Projects...

This year for Christmas we made a lot of our gifts. It was kind of a lot of work but it also kind of made the gifts a little more meaningful. Now that Christmas is over and all of the gifts have been given away, here are a few pictures of the things we made.

First, Russell refinished this little cabinet for Emily's play kitchen. The cabinet was mine when I was younger and my mom has been wanting me to take it home for Emily for a while now. Russell had to repaint it, fix two new doors, and he even added a shelf inside. As you can tell Emily has already filled it with all of her dishes and food. I also made Emily a little apron she can wear while she is "cooking" us dinner.

Next are a few more gifts we made for Emily. First is an "I Spy" bag. I filled this bag with random little objects and clear beads. Then you search the bag to find the objects. She has fun identifying each of the objects in the bag.

Russell made Emily this memory game out of wood. He cut the wood into 2 inch squares and then stained them. Meanwhile, I scanned a bunch of pictures out of one of Emily's favorite books and sized them to fit on the squares. Afterward, we used Modge Podge to glue and protect the pieces. They turned out good.

Finally I made Emily this cute Black Apple Doll. This doll was actually quite easy to make and I had fun decorating her with shoes, a bow, and lace and buttons for her dress. Emily loves this doll. She carries it around and has named it Baby Apple too. I also made a little blanket to wrap the doll in at bed time.

I finally finished my advent calender! This thing took me over a month to make and because I hand sewed everything, my thumb is permanently callused. I wanted to finish by December 1st but I didn't quite make it. I was able to get the main calender part done though including the tree and the pockets. I had also completed a few ornaments too. So we were at least able to start our countdown to Christmas. Then I made one or two ornaments per day until I was finally finished. My favorite ornament is the Baby Jesus in the middle of the bottom row. I think the calender turned out really cute and Emily loved helping hang the ornaments on the tree each day. I used two different websites to get ideas and construct our calender: inchmark and homemade by jill.

This picture isn't the best at displaying this gift. We had my sister, Terral and her family for Christmas this year so for their family gift I etched their last name on a Pyrex dish and etched each of their names onto glasses so they would have their own personal glass to drink out of. I also etched a little symbol on the glass of things they like to do. Terral is a nurse so I put a stethoscope on hers, Chad is a Radiology Tech so I put a radiation symbol on his, Justin plays the drums so his has a drum and drumsticks, the two girls, Cambree and Chrislyn, have flowers on theirs, and Drew loves cars so his has a little car on it. They loved the gift and thought it was really cool.

I made this car kit for my brother Clint. He drives a Duramax so everything he has or talks about has something to do with his "D-Max." That is why I put a D-Max symbol on the front of his pack. The pack contains everything you would need in the glove box of your vehicle and was pretty simple to make.

Some other gifts we made for Christmas this year didn't get a picture taken before they were given away. We had Russell's sister Traci for Christmas this year. She just got home from her mission a little over a month ago and we thought the perfect gift for her would be to put together a mission scrapbook. With the help of Russell's mom, we collected all of the letters she had written home, all of the pictures she had sent as well as other pictures of her reading her call, going to the MTC, and coming home. I put it all together in a scrapbook and made a fabric cover for the binder so it didn't look so ghetto and we gave it to her on Christmas. She thought it was a great gift and was even starting to cry as she was looking at all of the pictures and remembering all of her experiences on her mission. That made all the work worth it. I am glad she liked it.

I also figured out how to make my blog into a book! So for our parents, Russell and I gave them a copy of our blog in a hard bound book. The book consisted of all of the posts we made in 2009 and later in January or February I will make another book of all of the post made in 2010. I love reading this book because it is like a journal of everything we did during the year along with pictures of us along the way. It was so easy to make too that I am going to continue to make one every year. If you want to make a book too just click on the button on the side of our blog and it will walk you through the steps.

2010 has been a great year and we are looking forward to the big changes in our life in 2011 including buying a house and having a new baby boy.