While Jacque is a great dog, and we love having him in our house, he has been a bit of a desctructo of late. To date he has managed to rip, mangle or destroy:

• Two pillows
• A section of two of my antique quilts
• One of the rails of Gunne Bear’s new train set
• One of G Bear’s monster slippers

Needless to say I have been repairing, sewing and ordering replacements nearly daily since he arrived.

One of the pillows he destroyed was part of a set that I hadn’t cared for that much. They were generic blue stripes that fit into the apartment that we bought them for, but not so much the color scheme of the room they’re in in the new house.

So when I was faced with one blue striped pillow, and one ripped-to-pieces pillow, I decided to make new covers for both of them out of some fabric that I had sitting around.

The original pillow:

The fabric:

To make them:

I laid out the pillow on the fabric and cut out four squares that were 1-inch larger in size than the pillow itself.

I serged the edges and sewed together two squares inside out, leaving one side open to make a pouch.

For the pillow that was still intact, I just stuffed the old pillow right inside.

I folded in and top stitched the end shut for this one.

For the second one, I hemmed nearly the whole open end when I stitched the two sides together, leaving only a small opening. I flipped it right side out and stuffed it with the filling from the ripped pillow, then only had to stitch closed the small opening at the bottom. Much easier.

The reason I did it this way, rather than simply making a slip cover for the one that was intact is that I wanted them to match and I couldn’t make a slip cover for one and a full pillow for the other – the difference between them would have driven me batty.

I love, love, love, love, LOVE the way they came out – they match the decor in our downstairs family room much better now – pictures of the whole room to come once I finally finish decorating in there.

This post is linked to delicateCONSTRUCTION, Fingerprints on the Fridge and Home is Where My Story Begins

Of course all this Christmas crafting is going to rub off on the G Bear. He heard me say something about making an ornament, and wanted to get involved, too.

This super-cute wreath ornament takes only a few minutes to make and is toddler friendly, if any of you have toddlers or kids who want to get in on the Christmas craftiness this year.

To start you’ll need:

• Red and green beads – we used snowflake and spoke shape for texture
• 20 gauge memory wire
• A pipe cleaner
• Candy canes and corn chips for snacking on are optional, but we did find them helpful

To make the ornament:
Bend the end of a piece of wire into a small  loop so the beads don’t slide off the end. Cut the wire down to the size you want your ornament to ultimately be. We went small, because my toddler does not have the longest attention span in the world, but you can go as large as you want.

Begin threading the green and red beads onto the wire. I held the wire still while Gunne put the beads on. He was able to do it himself, but he liked the idea of us doing it ” ‘gether”.

Keep threading the beads, mixing up the colors and shapes until you fill nearly the whole wire. Leave about an inch or so at the end.

Take the loose piece of wire and push it through the loop you made at the beginning. Pull it tight to make a circle, then back off just a hair to give yourself room to place the bow.

Twist the pipe cleaner into a bow and use the last little bit of loose wire on the wreath to anchor it into place.

Finally, hang it on your happy Christmas tree and enjoy!

This post has been a part of iPhone Photo Phun.

Christmas crafting is taking over my life. No really; I mean it. I’m starting to troll other blogs and Pinterest for ideas or inspiration so I can keep on crafting.

So when I saw that KLZ had started another Antler Up linky, it was like a gauntlet had been thrown down. I need to not only don antlers, I needed to MAKE THE ANTLERS.

Two colors of Fimo clay, two barrettes, some yarn and a cheap dollar store headband later, I had these:

I mean, no one’s ever really SEEN Santa’s reindeer have they? So it is entirely possible that their antlers are really red and green candy stripes.

And that they only have three prongs each so they don’t get too heavy on their heads. Just sayin’. I mean, they do have to fly, you know. Heavy antlers might weigh them down.

I mean, reindeer food contains GLITTER, so it totally stands to reason that mine might very well be the most realistic antlers out there. Seriously.

