You gotta love Japan…this is from the official government website (Ministry of the Environment)

 

Visiting Japan last summer was so much fun, but one of the problems we ran into over and over was trash disposal. There are no single trash cans, but stacks of bins for recycling. Which is wonderful, but it was the one time my sister and I really couldn’t figure out the pictograms. I had several days where I got chastised by old Japanese ladies about trying to put something in the wrong bin, and wandered around all day with trash in my pockets.

Point being they are very environmentally conscious. I really would love to print this out to frame…I have a lot of Christmas bags I’ve made through the years to try to cut down on paper waste, but this is a much easier soltion.

We’ve had a busy week…spring break and all. We’ve been learning about quilting this week, so a lot of sewing. We checked out a ton of kids books on quilts from the library, and spent an afternoon looking at all of my old family quilts. Here’s the rundown.

Monday: The husband’s family stopped by for several hours. We had scones and tea.

Tuesday: The husband took the day off to work on the new room we’re adding on. More on that in a latter post.

Wednesday: The girls and I went out to the park, and library and fabric store. I’ll be honest, the park and library were totally a bribe for good behavior at the fabric store.

Thursday: we went to the Valentine Museum here in town with my parents. They have a lot of textiles and we were hoping to see some quilts, but not much in that vein was out. Then over to St John’s church…it’s where Patrick Henry gave his “Liberty or death” speech. That part was sort of a hoot. There were at least 7 guys dressed in colonial garb. They were doing a reenactment of the speech for a reporter from the Pilot & Ledger Star. We skipped the speech, but the girls still liked all the “old fashioned” people.

Uneeda Bisquit sign from near the church. This makes me laugh.	The church
The girls looking at Edgar Allen Poe’s mother’s grave.	The Binary Owl at the 17th street market. The binary addition doesn’t actually add up, but I am probably one of a very few that would care.

We then went by the 17th street market downtown and had afternoon tea and a snack at the Cafe Gutenberg. Little sis loves creme-brulee, and theirs is amazing. Friday:I got to spend the whole day sewing. Little sis turns five this week, so here’s her new dress:

It is from a pattern I made a while back. We’ve adjusted it so it has the exact right amount of twirl.

And as a funny postscript today she asked if we could take creme-brulee into school instead of cupcakes. Hard to say no, but I do not think they’s appreciate the blowtorch.

So, I made it a whole week with no sick days. I know, incredible. We haven’t done that since Halloween. It has come to and end. Big-sis is sick this time. This does not bode well. She doesn’t get sick nearly as often, but when she does…lets just say two Christmases ago she spent a whole week with a fever of 105.

So we did quiet things today. Made cards and read books. The one above are circles punched out of an old Knit Picks catalog. We’re using them as gift tags. These ones below are the ones the one we’re mailing. We’re hoping to get them mailed out by Wed.

By far the fav around here is the Wise Men. In case you can’t read it it says “They did not wear hats, they wore towels”.

Little-Sis woke up this morning insisting that she needed cards for all her “kids” at preschool. She’s just learned to write her name, so I came up with these. Yes, it’s the same art I used for the Doggie Bookplates. Can’t help I, I love these dogs.

These would work as tiny cards for kids, or as gift tags. They’re all in a PDF and can be printed in color or black and white. Enjoy!

I have to say keeping up the advent calendar this week has been crazy. We’ve had a slew of meeting, ranging from PTA to pre-school pageant. It is like every group or organization we are in had to get in a December meeting this week.

I haven’t even finished attaching all the numbers to the calendar. A project leftover from last year. Things done and undone, right?

I try to balance fun stuff with things that relate to the Christmas story. Tonight the girls got star stickers. We talked about who followed a star, and what they were looking for.

Here are some of the other things we have done. Some of them are cards to follow clues to find something, or cards for an activity.

• Make teacher gifts
• birthday candles
• Make cookies with mom
• straw tied in a present- we talked about how it felt, and what kind of bed it would make for a baby
• write Christmas cards
• Then the old fall-back, M&M’s

OK, I admit. I spent all day yesterday hanging out in my jammies. Sat’s debate meet went great, but after 12 hours of running back and forth I was pooped. I didn’t even knit.

This afternoon the girls and I worked on some holiday stuff. Big sis still wants to be the first librarian in space. We used her date stamper to make wrapping paper:

 

I love simple wrapping papers, and this is perfect. It’s red and white, and no mess to clean up.

Handmade Holiday is rolling along. Here’s the updated list of Handmade Holiday folks:

• Billingtons
• Crafty Bits and Bobs
• Kathryn Ivy
• mk carroll
• Rosie
• Tara

Be sure to stop by the flickr group. Amazing!

