combinations.  

peppermint bark is something that I get really excited to make when the holidays roll around.

here's a peek at my first batch of the season...

I usually put my peppermints in a plastic bag and go at them with a hammer, but this time I used the food processor... requires much less effort, but much more cleaning.

bottom layer.

top layer.

tasty!

our first Christmas.

So Thanksgiving came and went and it was a glorious feast... now I need to run 100 miles this week to make up for all the junk I ate.

My brother's mother-in-law gave us an "our first Christmas" ornament this weekend and it was so nice.  I was excited because I wanted to have one to hang on our tree... when I pulled it out of my suitcase to show the mister, it fell off of the hook and shattered.  Sad day!!

So I decided to throw together an ornament for us to have on our tree.  We happened to have some clear balls (ornament balls, sickos!) and some old programs from our wedding.  So I cut up a program (minus the front piece with the birds and the date) and stuffed the ball with the cut up program.

it was a fast project... and sentimental!  Can't beat it!

Oscar loves sewing

he needs to learn how to replace the bobbin.

DIY burlap stockings

too soon???

nahhh.

I decided to hand embroider names on the stockings... 

you know, just to be more difficult and time consuming.

I found a pretty font, printed everybody's name and traced it with a pencil on fabric.

It's not too difficult to make your own template for a stocking.  So I got 3 pieces of card stock, taped them together, drew a big fat stocking and cut. it. out.

hand embroidery time!

using the template, I cute out 8 pieces of burlap and 8 pieces of lining

using pinking shears, I cut squares of the names I embroidered 

I sewed the names on the unfinished stockings, then sewed the stocking together inside out, turned it right side out, put a ribbon on it and...

aw.

aren't we a cute family of stockings!