The "Eyes" Have It!

We recently lost my mom. And, even though she had a wonderfully long, happy and healthy life, it is still hard to say good-bye. My mom always decorated for holidays and this is probably where my love of seasonal decorating was born. I can vividly remember the windows of my first house being FULL of the Halloween die cuts that everyone considers VINTAGE now! Guess that makes me vintage also! As she got older, I'm sure she was wishing that I would stop making so many silly things and dragging them to her house for her, but she was always appreciative and every year, each previous year's goodies would appear as well. I would kid her about it finally being time to "edit"-especially when I saw the Mexican Christmas angel I made oh so many years ago of felt and layers of neon pom-pom fringe for the skirt. What was I thinking?!

In any case, when Mom finally had to give up her house and move to an independent senior living facility, one of the first things I did was make her a changable holiday wreath for her door and cull down her decorations in storage-keeping enough so that her life would still feel like it was going on business as usual-just in a different place. And, the facility decorated for EVERY holiday-even more than I do-so she felt very at home.

When the need came for another move-this time to a nursing facility, things that were familiar to her were even more important and we continued her holiday decor in her room. She got upset that she could no longer shop for gifts for her grand or great grand children so I assured her that I would find a way for the legacy to continue. Since there really was no extra spending money, I set out to make family gifts from some of Mom's own handcrafts.

She loved to crochet and we were all lucky recipients of many, many, many handmade doilies and table runners-not to mention placemats and holiday goodies. Since there are only so many small round doilies any one person can use, I started to take the doilies and use those as jumping off points for family gifts. I have used them for Valentine cone linings, glittered them for Christmas and stiffened them for something else-can't remember what.

I have a few more ideas up my sleeve but nothing else for Halloween and since that was coming up next, I was drawing a blank. Until I once again happened upon my friend Pinterest. Janet Hopkins blog had done a skull with antique button eyes. Since I have my mom's button box, I went rummaging around and found some buttons that would work-not the best but they were my mom's buttons so that makes them special even in their simplicity. Wasn't real sure what to do with the rest of this guy so I just kind of let him lead me and this is what I came up with. Is it the best thing I have ever done? Not by a mile. But, will it hopefully always hold a special place in our hearts and homes because it was the last gift from someone very special? You bet. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't be surprised if special gifts keep popping up for many years to come-as long as I can count on my secret friend Pinterest that is. Stay tuned to see what might be next.