Christmas doll house pillow

Let's just talk about this pillow. I know I say this all the time, but this might be the cutest thing I've ever made.

It was inspired by inkandbobbin over on Instagram. She makes these adorable little dollhouse-style pillows that she calls Whimsy houses. Most of them are on the uber-girly side of the spectrum, which always bums me out because I want all of these cute things but mostly my boys just want to play with trucks and dinosaurs. I've been toying around in my noodle how to make these more boyish so we could have one around the house without the Hubs throwing up.

But then this amazing thing happened. She started making a limited amount of Christmas ones.

Yes! Christmas is always the answer! It's not girly....it's festive.

And since I can never bring myself to spend money on something I can create myself, I dove in. No pattern or anything. I just winged it.

Most of this fabric came from my stash with the exception  of the framed Christmas characters. They are from my favorite Spoonflower fabric designer and you can order it here. She's not paying me to say that. She doesn't know I exist....yet.

That sounded creepier than it should have.

I fussy-cut the little portraits out and zigzag stitched them to the pillow behind the doors and windows. Then I couldn't stop, so I added them to the roof. And inside of the door. And over the trees.

If I were to make one of these again, I think I'd use fusible web to attach the appliques before I stitched them to give them some more hold. As I stuffed the pillow, some of the stitching pulled apart from the applique pieces, so it looks a bit amateur hour. And I left some raw edges exposed on the door and windows. I was in that "oh my goodness I just need to get this done so I can cross it off my list" mode. 

You now that mode. Don't pretend like you don't.

That pink Christmas tree makes me smile. You know that part of the Charlie Brown Christmas movie where they go to the tree lot and they are all pink and made of aluminum? Charlie Brown is completely disgusted, but I am swooning because PINK TREES!

I could have easily gotten away with a fat quarter of the fabric, but went ahead and got a full yard. You just never know when you're going to need Christmas Portrait fabric, amiright?

Henry liked it more than I thought he would as evidenced by his super cheesy smile. Max LOOOOVES it because his favorite game is peek-a-boo and now he can play it with the pillow. Which means he isn't playing it exclusively with me. Which means I now have time to do things like type out blog posts about pillows. 

Win-win-win.

Clearly the roof had to coordinate with the quilt I made last week. I mean, nothing in the world would make any sense if it didn't.

Oh, and our octopus is now a reindeer. Obviously.

I still have one more Christmas sewing project for the house that I'm hoping to finish this week. If I wait until next week I'll only get to enjoy it for a few days, so I need to get ON IT.

Anyone else crafting up some holiday goodness? Please link up in the comments below. I'd love to see what everyone is working on.

Lastly, if you want a cute pillow house of your very own, mosey on over to inkandbobbin and buy one of hers. They are amazing.

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O Christmas quilt, O Christmas quilt

hallelujah! holy sh*t, where's the tylenol - our holiday home tour

attack of the octopus

sittin' on top of the world

O Christmas quilt, O Christmas quilt

If this picture doesn't make you want to curl up with a quilt, then I'm pretty sure nothing will.

I've had this flannel in my stash for quite some time. I impulse buy plaid things. We all have our vices.

Aaaaaanyway, I finished all of my Christmas gift sewing last week and decided to make a little sumthin' sumthin' for the Lenneys. Something wintery, but not so Christmas specific that it would have to be packed up when the Wise Men hit the road in January.

The construction is simple. 7.5" squares in 4 colors, 12 in each color (I think). White always went with red and grey always went with yellow. It only took me a couple of sessions to make the top, and I was able to quilt the whole thing during a single naptime. It was a Christmas miracle.

The back is super-soft and perfect for snuggling up with a White Russian at the end of a long day. The drink, not the man. My husband isn't Russian.

He did, on an unrelated note, admit to me that he thought the quilt looked like a circus tent. In his defense I had just said "I keep going back and forth between really liking this quilt and thinking it looks like a circus tent." 

I sort of set myself up for that one.

I think it's grown on him, though, because I keep catching him bundled up with it on the couch.

And yes, in case you caught my last post, the tree is back up and vertical, although with FAR fewer ornaments this time around. There's like 19 ornaments on this 9' tree. Most of them plastic. I haven't been able to bring myself to go through the box of what's left and assess the damage. For now, this is just fine with me.

Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season!

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hallelujah! holy sh*t, where's the tylenol

This was supposed to be a cute home tour post to share all of our fun Christmas decorations around our house. A little snapshot of the vintage items we've collected over the years and the stories behind them. As I was editing the final photos, this happened.

Yep. It's as bad as it looks. These are the shattered remains of 31 years of ornaments. Two little boys were found staring at me, mouths gaping, unable to move. I'm not sure which of them gave the tree the fatal push, but down it came.

And this was me:

After removing the boys from he minefield, I ugly cried for about 15 minutes, then put on my big girl shoes and cleaned for an hour.

Sweep / vacuum / cry / sweep / vacuum / cry / sweep / vacuum / cry. Repeat.

I'm obviously devastated at the loss of all of our ornaments. I know they are just material things, and things don't really matter, but as we all know ornaments are delicate little orbs that carry the memories of those that gave them to us, special trips, life milestones. 90% of those are now gone and my heart is heavy.

What remains is a random shoe box amount of ornaments (mostly the ugly ones, because they were at the back of the tree...of course).

Silver lining - both of the ornaments with my babies' teeny tiny hand prints from each of their first Christmases survived. I think God knew I would fall apart if I lost those.

Thankfully I have some wonderful friends who sent words of encouragement. I even had donut and ornament deliveries at my house throughout the day, which did me a world of good.

As my friend Kristin said, we can rebuild! I've always wanted one of those gorgeous color coordinated trees that you see in magazines. Here's my chance.

So I press on. Since all of the photos were edited and ready to go, I'll go ahead and share them. I considered making them into a slide show set to Sarah McLachlan's I Will Remember You, but decided that would be a bit melodramatic, even for me.

Rest in peace, Lenney ornaments.

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takin it easy

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takin it easy

Howdy! As you've probably noticed, blog posts have been sloooooowing down a bit the last couple of weeks. There are 2 reasons for this:

One, we've had a string of dreary days which makes photographing basically impossible. I have several things I want to share with you, but the photos are just plain ugly. I'd rather wait. You would too. Trust me.

Two, it's the holidays. And since this blog is a hobby and not a job, I'm letting myself not feel guilty about taking a little breather to enjoy time with my family, decorate, and make a few more Christmas gifts.

I still have a few things up my sleeves to share with you before 2014 is out, but it will not be in the form of 3 posts a week like you might be used to. Hope that's cool. I've got some cool stuff planned for the first part of 2015 as well - handmade gifts that I can't show you now because it would ruin the surprise on Christmas for a lucky (at least lucky in my opinion) couple of folks.

Hope everyone out there is enjoying the holiday season so far!

Oh, and if you're still thinking about whipping up some handmade gifts in the next couple of weeks, I've linked to some quick and easy ones below. Wouldn't want to leave you high and dry.


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woodland creatures birthday party: the maxwell man turns 1

I'm not sure how it happened, but somehow my baby turned 1. Some sort of time warp, I guess.

Much as I tried to keep things simple and low-key, I friggin LOVE to throw parties. So as the day of the party approached, I kept adding little handmade projects here and there. It's a disease.

Here are all of the sweet little details that made up Max's Woodland Creatures 1st birthday party.