Just Make Stuff

2016 Favorites...

Loved collecting up all the best bits & pieces of this past year...

Favorite House Project  A small bocce court in our backyard

Favorite Mantle Decorations Even though school started extra early this year

Favorite Scrapbooking A mini book from my 40th birthday trip

Favorite Garden Moment Our first big tomato harvest for the summer

Favorite School Idea Designing cards for student group work

Favorite Hosting But Thanksgiving is always my favorite

Favorite Organizational Project The guest room closet was completely redone

Favorite Planner Project Getting all the cute supplies organized

Favorite Discovery Essential oil foot soaks have been one of the most relaxing things all year

Favorite Gift Wrapping I could make fabric and ribbon tassels all day every day

Favorite Recipe Creamy Tomato Soup

Favorite New Job Definitely one of the bests parts of this year

Favorite Gift Mac's graduation book might be one of the favorite gifts I will ever be able to give

Favorite Moment with Sean Standing in the quiet among the most amazing trees

Favorite Moment with Mac This had the most competition since there have been a lot of favorite moments with Mac this year, but seeing him ride around on a horse like it was no big deal was pretty much the coolest 

Christmas week...

This week will include reading the holiday magazines I didn't quite get to flip through yet, finishing my December Daily-ish book for the year, catching up on two months worth of television we saved on our DVR (today was Hamilton's America, which was awesome) and profuse amounts of vanilla iced tea and/or iced coffee.

Hope you get to relax a little this week too.

Happy Holidays...

Sending along many wishes for peace, love and happiness from our house to yours.

Secret Santa...

Sean always gives gifts to his amazing instructional aide and his co-teacher. I got Mac's college cheer coaches a little something...and his cheer team had a family they were collecting gifts for. The mom said she liked crafting, so I couldn't resist wrapping up a colorful pile of crafty presents for her.

Sean had a Secret Santa at work...and Mac had a Secret Santa at work...so Nora had lots of fun working to make sure they got cute stuff. 

I really, really love wrapping gifts.

Christmas tags...

This year it's mini shipping tags, small alphabet stamps, and gold paperclips...oh and including neon pink as a Christmas color.

Super secret gift tags...

Have I ever told you the story of the great Christmas gift guessing fight? 

Way back in the year 2000, we had our first Christmas in our new house. I bought a skinny 7.5 foot artificial tree from Target for $80, which is down in our living room now as I type this and really should be replaced soon. I also used to be super good at life and have most of my presents purchased and wrapped by Thanksgiving weekend, which meant Sean's gifts were sitting underneath our new tree at our new house. 

Sean's brother had flown in from his sophomore year of college to spend that Thanksgiving weekend with us. Can I just pause there for a second to take in that Sean's brother was in college? Sean was all of 23 years old and I was the super mature 24 year old.

Okay back to the story.

When I wasn't around Sean pointed out the gifts under the tree to his brother and said, "That's my new Playstation and that's the scooter I wanted".

Okay, now Sean sounds 13 years old, not 23. But those were the exact presents he was getting. 

His brother told me Sean's correct guesses later that weekend. Apparently Sean was a legendary (in his own mind) gift guesser and his family had worked for years to try to trick him.

I was ticked about Sean's guessing, but never said anything to him until...

We had a fight about something totally unrelated just a few days before Christmas...because remember how mature we were. At some point during the fight I yelled about him being a pompous ass and guessing exactly what he was getting for Christmas. The look on his face confirmed that although he had guessed correctly, he didn't know for sure and now I had ruined the "surprise". I started crying that I had ruined Christmas. 

Again, with the maturity. 

So, while still sniffling, I decided I just had to make sure he actually did get one surprise gift. I got out the Land's End catalog and called them to order a robe with his initials. I overshared the story of the fight with the person taking my order and they took pity on me, making sure it shipped to get there before Christmas.

And we lived happily ever after. 

So at some point between the great gift guessing fight and today, Sean and I started the tradition of writing little notes and hints on tags to each other. This year I took it a step further and made tags to taunt him with...

