Getting Ready for Saint Nicholas

There was much anticipation as the children pulled out their wooden shoes for the arrival of Saint Nicholas tonight and filled them with carrots and hay for his horse :)

We have spent the last couple of days reading some of our favorite books like the Legend of Saint Nicholas and The Baker's Dozen and of course we had to pull out our Veggie Tale movie of Saint Nicholas as well. It just wouldn't be complete without the veggies *grin*.

I've been sneakily collecting a few special books for their gifts in the morning and this year to make their gifts special I made these little wreaths with holly leaves. I just cut out a cardboard wreath shape and then used my hot glue gun to glue them all around the cardboard circle. Really easy and I think I'm going to make a bunch more for the rest of my christmas gifts :)

 I just love how they turned out and now I'm off to fill their shoes with nuts and other goodies before they wake up because I know they will be up before the first light of morning. There will be no sleeping late for mama tomorrow :)

Hugs,

Rosina

Drawstring Bags, Stamps & Jute

 Every year we participate in a wonderful Waldorf themed holiday stocking stuffer swap with families all around the world and this year was no exception! We made 10 sets of hand carved winter stamps full of acorns, snowflakes, gingerbread men and snowmen to send in little handmade muslin drawstring bags stamped with one of the stamps found inside each bag :)

They turned out even cuter than I had envisioned with their little jute drawstrings *grin*.

 We finally got them all packaged up earlier this week and sent our box of goodies on their way down to the US and in a couple of weeks our box will make its way back to us full of new surprises :) In past years we have received beeswax candles & decorations, aprons with wood burned wooden spoons, playsilks in seasonal colors, gnomes, knitted animals and so many more wonderful things. 

Are you participating in a seasonal swap? I would love to know what you are making :)

Hugs,

Rosina

Mini Heart Bunting Valentine Cards & One For You

Each year the kids and I have fun making valentine cards to give away to friends and family and in addition to this we decided that it would be fun to participate in a valentine card swap this year as well that will provide us with oodles of mail which is just plain fun anytime.

What I hadn't anticipated was making 38 cards! Yes, that was definitely more than I ever could have imagined but creating things with the kids is always fun :)

I love making bunting and my daughter always wants to use my sewing machine so I thought I'd combine the two together and so our little mini heart bunting cards came to life :)

We started by cutting out little rectangles of burlap fabric slightly smaller than the face of our cards and pulled out a few threads from each of the sides to give it a frayed appearance. Then between the two of us we traced over 120 miniature little hearts onto the paper side of some Heat n Bond paper that we would later iron onto an assortment of red fabrics.

With our hearts traced, ironed onto our fabrics, cut out and then permanently affixed to the top of our burlap rectangles in a semi circle formation it was time to get stitching!

Using a nice bright red thread my daughter stitched on the string for our bunting so that it no longer looked like our hearts were just floating all alone finishing the mini heart bunting...

And then she took each of the finished burlap rectangles and stitched each of them to the front side of each of our little note cards. So much more simpler than mucking around with glue and then waiting for everything to dry! Plus getting to use mama's sewing machine is always such a treat :)

I just love how they turned out with their little red stitching from the sewing machine and I was so happy that my daughter had so much fun sewing them. Originally I thought that she would maybe make it through half of the cards we had to make but she just wanted to keep sewing and sewing which actually turned out to be a good thing because we now have extras to share with you!

So if you or your children would like a little surprise Valentine card sent to you in the mail just let me now in the comments below and make sure you leave me a way to get in contact with you for your address :)

The first five commenters will have one personally sent to you by my happy heart stitcher *grin*.

All of the Valentine cards have now been spoken for :)

Hugs,
Rosina