Merry Christmas!

Wishing you and your family a very blessed and Merry Christmas!

"Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!" 2 Cor. 9:15

Round-Up of YOUR Fabric Deer!

I have just been blown away by all the beautiful fabric deer I've seen so far! You guys are amazing and so talented!

If you haven't made a deer (or Rudolph) yet, get the free pattern here. I also posted a tutorial here on how to make the deer smaller for decorating a Christmas tree or using somewhere you'd like a mini version. And for inspiration and fabric ideas, visit my facebook page and browse the deer people have posted. Some of them have even let me share their amazing deer with you here!

First up...meet 'John Deere' by Thread Riding Hood. I love the name and the fabric choices are so beautiful! That gold, and the fabric ears are so great! Plus it looks so festive with that wreath. Sherri did such an amazing job!

Arah made this fantastic deer! I am just in love with the bright colors and that frame!! I also love how she mounted the deer head on a piece of wood. Great idea!

Caroline's red and gray deer is so fun! I am completely in love with that heart shaped nose!

This floral patchwork deer by Inez is so pretty! My girls would love to have this one with all the pink!

Janine made a two-toned deer head and I love the contrast it gives. Those gingham antlers are so great too!

Sarah's deer head features this cool striped fabric. I love the effect it gives!

Shelly made a classic deer head that looks amazing! It almost looks real!

Jen made this great version with a huge red pom for a nose. I love the red accents and buttons for the eyes.

And here's one more that Wendy just shared with me. The red fabric is so festive with her other decorations!

Have you made a deer yet? I'd love to see it! You can share it on Instagram (tag @charmingdoodle) or on facebook. Happy sewing!

The Norah Dress Pattern as a Christmas Dress

I'm thrilled to get to tell you about a great new pattern by Mouse House Creations called The Norah Dress and Tunic. The pattern is easy and fast to sew...plus includes tons of options so you can really customize your dress or tunic.

I decided to make the dress version with sleeves and collar for my niece. Amelia turns one in a few short weeks and I, of course, wanted to make her something. My sister-in-law told me she'd love a Christmas dress for Amelia and I thought The Norah Dress would be adorable for the holidays!

The main fabric for the Christmas dress is the same fabric I used for my own Christmas skirt last year (you can see a picture of the bubble skirt I made here). I wanted the part around Amelia's face to be nice and soft so the sleeves and collar are a buttery feeling velour.

There are no buttonholes on this dress. Yippee!! The back is fastened with a simple button and loop. Hayley's tutorial gives great directions on how to put the pieces together and the pattern really is great for beginners as well as advanced sewers.

Be sure to follow Welcome to the Mouse House to stay in the loop with fun new patterns and check out the other bloggers in The Norah Dress pattern tour to see their adorable versions!

Have you made a Christmas dress for your little ones yet? I'd love to see it and hear about it!

Fabric Deer Head for Decoration

Have you downloaded the FREE fabric deer head pattern yet? You can get all the details on it here.

I promised to show you how to make a smaller deer that could be used as decoration on your Christmas tree and today's the day!

Here are the two different versions of the deer that I made:

What you can't tell in these photos is that the deer are completely different sizes. The picture below will put that into perspective. Here is my 4 year old holding both fabric deer.

The Rudolph on the right is the original size and is the size your deer will be if you use the pattern as is. The smaller deer in floral fabric was made by printing the pattern much smaller.

The smaller size is perfect for hanging on a Christmas tree or even attaching to a large gift. I wouldn't recommend making it any smaller than I describe below because it would get really difficult to stuff the antlers correctly.

Here's how to make the smaller version:
After you download the pattern (follow the directions in this post to download it from my facebook page), open the PDF and click Print.

When the print dialog box opens up, select 'Multiple pages per sheet' under Page Scaling.

This is a screen shot of what it will look like. See how there are now two pages on the same paper? It scales the whole pattern down and will let you make a deer less than half the size of the original.

I would LOVE to see what you have made with the deer/Rudolph pattern. Please share your version with me on my facebook page or by emailing, messaging me, or tagging me on Instagram. I will feature some of your creations soon!

Deck the Halls with Fabric

Today I'm over at Sew Mama Sew with a fun post full of ideas on how to 'Deck the Halls' of your house this year! All of the projects are made with some sort of fabric and were ssssooooo fun to curate into one big inspirational post for the Handmade Holidays series.

There are lots of fun giveaways through Handmade Holidays as well so be sure to enter for your chance to win. Also take a peek at all of the fun posts so far this month. I am in the middle of thinking through what kind of Advent Calendars to start in a couple weeks (is it really almost December??) and loved this post with advent calendar ideas. 

