Christmas Adventures

Merry Christmas

Christmas adventures this year started with finding the perfect Christmas tree!

Keeping up with tradition, we ventured out to Pine Tree Barn on Sunday and found the one. This is Nicky's first Christmas and Marlee's third (third? Is that even possible?) adventure cutting down a tree. With our ever growing family, we had the pickle of figuring out how to transport all the kiddos to the tree and back - with the tree. We backpacked Nicky and Marlee half walked, half was carried. Isaac was a huge help as usual with pulling the tree. The weather was perfect and we enjoyed every minute of finding the tree, cutting it down, hauling it back, and then, of course, having hot chocolate at the end.

Marlee was a bit of a grump (how dare we make her walk! worse parents ever!) but was all smiles once she got her hot chocolate. Now I know to get hot chocolate first...

After Pine Tree Barn, we put the tree up and decorated the house. After a bit of a Christmas stand debacle (bigger tree = bigger tree stand), we got the tree up and put on the decorations. Marlee loved helping with the lights and wanted more, more, more ornaments. My mother gave me the Disney ornaments that I remember so fondly from my childhood and I was able to put those up with Marlee too. I even ordered Minnie from the collection off Ebay because you can't have Mickey without Minnie! Nicky surprisingly did really good with the tree too. He grabs at the ornaments but then quickly moves on to the next ornament without taking any down. It really made me smile to see the tree bring my kiddos so much joy. Might have even filled me with Christmas spirit.

Maybe. 

Presents are almost wrapped and stocking are hung! Now we are just counting down till Christmas.

Don't tell but I am pretty excited for Christmas morning. The kids are going to love it. 

8 more days!

Craft Time

The combination of my obsession with Pinterest and the upcoming arrival of Marlee has brought out the crafty size of me, which to be honest, I did not know even existed before a couple years ago. I am the least artsy person I know but Pinterest makes everything look easy. My latest project has literally taken me 4 months. I originally bought 2 yards of fabric and only completed two rows of flowers. So then I procrastinated for a couple months, finally bought more fabric, and was short AGAIN. I procrastinated some more and realized Marlee was going to arrive before her lamp was complete. I went to Joann's for one last fabric purchase and can finally say it is finished! And I am quite happy with the way it turned out.

Fabric Flower Lamp Shade

The original Pin of this from the wonderful blog of Simply Ciani. Her lamp shade is definitely Shabby Chic, as she states, while mine is more on the shabby side BUT I was very proud of my lamp and received a ton of complements on it back when it looked like this:

This lamp shade was really easy to do, once you got the hang of wrapping the fabric. If you are a perfectionist, this is not the craft for you. My 'flowers' are all different in shape and size and style - not on purpose - but because they just turned out that way. If you are in a hurry, this is not the craft for you either. Even without all the delays in the fabric, this took many hours of my time. It does look great in Marlee's room though and I always feel proud when I finish a project.

I started with a plain lamp shade and base which I bought at Lowe's for 15$ - on sale of course.

The fabric I went with was a costume chiffon shear because I liked the color and it was easy to wrap around my finger. I was also able to pull it apart easy and it made kind of a rough edge which I liked. I purchased a total of 8 yards of fabric (4 light pink and 4 platinum grey).

I cut the fabric into 1 inch - 1 1/2 inch pieces and then tore them into strips.

Pile of strips of fabric

I wrapped each strip of fabric around my finger till a 'flower' was formed.

Tada!

 I used my handy dandy hot glue gun to glue the end of the fabric together and then placed a nice size glob of glue on the lamp shade.

Then pressed the flower in place and held for a second until the glue was dry.

One flower at a time and it was finally coming together!

You can tell that my flowers continued to get bigger by the bottom of my lamp shade. I was tired of wrapping and gluing so bigger flowers = more coverage!

Wrap. Wrap. Wrap. Glue. Glue. Glue.

(All those little strings are from the fabric. I just cut them all off at the end.)

And finally, I was finished!

 Proudly on display on her dresser.

I have a feeling this will probably be the last craft I will be completing before Marlee Jo arrives so at least I finished with a bang. Two more weeks till maternity leave!