Happy New Year!

I hope that everyone has enjoyed a relaxing and fun filled festive break.

My Festive holidays have been all about relaxing with family, catching up with friends, eating (far too much) fine food, watching Christmas telly (Christmas would not be complete without Mary Poppins and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!) and pottering away at some crafty projects.

We enjoyed a happy family New Years dinner yesterday, and now today its time to think about packing away the decorations for another year.

The family are headed off tommorrow for a small holiday to Glasgow, its over a year since we last had a break, with both of us running the shop it doesn't give much of a chance to get away. We are not opening again until the 10th so we've grabbed this opportunity for a last minute jaunt to our favourite city to enjoy a week of city living.....cinema viewing, deli snacks, science centre and museum visits, cafe lunches, sale shopping and the essential visit to IKEA!

I am not one for long lists of new year resolutions, but I hope the year ahead will include some more time for crafting, blogging, photo taking and most importantly will be filled with laughter, smiles and happiness. I wish all of these things to you all aswell :)

Christmas Crafting

We've been busy at the Gallery for the last few days preparing for our Yule Exhibition, and in the shop we've been getting out all the lovely new Festive stock so Christmas has really been on my mind this week.....we've even ordered our tree!

Then I noticed that it was sign up time for the 5th Annual Holiday Ornament Swap and I happily realised lots of other crafty people were starting to get ready for Christmas. Once I'd signed up I started searching the internet for some holiday crafts inspiration and found Kidspot's very extensive list of Christmas Craft Ideas, lots and lots to make.

Be quick and sign up for the Holiday Ornament Swap too, you've only got till Friday 5th November to do it !

What I Made for the Boy(s)

Well I had great intentions of being very productive as far as making boy clothes this month but not much of it acually happened. The month sped past, most of it seemed to be very snowy and a whole week of no nursery due to the weather cut short my crafting time.

These new trousers for Alfie were the only thing I managed to make, based on Dana at Made's Knee pad pants (without the knee pads!), they were upcycled from an old T-shirt and I think they look pretty smart. They were started and finished in under an hour, I think I will be making a lot more of these.

I will be carrying on my boy related crafting into March and beyond because the Celebrate The Boy month gave me so many ideas. Have a look at the flickr group to see what everybody made.

Boy Stuff

No posting in months and now two in two days....I'm doing good eh?

I bet you didn't expect another post so soon, I didn't think I'd post so soon again either but as the Mam of now 2 boys, I am constantly surrounded by sewing patterns for lovely girly dresses and tops and skirts ands other cute filly accessories and frustratingly few patterns for boys ( or very few I'd ever want to make for them anyway) and it seems I'm not alone.

Made and Made by Rae blog are hosting a special Celebrate The Boy Month with daily patterns and ideas for boys stuff...hurrah, how exciting. I especially like 90minute T-shirt Pattern on Made today and modelled by such a cute little boy too, I am definately going to make this one, sometime when I have a spare hour or so......

Click the About A Boy link on my sidebar to find out more.