Or, maybe, just possibly, my Christmas Crafting addiction is going just a hair too far. Or, something along those lines.

Last year in a fit of Christmas craftiness, I made a gumdrop wreath to hang on our door. I spent hours gluing on gumdrops, working out the colors so they would appear random, yet balanced and sprayed the whole thing with an entire can of fixative so I could re-hang it again this year.

So I’m sure you can imagine my glee when I got out the Christmas decorations from our store room this year and discovered that mice had been eating my wreath. Apparently fixative may prevent the gumdrops from getting moldy or going bad, but it doesn’t stop mice when they’re particularly hungry.

My first thought was, “I’ll just have to make it AGAIN, dammit!”, but on second thought, I realized that perhaps it was time to make a non-edible wreath for the holidays. I really don’t want to keep re-making the damn things year after year, after all.

Cruising around Pintrest and several blogs, I finally got my inspiration for a new wreath. Yarn wreaths are apparently all the rage right about now, and I loved the idea:

• Pretty
• Customizable
• Non-edible

Perfect!

The only thing I wasn’t too wild about on the ones I had seen was how smooth they looked. For some reason this bothered me, not enough that I was put off from making one, but enough that I kept brainstorming ways to give mine some texture. I finally lucked into an idea when I visited the local dollar store last week.

There, on the shelf and marked down to 50 cents were wicker wreaths. Right next to them was some dark green yarn, also 50 cents. Perfect!

My new wreath cost one dollar and the wicker gives a really nice undulated effect to the wreath that solves my texture issue.

I made the nest and eggs out of some scraps and Fimo that I had lying around (funny aside: I discovered only after I made them and put them in the wreath that the eggs are made out of glow-in-the-dark clay. They look sort of disembodied and spooky in the dark) and the bird I used to have on my desk way back in the day. I cut the branches off the tree in my yard, and the whole thing looks so much better – and is so much cheaper – than the gumdrop wreath was.

Not to mention the fact that it isn’t edible.

Of course, now I sort of feel like I may have thrown down a challenge to the mice in my store room. I sincerely hope that this time next year I don’t discover that they’ve developed a taste for yarn and glow-in-the-dark clay.

About a week ago, I was suddenly struck with an overwhelming desire to start making beaded snowflakes. I have no idea where it came from, but I had to make them. I think I made about 20 in total, most are being sold at Self Awakening in Salem, but I kept back a few of my favorites to hang from the ceiling fan in our living room.

As soon as I was finished with them (OK, I’m not really finished. In fact, I’m making miniature ones to make into necklaces right now. It’s a sickness, I swear it. I cannot.Stop.Making.Them) I turned my attention to some other holiday crafts that I had been toying with the idea of making for the house.

First were the stuffed Christmas trees.

These took all of five minutes to make, so I moved on to yarn Christmas trees.

These also took like no time at all to complete, so I began another project (yes I am trying to keep busy just now, why do you ask?)

These photos were taken this morning; I’m still working on these prints. The photos show them about half done. I’ve actually added to them since photographing, but I’m too damn lazy to take any more photos just now, because I realize that I will probably be working on them for a few more days.

We have some potentially amazing things happening this weekend that will hopefully occupy me soon, but until then, my house is going to be completely decked out for the holidays long before they even arrive.

This post has been part of iPhone Photo Phun, despite the fact that I took them with my Motorola Defy.

It took a long time to feel a bond with my baby. The initial distance that sprung up around us when PPD/PPA settled in took weeks to finally evaporate and allow me to come to love my boy.

Because of the rocky start that we had, and the exhaustion that all new mothers feel, I have few clear memories of his first days of life. I rarely try to remember them, either, because I can’t say I’m proud of them.

