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Sewing can be such a fun and rewarding hobby.  There are so many great projects that allow you to add a handcrafted element to your home.  And if you prefer a slightly different type of motivation, there are gorgeous fabrics to chose from allowing those handcrafted touches to be custom to your style.

Yet sewing can be an intimidating and time consuming hobby, can’t it?  Between balancing all the aspects of daily life (career, family, etc) I sometimes find myself preferring a nice, simple project that I can finish in a relatively quick amount of time.  One that can be finished without utilizing my seam ripper too many times and allows enough time for all the other to do’s on my lists for a weekend.  A mini-project if you will, that can be fit in during a couple of hours on a Saturday morning.

Coasters are perfect for these little mini-projects.  They are quite simple yet fun to finish.  And you can pick out the perfect color and pattern to compliment your home.  Oh and you also get to work on keeping your top stitching straight!  They can be made with a fabric leftover from an earlier project or you could get a fat quarter, so they are also a very inexpensive project.

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In addition to our boozy gift baskets, we made cute marble magnets for nearly everyone on our gift list this holiday season. In fact, these were so easy and fun to create, we couldn’t stop making them. We packaged them in little cellophane bags and tied them right into the bows on our packages. Now that we’re past the holidays, these would make great little hostess or birthday gifts… dressed up in an Altoid tin, perhaps? Here’s a pile of our magnets before they went into their gift bags:

Supplies: You can find the supplies to make 50 magnets at your local craft store for less than $10. You’ll need glass floral beads and basic magnets (I chose 3/4 inch for the size of my magnets/beads, but other sizes are available), Glass & Bead glue, and a circle punch (the punch is completely optional – if you’re more precise and less lazy than I am when it comes to cutting out tiny circles, skip it!)

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Subtitle: When All Else Fails, Get Your Siblings Drunk!

You remember the extreme limitations imposed upon my family gift-giving this year, don’t you? After trying and failing at a few different ideas for my siblings and their SOs, our highly scientific thought process went something like this:

Without further ado, our Crafty Christmas:

To set the theme, I made booklets for each couple that were printed on cardstock, hole-punched, and tied with holiday ribbon. I forgot to take a photo of the finished products, but here are the jpgs. Read them vertically, and click for a larger version.

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I needed a somewhat fashionable curtain for our bedroom, and wasn’t having an easy time of explaining what I wanted to a seamstress. After trying a few times to find an affordable option in the stores, I gave up and created my own bohemian version (i.e. I didn’t pull out the machine and sew the seams).

Here’s the finished version:

Take your fabric and cut into strips that are about a foot longer in length than they need to be, and in whatever width you desire. I chose varying widths. Thicker widths create more coverage and larger knots, thinner widths create the opposite.

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I love getting Christmas cards in the mail. Photo Christmas cards are my ultimate faves and of course, anything handmade makes me squeal in excitement. So I decided that as long as I can muster up the energy, I will be hand making our cards each year. So far so good. Next year, with a 9 month old? Not so sure it will happen. But for now it’s one of my favorite projects each year.

In 2007, the year of our wedding, I had to use a wedding picture. What newlywed couple wouldn’t love to showcase a photo to family and friends once more? If you are a newlywed I say go for it….even if you think everyone is sick of seeing your wedding pictures, they probably aren’t:)

So I picked one black and white picture, then chose a bunch of fun Christmas printed paper and went to town:

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Not going to lie, this next craft is a labor of love.  It’s a bit time consuming, but it’s a great thing to keep your hands busy on a cold night in front of the fireplace!  These hand-embroidered cards make a great gift for friends (I made them for our holiday swap…hope you enjoy them, Cyd!) , not to mention that they are far cheaper than purchasing them in the store…

Materials needed:
-Kraft paper cards and envelopes (Michaels or other craft store), about $8 total for 20
-Embroidery thread (about $0.49 per color, which will be more than enough to make 10-20 cards)
-Crafting needles (found in sewing aisle)–try to find one that is long-ish and thin, with a big enough head to thread embroidery through
-Whatever you’d like to stamp the envelopes with. I used clear embossing powder to emboss them with a subtle evergreen stamp.

