Itty Bitty Clothes

Once again this is not my creation.  I am not this talented and do not have enough time to tackle a project like this.

You are not going to believe these clothes.  Seriously, I had seen a set of them before and was still shocked.  If you are not sitting down, sit.

My mother in law, Mari, gave this doll to my four your old Ella.

 By itself not that big of a deal right?  You'll recognize it as a Cabbage Patch Doll.

But along with it, came these:

 Hand made outfits.  I've seen children who don't have clothes this nice.  Seriously, clothes that you buy in the store are not finished this well.  

The edges are finished, the insides are lined.

Check out this one, this was everyone's favorite:

 

Yes, she actually made that.  By hand.  Even the boots.  Can you believe those boots.  The grownups in the room took the doll away from Ella to play with it and dress it up.

We couldn't get enough of those boots.  

I'm wondering if she can make them in a women's size 8?

By the way, Ella has as an imaginary friend named Maisa Daisa, so that's what is printed on the dolls Birth Certificate.  Here is Maisa Daisa dressed up for bed.

 She even has matching slippers to keep her feeties warm!

Here are a few other outfits:

Check out the guess logo on the back of the pants!

Number One Room Mom!

This actually isn't one of my creations, but is such a cute idea, I definitely plan on stealing borrowing the concept.   

I love being able to help out in my kids classes at school.  Especially since each one of my kids has an awesome teacher.

Riley's teacher Mrs O. is incredible!  We just love her.   She also happened to be his 5th grade teacher and she and the entire class moved up to 6th grade together.  Did I mention she was teacher of the year in our district last year?  She is such a fun teacher but firm at the same time. 

About two weeks before Christmas, I stuck my head into her classroom for some reason, and she said she had a gift for me, but just couldn't hold on to it until Christmas.  And she gave me this cute little thing:

Is this not the cutest little gift ever?  The red thing is a actually a pot holder/oven mitt.  Inside the pastry bag is sugar cookie mix and of course there is the spatula and some sprinkles.  Tied into the ribbon is a cookie cutter.  Mrs. O. knows that I love to make cookies and I love how personalized this gift is to my taste.   And I feel like I won an award: "#1 Room Mom!" 

I actually did steal, I mean utilize, this idea for my sister for Christmas.  She loves Lemon Bars and asked if I would make her some since she is in town for the holidays this year.  I made her some of course, but I also found a cute yellow mixing bowl, a yellow oven mitt, yellow spatula, yellow measuring cups and a whisk.  I put all the dry ingredients into two disposable pastry bags and included the recipe on a laminated card.  I arranged everything in the bowl and filled the empty space with fresh lemons.  The possibilities really are endless if you would like to make a custom little kitchen gift.

So thanks Mrs O.  We love you!

Our Family Christmas Card

Last year I bought some really cute Christmas cards, stuck photos in them and addressed them all.  All that was needed was a trip to the post office.  

Those cards are still in my office in the basement!

This year, I was really struggling with the whole Christmas Card issue.  My camera broke in November and I didn't have a really cute family picture to use for our cards.  I kept pushing the cards to the bottom of my to do list.  Then one day when blog hopping, I stumbled upon this blog and her cute card that she did last year.   So, I quickly started taking pictures, but had a few little problems.  First of all Chris was out of town on business.  Next I was just using a Nikon Coolpix point and click and was having some issues with color.  (As you can see in Ella's picture)

My final issue, was when Chris got home, we quickly took a picture and I started editing the pictures together.  Only he wasn't holding the white board we all used as a prop very flat, which made adding the picture onto his board a little tricky.  So then I had to take his picture into Illustrator and try and fix it. 

So this was my final product. Marissa's version at Threaded Together is much cleaner but  all in all, I'm pretty happy with it, considering the time frame I had to put it all together and the different circumstances.  I used Adobe CS3 for the editing and just had the cards printed at Walgreens.

The Best Visiting Teacher Ever!!!

In our church we have a program called Visiting Teaching.  Ladies are assigned a Visiting Teacher who checks in on them once a month and share a short spiritual message.  My Visiting Teacher is amazing.  She also happens to be my neighbor.

She is the mom to 13 kids.  She and her husband just celebrated 50 years of marriage.  She bakes the most amazing bread.  We have an auction at our church every year and people outbid each other like crazy to get her bread.  But I get the bread delivered straight to my door, right out of the oven.  And let me tell you...I brag about this a lot!!

Last month, for my birthday, she brought over some beautiful pink carnations for me.   I still needed to return her vase but I didn't want to return it empty.  On a little trip to Michaels I found these branch thingies that were 40% off.  (I have no idea what the proper name for them is)  I also found some ornaments in the clearance bin.  After I cut the branches to the right size, my 4 year old literally put this together!

 

My bad photography doesn't capture this, but the branches have really pretty sparkles on them.  We added a colorful bow and Voila!  A quick and easy little something to add to your Holiday decor. I would advise if making one for yourself, that you maybe add some glass beads to the bottom of the vase to weigh it down a little to counterbalance the height of the branches.  Unfortunately I had to quickly get this out of our house because our Kitty thought this was made especially just for her.  

Sorry kitty, my friend loved and wants to keep it!