Cleaning out a closet 9 months after my son’s birth, I found a plastic bag stuffed into the back. Perplexed, I pulled it out to find the tiny knit hat the hospital had given my son his first night. The nurses knew I was having a tough time, and the baby had to spend some time under warming lights away from me. They offered me what they called a “special hat” for him. That hat was the first thing that made me happy following my son’s birth.

About three hours after they gave us the hat, it was time for us to change his diaper ourselves for the first time. Inexperienced as we were, we failed to position him well and he managed to pee on his own head. On the hat.

After coming home, I tossed it in the laundry. Since it was June and hot, the heavy hat got resigned to the closet and forgotten about.

9 months later, when I found the hat I felt a huge rush of love for my son. For the sleepy newborn he had been. For the nurses who tried to make me smile after the trauma of our first night together.

I hadn’t done anything to commemorate his first days with us, because at the time I didn’t feel anything but numb. Finding the hat made me ache for those first days that I stumbled through, not know that I would ever love my boy this much.

As I sat holding the tiny hat in my hands, I knew I had to do something to heal myself for those first days. Otherwise, I would always regret them.

The hat lives on our mantle now, along with other reminders of his first days. I look at it often, and it finally feels right.

**This is my extremely late (and first) entry for Red Writing Hood – Found.**

I’ve written before about Gunne Bear’s sleep sack addiction. Since the time of that writing, things only got worse, but in a subtle way that actually left me a bit confused.

He still insisted on sleeping in a sleep sack of some kind, even on the hottest nights of the year last summer when the outside temperature would hover in the 90s and our un-air conditioned home wasn’t much better.

And he still sucked on the corners of the sacks themselves, but he seemed less interested in dragging them all over the house with him. So I figured he was outgrowing his addiction and with a little time, all would be well.

Fast forward to winter. As hot as our poorly insulated house got last summer, it has been just as cold this winter. I had taken to layering a cotton sack inside a fleece one for him to sleep in, in the hopes of keeping him warm enough at night. The problem was that he had outgrown the cotton one; I would up splitting it open at the bottom like a dress so his feet could move. This left part of his body not quite as warm.

So he began to wake up and cry because he was cold, and I began to tiptoe into his room at night to put a fleece blanket over him once he was asleep. Why couldn’t I do it when he was first put to bed? Because when I would go in there, he would be asleep folded in half. As if he had been sitting up right and suddenly bent at the waist to sleep with his face on his feet. Odd, I thought, but didn’t give it much thought.

Clearly we needed a new solution, so I bought him a new, heavy duty sleep sack.

This thing could withstand being slept in in the snow, and it has two sizes, so it can grow with him to age three. Perfect! Except that the first night I put it on him, he lost it. Sobbed like his poor little heart was breaking into a million pieces. We wound up with him in our bed that night, trying to console him. It was really rough.

The next night, I put him in the new sleep sack and handed him his old one to hold in desperation. At first he pushed it away; he had never held it before, why start now? But I insisted and after a few minutes of rocking and songs, I noticed that he was holding onto it tightly with both hands.

He began to sleep with it at night, and crisis averted. So we thought.

After about two days, he began dragging it with him everywhere like a blankey. Which is fine, expect that it had a zipper that was getting caught on everything and it kept tripping him with its arm and neck holes. So he’d be running along, step in an arm hole and pitch forward straight into it, getting tangled. A little like this:

Clearly, this was not working, either. I needed a new solution. One that would allow him to have his lovey, but not the bodily injuries it was incurring.

So one day after he woke up from his nap, I quietly stole it and his old cotton one and brought them downstairs. I cut off the arm and neck holes and removed the zipper from the fleece one. This created a triangular shaped hole in the fleece sack. I cut an identically sized triangle from the cotton sack and sewed it into the fleece.

I then top stitched the top closed and voila! Instant lovey!

He loves his lovey. It goes everywhere now and we have finally solved the problems of waking at night to cry about being cold, or about being alone without his beloved fleece sack. The making of a lovey was long and hard, but evidently worth it in the end.