Tomorrow I’ll add some more ideas of what to make. Right now the husband and I are going to watch Transformers and I am going to rework a yoke on a sweater for little-sis. Every time I start to knit for them they insist on growing!

Oh, and check out the Flickr badge to the right.

Another Wreath-here’s the how-to

Yeah!! Rosie over at www.rosieknits.com just signed up to participate in Handmade Holiday. Check out her blog, lots of snappy things!

Personally I am rolling along on the gifts. I had lots of good knit time on the DC trip this weekend, so I now have a cardigan done for little-sis and half a sock for a family friend. Deep calming breath, it will all get done.

Need an idea for what to make? Here are some smaller projects I’ve come across. Have a good idea for a simple handmade gift? just e-mail me and I’ll add it to the list. (becca (at) handmademom dot com).

• Portfolio from Amy Butler - I think I might make one of these for big-sis. She’s writing a book-a-day right now. This looks like something she would love, and I can make in an evening…perfect combo. Have I mentioned I love her fabrics:

• Knitty’s winter issue always has tons of great quick gift ideas.
• Did you say baby? Here’s a pattern for a knitted baby kimono over at The Complete Fabrication. Too cute.
• For the kids this year we are doing lots of books. I am including a set of my Doggie Bookplates with each one. If I have time I also plan on making a busy bag to hold them….right, time…

I learned this last year at a meeting of my teaching sorority. It is the easiest way to make a homemade fresh wreath that I have ever seen. Even the kids helped a bit.

Materials:

• Artificial Evergreen Wreath (trust me, they’ll never know)

• Lots of cut evergreens.
• (Optional) Dried flowers and seed pods from the garden.

Directions-before making the wreath

• Gather the evergreen cuttings. Start collecting early. Mine is cedar, boxwood and other clippings from the yard. Honestly I have no idea what the variegated stuff is. The cedar we scored down the road. A neighbor was cutting back some shrubs and left it out for trash collection.
• Put the cuttings in a bucket of water until ready to use. Keeps then nice and fresh.

  

Directions-How to make the wreath

• Start by setting up your work area. If working inside put down newspaper.
• Put the wreath form back-side down on your work surface and push apart all the branches. Basically you will be using these branches like pipe cleaners to tie the fresh greens to the form. It is easier to do this if you untangle a bit first.
  
• Cut the fresh evergreen into bundles about 4 to 5 inches long.
  

  

• On mine form there are two rings, one inner and one outer. I started on the outer ring.
• Place the first bundle down and twist two branches around the bundle, about 2 inches from the cut end of the greens.

  

  
  

  

• As you work make sure to lay all the cuttings in one direction, overlapping by about 3 inches. Try to tuck the branches of the artificial wreath behind your cuttings. It fluffs up the wreath, and fills in any gaps, but is otherwise invisible.
• Continue adding bundles until you have gone all the way around the form.

  

• Tuck the cut ends of the last bundle under the end of the first bundle, twist into place.
• For mine I did the outer ring in cedar, then for the inner ring I alternated boxwood and the mystery shrub. I then added dried flowers from the garden-gomphrena, seed heads from garlic chives. You could also use pine cones, seed heads from crepe myrtles, berries, bows, whatever you have on hand.

  

Note: I checked with my garden savvy stepmother-the yellow speckled stuff is Aucuba.

We had a great Thanksgiving. I even survived the in-laws. No small matter, that.

I also had tons of time for crafting. Here’s a sneak peak:

I’ll be posting on a few of these separatly later this week. Today I am home from work today. Big-sis has a nasty stomach bug. Go wash your hands…seriously.

And if you are interested in playing along with the Handmade Holiday Craft-Along, jump right in. Let us know what you’re making for the holidays!

I don’t know about y’all, but I am already getting a bit overwhelmed by the thought of the holidays. I generally try to give as many handmade things as possible. especially this year with toys since what you buy may be poisonous and recalled in a week anyway.

So, to keep my momentum going I decided to host a craft-along to encourage people to give handmade this year.

Handmade Holiday Craft Along

Goals

1. Encourage people to give handmade gifts for the holidays
2. Turn away from the over-commercialization of our holidays (you never really wanted to be a corporate stooge, did you?)
3. Give resources for gift ideas

As we roll throught he holiday season I’ll post gift ideas and links to cool projects. I’ll also publish a list of participating crafters. I’ve set up a Flickr group for folks to share what they are working on.

Rules

1. Make something
2. Give it to someone
3. Show it off

To join e-mail me (becca (at) handmademom.com) or leave a comment.

Here’s a button for you. (Please save to your server).