12.19.2008

More Stockings

Here are all the stockings I made (except for two which my roommate decorated)


All of the initial stockings for my roommates and my roommates girlfriend.


There's were the last I did and I did them a little differently, rather than putting the ribbon trim across the top I decided to embroider them and I'm pretty happy with the results. After finishing all of these I was pretty sad I didn't have any more to make, I kept thinking of snowflake designs that I haven't done yet!

P.S. Sorry the pictures are so small, I pulled them from facebook because my thumb drive has gone into hiding! If I find it though I'll sub out the pictures for higher quality ones.


12.16.2008

Christmas Cookie Extravaganza! (Part II)

Now we have the fun part... THE DECORATING!!! Along with a number of sprinkles and small gel frosting, I made two glazes, one in green and one in white. Some of the women in my program at school were kind enough to join me for the holiday festivities and it was a wonderful afternoon of cookie eating (and decorating, but also a lot of eating).
Marta and I model some of our cookies. Not to brag, but I'm kind of like an elf when it comes to Christmas (must come with the ears) so I take to cookie decorating like a penguin in the snow. Marta however struggled with her creativity at first, creating what has lovingly been called "the green monster." After a few cookies though everyone was pumping out Martha Stewart worthy masterpieces in cookie form and we were able to pay more attention to the important task of analyzing the subtext of the Christmas movies (this is what grad school is all about people). More baking to come as the season progresses!!
Happy Holidays!

12.14.2008

Christmas Cookie Extravaganza! (Part I)

I threw my Second Annual Christmas Cookie Decorating Party last weekend. As with the first year, I supply the cookies, decorations, cocoa, and claymation Christmas movies, and my guests bring the creativity!
Lucy was the first casualty of the night with a face-full of flour, I think she'll recover though she may never forgive me.
I meant to prep the dough in advance but the night before the party I fell asleep and then woke up in a panic at midnight saying "I MUST MAKE COOKIES!!" Rick as a dutiful boyfriend helped me whip out a couple batches worth of my signature cookies.
Once I had a great assortment cooled and put away it was time for dishes and then back to sleep. More on the decorating party to come...

12.12.2008

Craft Time

I've been feeling the Christmas (and crafty) spirit pretty hard as my semester winds to a close. So I started on a slightly ridiculous project. First I wanted to make Rick a Christmas stocking, then I decided we had to have matching ones, but then I figured what was the point of that if everyone in my apartment didn't have one so that they could all hang up together. And here we see the end result. Four hand-stitched and embroidered Christmas stockings. All were made while either participating in Christmas decorating or watching Christmas movies and it was pretty fun!
Just some red, green, and white felt, silver, gold and white embroidery thread, ribbon, and seed pearls, for something I'm pretty darn proud of. It took a while for my hand stitching skills to come back, but luckily even though Rick's was first it still looks okay.

Lucy was surprisingly not terribly unhelpful, after a few times chasing my embroidery thread (and who can really blame her) she decided to nap on my supplies to keep them from running away.

The seed pearl work on the tree got to be pretty tedious at the end, but it's all the details that make it special, which is what I told myself every time I dropped a bead or stabbed my finger (after cursing silently).

Rick's (like mine) is stuffed. I'm not sure if you can see it in the picture but I filled the parts with scrap felt so he's a puffy little snowman! This project can be made more kid friendly if you use glue instead of sewing, after fixing the pieces on just let them sit till the glue fully dries (or if you're nervous about your stitching you can use glue to reinforce it).
Happy Holidays!

12.10.2008

Season's Greetings!

So in the spirit of the holiday season, and in keeping with my goal to work more on documenting my many adventures in the kitchen at home, I bring you Gingerbread Houses! A seasonal favorite, we take the making of gingerbread houses very seriously in my family. For a good hour there was very little discussion as everyone bowed their head over their given task. Working
with pre-made kits we all set about creating our part of the gingerbread village. Above is my mom's, let's just say it's a house of ill repute where the women of negotiable affection work. Next we see my sister's grocery store... a very cheeky grocery store. Also note that she is the only one who thought outside the box and did a house that did not follow the prescribed formula. Hooray Ali for being an individual while the rest of us were sheep.

The inside of the grocery store. I feel like using the candy to represent fruit and vegetables is somehow related to the fact that the Cookie Monster is now the produce monster and sings "cookie is a sometimes food." What is our nation coming to?

Of course, as a Library Science student, I made sure that our confectionery village was supplied with books. No one likes an illiterate gingerbread man.

The whole little village. Now we'll just have to sprinkle powdered sugar for snow and create some paths and ice rinks, also make some trees.

Happy Holidays!