Still Holding On!

This is one of the times of the year that I dread the most! There is something sad to me every year about taking down all of the Christmas decorations. I will miss the sights, the smells, and the sounds of the holiday. But, perhaps, I will most miss all of the memories and togetherness that Christmas evokes. I am always sad to see treasured decorations get boxed up for another year but maybe more so for this holiday. I guess it may have something to do with the fact that we are also saying good-bye to another year...although this has been a rough one for our family and many of our friends and, quite honestly, I am more than ready to hop into the new year!

In any case, as I was looking around today, I remembered a few things I wanted to memorialize. I guess by now, anyone who reads this blog knows that I love all holidays and crafts. Many of my family seem to have inherited that gene and I am always thrilled when hand made gifts show up for any occasion. We didn't get to as many hand made things as we had wanted this year, but here are a few.

When her eyes were better, my mom was the queen of crocheting and knitting and all of our family were beneficiaries for almost every holiday. A hand made gift would come in some form or another. As her eyes and fingers began to get worse, small ( or large ) doillies were usually the gift of choice. We all have so many - and we treasure them - but how many doillies can one home possibly display at one time. Couple that with the fact that my mom can no longer do any shopping but still wants to give gifts and I am hard pressed every holiday to come up with something meaningful that could really still be from her. I always try to use something from her things that are stored at my house and this year I was at a loss when I saw an idea in MS Living. They used doillies purchased from e-bay so how lucky were we to have own own stash conveniently on hand!? They glittered them in various metallic colors and ran them up the middle of a table. My initial intent had been to make 3 for each recipient. I decided to start with an antique gold color that I actually mixed using MS yellow gold, silver and rose quartz. It is pretty and mixes well with any of those colors and all of the mercury glass we are all using these days.

As with all MS designs, what may sound like child's play, usually isn't. This project starts off with stiffening with starch. I had to do each one, on each side, about 3 times. Then you spray with adhesive. I had an old shower curtain liner so I put it out on the floor and did one doilly in the middle at a time. Let me just say "over spray" - even in the middle of a shower curtain. My feet stuck to my wooden floors many, many feet away. The glitter disappears like socks in the dryer! You pour it on and try to shake off and it is gone-and not necessarily covering the doilly. When you finally get it covered, you let it dry and then spray with hair spray. I know the idea is to set the glitter, but if you could see my skin, hair, floors and table tops, you would know that that idea isn't fool proof. I will say, that when I looked back on the original picture, I don't think MS totally covered her doillies in glitter. Perhaps just the hint of glitter. Of course, it took me many, many bottles of expensive glitter before that thought hit me. I am sure by the time we store these away and bring them out again next year, that will be a lot less glitter on the doillies and a lot more on everything they were stored next to! In any case, everyone loved them and they will be another remembrance of my mom for many years to come.

My oldest grand daughter has always been crafty. And why not? I have had her hands in glue and glitter ever since she could sit up. She always comes up with unique and meaningful gifts and this year was no exception! My husband, I think like most men, is not easy to shop for. He has recently been tauting "his" new strawberry smoothie. He is making one every morning for breakfast and very proud of the fact that he has it so precise now that his concoction perfectly fills an old 22 oz. Gator cup-a remnant from a long ago drink at a football game. Hannah decided his recipe ws worthy of a finer vessel so she made him his own, personalized smoothie cup. He is thrilled! He loves it and I am happy to have a much prettier cup in the midst of all of the mess left in the sink after he is finished every morning.

Hannah knows how much I love my family pictures so she made me a personalized clock this year. The photo face is wonderful but the message around the side says it all..."don't count every hour in the day; make every hour in the day count!"

I'm not very proud of it, but the only other holiday craft I completed this year was for my sons-in-law. They're reindeer beer bottles. They were all over the blogs this season and just struck me as funny. Still have all of my other wonderful ideas on my Pinterest Christmas board-maybe next year!!! For now, I am going to milk every last bit of the holiday out of the next two days. I will admit to already looking at old Valentine blogs from last Valentine's Day and I'm sure I will be pulling down the Rubbermaid containers before too long. I used to decorate for winter in the first part of January but didn't leave that up long enough to make it worth my while. Now, I go straight from Christmas to Valentines. If you are ready to do the same, stay tuned!