Craftastic

The art of a family Christmas card is definitely just that....art. Especially when there is a toddler involved.

This year I enlisted my sister to take our family portrait. With a quick tutorial on how to use my camera and a change of clothes for the three of us, we loaded up the car and drove to my newly discovered alley. This alley provides a perfect backdrop for portraits featuring the old buildings of downtown Greenwood. Of course, our child who typically sleeps twelve hours a night and takes a one and a half to two hour nap a day decided that this was the day, of all days, that she didn't need her full twelve hours nor her daily nap.

Oh joy. Where is the peace?

Bottom line: Our smiles were forced, our frustrations ran high and there was much pressure. Pressure because apparently the alley I discovered has also been discovered by every other photographer in Greenwood. Yep there were 3 other photographers waiting for any given opportunity to capture their subjects in the alley.

I don't want to spoil the recipients of our Christmas card by sharing the pictures here just yet. But I do have to share one. In case you were wondering where Jim Boggs' Ass was......it just to the right of my head, down the alley.



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Madison is very independent. We often find her off somewhere in the house playing by herself, talking away to her babies, or monkey or no one in particular. She'll play like this for twenty or thirty minutes before she comes to find one of us. After of few minutes of not hearing her I do tip toe around to find her so I can secretly watch her playing.

On Saturday, I knew she was in her room so I grabbed my camera so I could snap a picture of whatever it was she was doing. I tip toed down the hallway and peeked into her room. Apparently I am not so light on my feet nor my toes because right when I went to snap a picture of Madison she looked over and said "Cheese!"

 

I asked her to read to her monkey and she did. So, now I can at least pretend like I sneaked up on her and caught her in a moment.



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I've been obsessed with adding color into our home for the past month. We have a lot of beige and deep red but hardly any of the other gorgeous colors featured on the color wheel. So, my mission has been to add a splash of color to our home. And how am I doing that you ask? I'm making some crafts.

Here, sitting on our fireplace mantel are some glass jars that I painted along with a straw wreath that I covered in yarn and adorned with some colorful felt flowers.



I also decided to recover our dining room chairs with a colorful fabric. For a mere $13 it's like a whole new table.

BEFORE:

 

AFTER:

 

I've also left a few party decorations around. Why? Well, because I spent a lot of time on them and I just like them. They make me happy!





I'm now branching into holiday decorations. Here is a little decoration I whipped up to put our Maddie Cakes in the winter spirit. A little snowman shirt.



Since she was wearing her snowman shirt, I thought that it was only appropriate that we constructed some actual snowman from some foam pieces.





Yeah, some of my ideas aren't so good. This is about as far as we got. Our glue wouldn't stick nor would Madison stop trying to eat the snowman's fuzzy balls that were supposed to be his ear muffs. She kept saying "Tandy!" and would pop one in her mouth. Since Halloween this child has been obsessed with candy. Needless to say I packed up our pieces and we'll just try this craft again some other time.

Well, bye for now.
Love, -K