Trimming the Tree...

We brought home our tree last night and stayed up late drinking cocoa and eggnog and decorating it.  I forget how exciting that is for children.  It's so beautiful experiencing it all over again with them.  Though, I am paying for that late night today though with a couple of cranky boys.  Ah well, we'll chock it up to making Christmas memories. 

Christmas decorating is forever a work in progress at our house.  Crafting our decorations is half the fun!  We like simple and handmade. We have very few stored decorations actually.  Most of it is made from natural materials and composted when we're done with it.  Things like pine greenery and pine cones are brought inside.  Last year we dipped pine cones in beeswax and made a garland.  This year we hung them on the Christmas tree. 

I bought a straw wreath base to make a Christmas wreath for our door this year.  Months ago I found burlap ribbon for 50% off and snapped it up.  Wrapping it was so easy. I added some pretty fabric lace ribbon too. I found pine cones outside to hot glue to the base.  Easy and beautiful.  It made me want to paint our anemic looking door to show it off.  Perhaps brick red?

Our sweet baby Jesus, the center of it all.  Click, here, for that tutorial.

  
I also found this wool for 50% off.  I want to make a garland for our dining room.  Beeswax pine cones and more toadstool ornaments maybe?  I never need much of an excuse to make toadstools or play with beeswax.

I have to make another plug for this beautiful little book.  We finished Mary's Little Donkey last night.  A special night to end it on, after decorating our tree.  If you're looking for ways to keep the spirit and meaning of Christmas at the forefront of thought with your kids, this is a great one.  There is one illustration per chapter and they are lovely, lovely pictures.  I adore this book.  I think reading it will become a Christmas time tradition for us. 

What are you crafting or reading this Holiday season?

Until next time...

Baby Jesus, Tutorial...

Gosh it's been so long since I've done any crafting for myself!  Now that my shop is slowing down I
can focus on crafting for my family and all the important things like making Christmas cookies!

I've been wanting a special baby Jesus for years. One that fits our nativity stable. Here's a simple baby I came up with.

I began by needle felting the bedding.  I used a rough wool in neutral with speckled blue & orange in it.  Then needle felted white on top of that.  They look like little oval nests.  You can use whatever colors you like of course.  I wanted neutrals and light blue. 

I used the baby pegs I often use for my shop. If you don't have these on hand you could easily use a wooden bead and a bit of stuffing for his body.  Or even needle felt his body. 

I drew eyes on him in pencil.  The blue is a square of cashmere from a re-purposed sweater.  You can use wool felt or whatever you have on hand.  I cut it with pinking shears and then folded it in half to make a triangle. I glued the baby peg in, then glued the first folded layer of cashmere down around baby.  I did this because I wanted as little glue as possible on the top layer of cashmere, so no glue can be seen.  Next I glued the corners of the blanket down.

Here he is all finished. I love the varied textures, he's so soft and snuggled looking.  I will keep him at the center of our table and on Christmas eve we'll add him to our nativity. 

If you use this tutorial please link back here,  I would love to see them. 

Until next time...

Our Advent...

 

I have felt a little crazed this Advent season.  My etsy shop, MamaWestWind, has been buzzing and I have been crafting away, staying up too late & pushing myself perhaps a little too hard.  Ah, but every evening our bed time routine brings me back to peace.  This year we've added a few things to our Advent traditions.  The above paper advent calendar from, A Child's Dream is just beautiful. 

Every evening the boys take turns opening a window.  The drawings are just exquisite.  The boys ooh and ahh over the delicate little pictures.  

The angel descends her star ladder one star every night as we count down the days until Christmas.  

The stable awaits Mary & Joesph. Our little blue advent candle will be lit on Christmas eve.  This year we are reading, "Mary's Little Donkey and the Escape to Egypt", by Gunhild Sehlin.  It's such a beautiful book about Mary & Joesph and their journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem and their escape to Egypt.  This book is truly bringing the story alive for us.  It's told so sweetly from the perspective of Mary's donkey and the animals around them.  Each night both the boys listen intently to one chapter.  For Owen this is a major deal as he usually walks around and leaves to play while we're reading anything long or with few pictures.

 

Mary and Joseph are traveling from our kitchen towards the stable.  Each night they move a little closer.

We made this beeswax nativity last year after seeing it on Small Things blog.  I love, love, love this nativity.  So beautiful and smells so wonderful.  It resides on the nature table.

So what are your favorite Advent traditions?  I would love to hear about them.  

Until next time...

Advent Dolls...

 

Tis' the season for meaningful traditions.  Here's a new one I've added to our celebrations. These little angels & snow children are available in my shop.  They fit perfectly into a holiday ring or advent spiral.  Take 10% off all purchases with coupon code, wintersale13.

I'll be back soon with more about making our advent season meaningful.

Until next time...

Last Minute Christmas Craft...

About a week before Christmas I pulled together this advent wreath.  I had been collecting supplies for awhile and finally made it!  I used an inexpensive straw wreath base and wrapped it with jute.  This takes quite a bit of dedication to say the least.  I put on Pride & Prejudice one night and while swooning over Mr. Darcy patiently covered the wreath.  It took almost the length of the movie. I am out of most of the beeswax sheet colors for candles but still had yellow and I love how the green & yellow look together.  I used Willodel's idea of using bells for the candle holders.  I strung white ribbons and bells from it and it hangs over our table. 