My Christmas tree has been up for a few weeks (gasp) and I love putting it up early because we're gone so much in November and December that it feels like there's no time to enjoy it if we put it up later. Have you decorated for Christmas yet? Or do you wait until after Thanksgiving? 

Unique Christmas Cards

Every year I spend quite a bit of time researching new and fun options for Christmas cards. There's certainly nothing wrong with boxed greeting cards from a store, or a classic photo card made locally or at a place like Shutterfly. But I love seeking out unique and different cards. Cards that stand out a little.

I'm SUPER excited for my cards this year and thought I'd share some of my favorites with you in case you still need ideas. And if you already have your cards ordered this year, pin some ideas for next year!

Note: This post contains affiliate links. I like some of these companies' products so much that I happily share the love as an affiliate for them.

Cards printed on WOOD : Did you know you can have your image printed on real wood? It's so unique and amazing! I used Night Owl Paper Goods to print wood cards for Henry's first birthday and am just in awe of how cool these cards are! The wood is very thin and is pretty flexible so it doesn't break in shipping. You can even see the grain of the wood through the image and there are lots of options and colors of wood you can choose.

A Christmas 'minibook': The year our fourth baby was born I really splurged on cards. I created a minibook by Minted. These gorgeous books have tiered pages you can fill with words and photos. I had a page about our whole family, a page about the kids, and a page that was basically Henry's birth announcement. People still ask me about these cards and I sent them 3 years ago!

Foil: Foil is a trend popping up all over this year. The shimmery gold or silver is literally stamped into the card and shines when you look at it. Minted has a selection of foil cards as well as a few other online stores. Even if you don't want to pay the money for real foil stamped cards, you can choose a metallic design from almost any company out there printing cards this year. Huge trend, and with good reason. The shiny metallic is beautiful!

Pop Out Ornaments: A new card style introduced this year is a flat card with a center section that can pop out, turning into an ornament. (It's subtle when the card is put together - can you see the ornament's outline in the photo above?) I don't know that these are very main stream yet, but I expect next year to see lots of places doing these.

Letterpress: A professional photographer's lab called Miller's Lab came out with letterpress cards a couple years ago and I fell in love! Custom letterpress is stunning, but expensive. These designs are pressed in a fixed place and you simply add your image and design to the card. (in the card above, the green chevron design is the pressed part) This is what we did for our card two years ago. Since they were a little on the expensive side, I also did a version of my card printed on simple metallic paper for most of the people on our Christmas card list so we could save the letterpress cards for immediate family. You may need to find a photographer to order them for you, but you won't be disappointed by these cards. They're amazing!


Now drumroll please...here are the cards I have chosen this year...

Spinners:  I am beyond excited to get our cards!! (I'll post pictures of my actual card after I get them.) You can upload four images to the card and friends and family can then spin the wheel to reveal a different photo. How cool is that?? I tried to figure out how to make them myself and save some money. But in the end, even at the pro photographer print labs I use it would have cost me more to print and assemble my own. I only ordered enough of these for immediate family and then designed another card for friends and relatives. But this satisfies my need have something unique since it's one of the most interesting cards I've seen out there in a while.

My cards are on their way and I'll share more about them soon.

I hope you found some new Christmas card ideas. I have several more fun and unique card sources but these are some of my favorites. What are you doing for your card this year?

And Rudolph jumps over the tree

I had fun this year putting up trees in the kids' rooms. It was pretty early (October, actually) and the kids have had fun with their trees and decorations ever since.

The boys have a small tree set on top of a bookcase. Each year Michael's work gives us a new ornament at their Christmas party. It's usually a Santa but sometimes it's a snowman. We put a bunch of those ornaments on the boys' tree, along with some fun stuffed animal ornaments.

The girls have a 6 foot tree with lots of fun decorations. A contemporary furniture store in our area went out of business a while ago and I bought lots of crazy and sparkly ornaments and garlands from them. Pink and sparkly...perfect for the girls.

And Rudolph looks like he's jumping right over their tree. I can't remember where I got this tree-topper and we've never used it before but the kids LOVE it!

Now, if only we could keep their Little People Nativity set in tact. They played with it non-stop for the first few days it was out...but then baby Jesus, all the wise men, and most of the animals went missing. It's kind of difficult to tell the Christmas story without baby Jesus! I hope we find him soon.

Christmas in October??

I was shocked (ok, not quite shocked...but definitely surprised) a few weeks ago to see a Christmas tree displayed in the windows of a store in the mall. Wow - it gets earlier and earlier every year, doesn't it?

I LOVE Christmas. Always have. The decorations, the music, the snow, the food, the gift-giving...all to celebrate the birth of Jesus...love!