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I might be a little behind in getting on board the glitter house boat (I believe they became re-popularized in 2006 by Martha), but some people still haven’t heard of them so…  Here are two little houses I made.

“These quaint little decorations, known as ‘putz houses’ or ‘putzes’, were found on tables, mantles and under Christmas trees in homes across America for many decades starting around the early 1900’s.” (-LittleGlitterHouses.com). The blue one above as an attempt at a model of my own home.

I think glitter houses are adorable for Christmas and a fun craft project.  You can check out Martha’s instructions and templates here.  The pink, yellow, and green house I made is from LittleGlitterHouses.com.  It’s simpler than Martha’s, so it’s a good one to start with if you want to give this craft project a try.

A few things the tutorials didn’t mention: For the windows, I use red clear cellophane that’s like the stuff you wrap Easter baskets up in.  For the light inside, LED tea lights work perfectly.  If it won’t fit in the house, stick it in the base and make a hole for the flame part to come through.  You could also run a string of twinkle lights across your mantle or wherever you have your houses set up, but I couldn’t bear to see the cord. I’m trying again on my house soon – with lollipop sticks for the porch railing.  Wish me luck!

If you like these but don’t want to get quite as involved, check out Martha’s Train Station kit, available in lots of craft stores (I’ve seen it in Michael’s and AC Moore).

Have you tried these before?  Any tips?

P.S. Bonus – I’ve started blogging about the Baltic cruise Ami and I went on with our husbands over on my travel blog.  Come visit!

My family is a crew of perennial over-gifters. We love giving gifts; in fact, we can’t quite control ourselves. Our Christmas Eve extravaganzas are infamous. Presents begin in neat piles under the tree, but not two feet later are stacked to dizzying heights, toppling over one another, and spreading out half-way across the living room floor. We have a ritual for opening the gifts, too: one at a time, oldest to youngest. It takes hours. There is applause and fanfare after each gift is opened. As I said, it’s a ritual.

source

But 2009 has presented itself as that fateful Christmas that would belie tradition, for reasons of scheduling and economy. First, we’ve moved our usual Christmas Eve extravaganza to Christmas Night so that my niece’s maternal grandparents finally get a chance to host Santa (they’re three hours away). With that being the case, Trevor and I realized how much money we could save by traveling on Christmas morning instead of Christmas Eve, so we jumped on discount airfare. (Christmas Eve all alone with a boy? What ever’ll I do?!) Oh, and did I mention that half of us are looking for jobs or desperately hanging onto the jobs we have? Yep.

So with everything so in flux this year – and our family focus becoming increasingly grandchild-centric anyway – the family matriarch put her holiday-socked foot down and issued a proclamation*. In the spirit of simplifying and treading lightly while Ye Olde Economy is still kicking our butts, no gift can cost more than $10 per person.

What the…?!

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I’ve always been a fan of crafty projects and what better time of year to bust out your inner Martha than with the holiday season? There’s nothing like personalized touches in your home and a lot of times I choose to make our decorations instead of buying them because I love having full control over what we display. Saving money doesn’t hurt, either:)

For instance, both my husband and I grew up in homes that celebrated Christmas with yearly ornaments. That means that every year of our lives, from birth until we were ‘on our own’, is well-represented via ornaments. My mom and mother-in-law gave us all of the yearly ornaments last year and it is SO much fun to go through year by year and relive the memories. This is something I want to do for our family, too, and so beginning with the year of our wedding I’ve made a family ornament to hang on the tree. I just used a picture, some cardboard, glittery glue, some string, and any other little details I can find and voila….a yearly ornament!

2007:

2008:

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I have an obsession with black lampshades:

{Desire to Inspire}

{Elle Decor}

{Decorpad}

I think they add a little drama to a room, and who doesn’t want that?

I had a basic Ikea floor lamp in my living room just begging for some drama so I decided to recover it. Below are step by step instructions.

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