"Hey, Sean you'll never guess"

"Sean doesn't know what this is" 

Aaaannnnd yet again with the maturity.

But, speaking of maturity, since the great gift guessing fight sixteen years ago, Sean has never even tried to guess a gift again. 

Christmas cards

So we managed to get through pretty much all of 2016 without one decent photo of the three of us together. Instead of trying to get one at the last minute, I relied on a few favorite photos from the year...graduation, prom, my birthday trip and Montana.

The multi-colored stripe obsession made its way onto this year's cards too. 

It's a little ridiculous how happy I am to mail all of these each year. I have to walk them into the post office and stand there sending each one through the mail slot, off on its way to family and friends. 

Merry Making 2016...

In 2013, 2014, and 2015 I had all this merry making done in the first week of December and now we are close to the third. I have been behind on pretty much everything this year, but thankfully there is still some time left to do a few family holiday activities. 

I am buffalo check obsessed this year, so I used it to make the tags and it turned out some of the wrapping paper (one & two) I had to have went right along.

Here are this year's tags and tracking sheet in case you're behind too.

Every little detail of merry making continues to be one of my favorite traditions and I can't wait for Mac to start tearing into these packages.

They're back...

The elves are at it again this year. Lucretia showed up really late, but she came with eggnog. 

(My brother recommended the brand and said even people who don't like eggnog like this stuff...and he was totally right)

So far Clarence's best trick has been bungee jumping with rubber bands.

I will never consider having elves around without children as something that is normal. No matter its peculiarity, though, it really is pretty fun.

Off in the mail...

This afternoon at the post office (miraculously with no line!) boxes went off on their way to Oregon, Iowa and Oklahoma. These were the gifts that headed towards "where the winds come sweeping down the plains" to my dad and his family. 

I broke out the alphabet stamps again for a couple super simple versions of gift tags this year. Can't wait to get more wrapping done and make a pile under the tree of the gifts that are staying here in California.

Six Sundays...

This Sunday was filled with a level of peace that can only be achieved by knowing there is not school tomorrow. I am so super-duper lucky to have six of these types of Sundays before I go back for the spring semester. 

I worry that I might sound like a teacher who thinks the reason for teaching is the vacation we get, but please know that is not the case. I am actually looking forward to working on the tasks I have on my end-of-semester to do list and had to stop myself from starting on them...figuring that Christmas cards and packages should at least get out the door. 

But no matter how much I love work, knowing that I will not be scrambling to get it all done too late on a Sunday night is an awesome feeling.

favorite Christmas scented candle//free print//frame...and my Grandma's ceramic tree

Papers before paper...

These are the days where I want to be focused on wrapping paper, but instead I have to be grading papers. I finished up my last classes today, so I just have the last big batch of grading before all the holiday crafting can really get started.

Project Life 2016: 05

This little collage of twenty Project Life pages is from the beginning of August until the end of October. At this point, I had 100 pages done for the year with two months left to go. 

A new holiday era...

After eighteen years I decided to spring for new Christmas stockings. I had originally purchased four embroidered stockings from Land's End in 1998...Sean, Nora, McIntosh and Meriwhether. Mine had an angel...which is the last thing I'd ever pick, but they only had four designs and I really liked the other three. 

West Elm provided stockings 2016...along with a 20% discount and free embroidering and free shipping. Hard to beat that. And they were a cute striped wool felt with no angels anywhere (my apologies to people who like angels--you must be a much nicer person than I am). So now we have Sean, Nora, Mac (since he doesn't like McIntosh) and "dogs"...for Shamrock & Paddington. 

The bonus is these stockings hold a lot more. The old ones would seriously hold maybe three little things, so anything bigger than a few inches would be piled on the fireplace. Now there is plenty of room for Santa to stuff my stocking full of craft supplies and chocolate.

'Tis the season

Oh the Christmas crafting I want to do...and the work for school that I have to do. 

No matter what though, I am definitely doing a fifth year of December Daily-ish documenting. My supplies are all ready and I am getting started this weekend.