Last Saturday I got 4 or 5 Christmas catalogs in the mail from stores like Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, and Garnet Hill. I sat down for a few quiet moments to look through them and it really put me in the mood to do this:

Yep. It's up and SO pretty! I bought this tree from Hobby Lobby last January. It was their last display tree and had a crazy unbelievable price. I had been wanting a taller pre-lit tree forever so I snatched it up. It's perfect for our family room!

I also put a 6 foot tree up in the girl's room and it looks adorable. It's decorated with lots of funky things I've had in my Christmas stash for a couple years but didn't want to use on my 'pretty' tree. And, I put a small 2 or 3 foot tree in the boy's room.

I originally planned to decorate everything which meant putting up all the wreaths, stockings, decorating the stair banisters, etc. BUT...it's a little early for that. So, for now, I have a bare tree downstairs that makes me very happy. I think it will be a few weeks, though, until Michael lets me light up the tree AND open the curtains. He thinks our neighbors or passers-by will think we're crazy for having a tree in the window already.

I also got out some Fall decorations and put our cornucopia out and a few fake pumpkins so that Thanksgiving doesn't go unnoticed. Henry will be quite sad when the foam pumpkin is put away because it's currently his favorite new toy.

When do you start decorating? Any fellow crazy people like me who love to decorate early? Or order Christmas cards in October? (just finished those up too...it's great to check things like that off of the to-do list before the craziness of the holidays sets in)

What Christmas Decorations??

If you have knew me very well "before" the house water-damage-fixing-craziness...you know that one of my favorite things was decorating my house for Christmas. I'm the odd one who owned 4 Christmas trees...bin after bin after bin full of decorations...and anything I could get my hands on that was peppermint-scented!
Last year we were living in our rental house while renovating our house and we didn't set up a single decoration. This year, even though we're back in our house...it's not looking good in the Christmas decorating department.

I sold most of my Christmas stuff when we did a big garage sale earlier this year...and feel like I need to learn how to decorate my 'new' house all over again to make it festive. Personally, the kind of 'decoration' I want hung right now isn't twinkly lights and mistletoe...I'd rather hang doors on the closets and rooms! :)

Nevertheless...the festive atmosphere hit our house for a small time today...craft day with the kids!

And what...you may ask...could this crazy looking bunch make? *

While at my parents' for Thanksgiving I raided my mom's Woman's Day magazine and tore out 4 or 5 pages of wreath-making ideas. The one we made today was the one from the cover and we'll be making several of the others this weekend.

The kids helped unwrap over 3 bags of peppermint candies while I was hastily hot-gluing them onto a wreath form. We love how it turned out!

Fingers crossed I won't find anyone licking it...Isa has her eye on it and I wouldn't put it past her. ;)

Have you made anything fun to decorate your home for Christmas?

*Please excuse the odd-looking dining room. It's still a work in progress. Our new dining table gets delivered next week (YAY!), and I have lots of curtains and chair covers to make so we can finally stop using ugly green shower curtain liners as our curtains. :) Soon I'll post more pics of the room since it's been greatly neglected on this blog so far.

Christmas

It's hard to believe Christmas has already come and gone! We had fun at my parent's house and even got to spend some extra time there because of the threats of a big snowstorm. I'm still working on pictures of our week but thought I'd post a few that I've already gotten to play with a little.
My big gift (to myself...from my husband) was a new camera lens! Love, love, LOVE it! Here are a couple of the first pictures I took with it. You can see how amazing it can make lights look on a Christmas tree and how narrowly it can focus in these pictures.

Having some fun with Isa while she was sleeping away. :)

Here are a few random pics. The left-most is Emma adding her thumbprint to a 'Family Tree' that I found on etsy. In the middle is Elliott opening one of his gifts. In the background you'll see the 'beautiful' Green Bay Packer lawn ornament my brothers gave to my dad. The third picture was taken in the middle of a few minutes of frustration trying to get the kids to all sit together for a picture.

My parents gave Emerald and Elliott adorable little rocking chairs. Emma loves climbing and we caught this sweet little moment with her relaxing on the chair while everyone opened gifts around her.

I roped Andrew into letting me take some pictures of him playing his guitar. The kids loved listening to him play...but I think they were more fascinated when they had a few minutes alone with the guitar to get into trouble!

We got to spend some fun time with Nana and Grandpa. Here is Isa with her great grandparents.

My grandparents' place isn't exactly kid-proof so we have to watch the kids like crazy to make sure they don't get into anything. My idea of 'keeping an eye on them' was to follow with a camera and I caught some cute moments with Emma.

Hopefully I'll find more time soon to finish the rest of the pictures so I can post them. Hope you had a Merry Christmas too!