Hand-made Christmas Stockings!

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.

I love Christmas stockings. I've already shared mine with you in a previous blog. I think I've also mentioned that I am also a wanna-be crafter. I try, but not much turns out well. Ever hopeful, I never give up. I have many stories about such 'crafts'...from blue pickles, to moldy christmas dough ornaments, and we won't even get into gingerbread houses! Well, maybe I will share the gingerbread house story with you another day in December!

One year I decided to make Christmas stockings for my family. Why should I be the only one with a special stocking? For some reason I had a sewing machine (shocking and that's a whole other story). So off I went to a fabric store (shudder) and found some cute material and trim. I was so excited!

I had no pattern of course; how hard could this be? I just drew the patterns and cut! Easy enough...looked great. Sewed the material and boom, they were finished. All I had to do was decorate with rick rack, buttons and fringe. Three darling stockings. I was so proud.

Then I turned them right-side out to begin the decorating. WHOOPS! I had not allowed the inches necessary to have a nice wide stocking, thus I ended up with stockings that were about 3 inches wide!!!! I didn't buy extra material so I was stuck. I went ahead and decorated them (wish I had a picture now) and they turned out so adorable...except for the width, of course.

Let's just say, no orange ever fit into one of them. We had a lot of laughs because each and every year I put in a banana.

Unique, that's it!

The home-made stockings were adorable and unique!

We can spin anything to a positive!!!!!

Memories

I thought this was the cutest little Mary Engelbreit poster. I downloaded it for my desktop. It brought back a great memory of when my granddaughter, Rachel was two-and-a-half...Leaves were falling rapidly in our yard and I was taking care of her everyday then while her parents worked. I asked her if she wanted to go pick up leaves with me and of course, like any wonderful child, she did! Kids are so helpful when they are small...I'm not sure what happens at age 12. Before we gathered the leaves we pushed them into a big pile and she ran through them playing.

Anyway, I gave her a basket and she began filling it up. I grabbed my camera and took some photos which came out so adorable that I knew we would make a craft with those leaves. So that's what we did. We went and got a few picture frames and glued a variety of leaves on the frame...she dutifully pushed them til the glue 'took.' I had the photographs enlarged and ready to put in the frames a couple of days later. Then we wrapped them up and gave them for Christmas to her mommy and daddy and her other grandparents. I don't know how long those leaves lasted but it was a fun couple of days we shared making something meaningful for those she loved so much.