An Embroidered Dollhouse Bag, Dolls, and Animals

After much thought and indecision, I decided to embroider a dollhouse bag, dolls, and animals for one of E(2)'s handmade gifts for Christmas this year.  I love to do embroidery, and I really enjoyed this project.  Thankfully, I started a few months in advance because this took forever to make!

Here's the dollhouse.  I attached the fabric to the canvas bag using steam-a-seam.  I then stitched around the edges.  This was NOT easy to do, and I thought my thumbs would fall off after pushing the needle through the layers of canvas, fabric, and steam-a-seam...I really needed a thimble!






I didn't use a pattern for the house...I just totally winged it, and I'm happy with the end result :)







My stitches aren't perfect, but E doesn't mind and neither do I!







I embroidered an E doll, an O doll, and an M doll (their cousin).  Since E loves animals, I embroidered 3 animals to go with the dolls.  I think I'll add a few animals in her Easter basket.  She loves pigs, so I need to find a cute pig pattern.






I purchased the doll and animal patterns from several years ago from...I can't remember.  I'm sure someone knows, so please tell me so I can add a link! 

Yes, Wee Wonderfuls!  Thank you!

My plan for this first week back to blogging (it's SO hard to start back) is to finish up with Christmas posts, and then get back into the routine of posting about our daily activities.  It's going to take me a while to get back into the swing of things, but hopefully I'll catch the blogging bug again soon.

Rudolph Nose Gifts

I put together a bunch of the Rudolph Nose gifts for the girls' cousins and friends, and they are a big hit!  Go to A Little Learning For Two for the cute printable.  Then put the printable, a red balloon, and a glow stick in a ziploc bag.  Done!  This is so simple and so much fun!  Thanks to A Little Learning For Two for this great idea and printable!!!

Thumbprint Rudolph Ornaments

We read 2 Rudolph books as our advent books one day last week, and the girls enjoyed both of them.




After we read our books, the girls and I made several Rudolph ornaments.  These thumbprint Rudolph ornaments were the so easy to make and turned out so cute!



To make these ornaments, I painted the girls' thumbs brown and pressed them onto these small glass ball ornaments.  After they dried, I drew in the antlers, eyes, and nose with sharpie markers.  I wrote the girls' names and the year on the back of the ornaments. 

The idea for this ornament came from here via Pinterest.

Candy Cane Playdough

Homemade playdough makes a wonderful gift, and the girls and I had fun making candy cane playdough for their friends and cousins.  E(2) and I mixed up a batch of vanilla scented playdough while O was at school.  When O(5) got home, we made a batch of peppermint playdough.  We all love playing with the fresh, warm dough. 

I put the jars of candy cane playdough in these gingerbread boxes along with a few cookie cutters.  What a fun and simple Christmas gift!  I hope the girls' friends and cousins love this gift as much as we do!




Here's a link to the post with our basic playdough recipe.  Here's a link to our playdough gift sets from 2010. 

The idea for putting the candy cane playdough in jars with alternating colors came from Pinterest.  However, I can't find the page that it orginated from...sorry about that.

The Land of the Sweets

The girls are just not very interested in our felt gingerbread village, so I decided to call it "The Land of the Sweets" (like in The Nutcracker ballet) and added a couple of our tiny Nutcrackers to it.  They were a little more interested, but I still like playing with it much more than they do :)












Here and here are previous posts about our felt gingerbread village.

An Embroidered Nutcracker Doll

I started working on this embroidered Nutcracker doll for O(5) as soon as she got the letter saying she'd be dancing as a mouse and a cherub in The Nutcracker ballet this year! She did a great job, and we were all so proud of her!




I've wanted to embroider a Nutcracker doll for her ever since last year when she was a cherub in The Nutcracker, but I couldn't find a pattern. This year I realized that I could just make my own pattern!

Last year (after Christmas) I bought this wooden Nutcracker (from Michael's) to give to O this year (she LOVED coloring him!). Before I gave it to her, I copied it on a copy machine. I traced the copy with a red transfer pen and ironed the pattern onto a piece of fabric. Then I got to work! It took many, many, many weeks to finish this little guy, but it was totally worth it (I could only work when O was asleep, so she wouldn't see him!). I usually only use the backstitch when I embroider because it's what I'm comfortable with, but I made myself learn the stem stitch and the split stitch (very easy, but more time consuming than the back stitch) as I was making him.





After I finished the embroidery work, my mom swooped in and finished him for me! THANKS, Mom! (I'm never good at the finishing work, but she is perfect at it!). We used a piece of velvety red fabric from one of my old shirts for the back of the Nutcracker, so that he would be super soft for O to snuggle. After I cut the red fabric, my mom pinned the Nutcracker to it back to back, and she then sewed it using the sewing machine. I stuffed him and closed him using the blind stitch (my first time doing this stitch, and it was easier than I thought it would be!).




Here's a pic of his velvety back.



And here's a close-up of his face.




He's not perfect, but O loves him and that's all that matters!  E(2) is planning to be in The Nutcracker when she is 4, so I guess I'll be making another one of these guys in a couple of years!

Chocolate Covered Pretzels

Making chocolate covered pretzels is a Christmas tradition.  We made these for O and E's dance teacher.

O(5) had fun drizzling the melted chocolate on the pretzels.  E(2) stood in the kitchen helper and observed, but I was afraid to hand her a fork covered with melted chocolate...it would have gone straight into her mouth!




Super simple and fast to make!



Prettily packaged, and we were done!

Paint Your Own Purse and Dolls Gift Set

We went to 3 birthday parties in October, and this was the gift we gave at all of them (I forgot to write about it then, but I thought I should share it now just in case anyone needs Christmas gift ideas).




The wooden purses, dolls, and frame came from Michaels, and the craft supplies came from WM. 

Christmas "I Spy" Ornament

This "I Spy" ornament was fun to make!  I cut the strings off of a set of tiny Christmas ornaments, including a wreath, snowman, red bird, Santa, etc.  After they were stringless, I put them in the plastic ornament and added in the paper confetti strips.  I glued it shut and added a ribbon...done!  (I'll add a list of things to find...eventually)

E(2) immediately started searching for objects!





I'm so happy with how these "I Spy" ornaments turned out!  These are on my handmade gifts list for next year...I'll stock up on the supplies this year after Christmas :)