I hot glued the pinecones & the candle holders on.  It's really meant to be decoration, we lit the candles briefly on Christmas eve but had visions of it going poof, (straw & jute, hmmm?) not to mention hot beeswax dripping on us as we eat. Yikes!

It's such a simple thing but I can't describe how happy it makes me to look at it.  Maybe it's because we don't have a dining room, and now the wreath makes me feel like we have a more formal dining space.  It adds loveliness to the room and it gives me a little hope of someday having a beautiful dining room in our own house.  I also love that it could work all through the winter season, from St. Lucia through late winter. 

More last minute Christmas crafts to come. 

Woodland Ornament CRAFT ALONG

This week for the Woodland Ornament Craft Along, Michael and I made Fairy Pine Cone Ornaments from Lucinda of Willodel's tutorial. We used her tutorial as a jumping off point and made our own version.  I had already made these bead heads with eyes and glued with pipe cleaners for another ornament I make for my MamaWestWind shop. So their arms are glued right into the little bead head. 

 

Michael loved Lucinda's gnome capped ornament so he decided to make his own version if it. He blanket stitched the hat so well, I was impressed.  We hadn't sewn in awhile and I thought he would need extra help but before I knew it he was finished. He said "Mama, we need to sew more often.  I could help you with your shop!"

We tried a couple of different types of wings. We needle felted wings for two of the ornaments. Michael chose blue for his. 

He was so proud of his work. The needle felting inspired him and he wanted to felt more and more.  He made a gingerbread man for his brother to play with and started a bunny for his brother's Christmas present.  Too sweet! 

I needle felted the red leaves on the ornament in the back.  The needle felting was a lot of work so for the next two ornaments I cut leaves from green, upcycled wool.

After all of that, I dipped them in beeswax because by then I was a beeswax dipping fool!  I had a bunch of pine cone ornaments that I was dipping and also making beeswax nativity sets for friends.  I think that lovely aroma completely went to my head.  I do not recommend dipping!  The ornaments sleeves, some hands & wing tips were waxed accidentally, hahaha.  If you do want to beeswax them, I would paint the wax on or pour the wax over the pine cone maybe, but be more careful than I was!

Anyway, we love how pudgy & cute they came out. So, four ornaments are finished on my quest to have a handmade woodland tree this year. 

Please craft along with me on my Woodland Ornament Craft along!  I will be selecting Ornaments from my Handmade Christmas Pinterest Board and making them throughout the month of December.  The goal is a beautiful handmade woodland tree.  Follow me & my boy as we craft and please join in and link to your projects! They can be the projects we've selected here or your own.  Either way we would love to see them! 

So next week our project will be, needle felted toadstool ornaments!  Because what's a woodland theme without toadstools!? I'll be using this tutorial at Magic Onions. 

Join me, won't you!? Enter your link below.

Star Ladder Advent

This year we are making our first advent calendar!  Last year we had Mary & Joesph slowly walk about the room until they reached the nature table. This was such fun but I realized we do not have much furniture to accomplish this with.  I do love this tradition though, it really helps us remember the meaning of this season for our family.

This year we will be adding a Star Ladder from the book All Year Round.  There are 23 yellow felt stars glued to this blue ribbon. I really have to find a way to pretty it up, as this bare wall is not doing it for me.

The end of the ribbon will be our nature table where we will have a nativity set up and a candle will be lit on Christmas eve.  Right now we have some mischievous Jack Frost dolls that have taken it over! They will be kicked out or at least moved over.

Today I'm working on the angels who will slowly descend our ribbon.  These are tiny, only about two inches long and made with wool batting & roving.  I've made two because I'm gifting an advent ribbon to a friend and her children.

I'll show you our finished Star Ladder soon.

Please craft along with me on my Woodland Ornament Craft along.  I will be selecting Ornaments from my Handmade Christmas Pinterest Board and making them through out the month of December.  The goal is a beautiful handmade woodland tree.  Follow me as we craft and please join in and link to your projects.  At the end of this week I'll be sharing our Willodel inspired Fairy Pinecone Ornaments.

Until next time...

Woodland Ornament Craft Along!

We have some holiday crafting going on here lately!  Above are some beeswax dipped pine cones.  Mmmm, I love the smell of beeswax.

Which is why I knew I had to make this when I saw it on Small Things, a beeswax nativity set.  It was so fun to make and I even made a set for a friend too. Talk about beautiful and inexpensive! 

It sits on our mantle right next to our birth of Jesus silhouette.  Michael was so excited to see it lit the other night.




We also have some fairy ornaments in the works!  This year I would love to have a handmade, woodland/ fairyland Christmas tree. Please check out my Handmade Christmas Pinterest board.  It is a selection of projects I'd like to accomplish.  A couple of them are ornaments I've made for my MamaWestWind shop but now would love to make for us.  I will only get to a few of the projects I'm sure, so I've intentionally kept this board small and manageable. I love Pinterest but whoa can it get overwhelming.  So, I'm going to make one ornament style per week, at least 3 ornaments each if not more. So, by the week before Christmas I will have at least 12 new woodland/ fairyland ornaments plus a bunch of beeswax dipped pine cones. 

Are you interested in joining me?  Every week I'll blog about the project of the week and then later the finished project. You can follow along with me or select your own favorite projects to do.  By Christmas I should have one lovely handmade tree.  For more handmade ideas visit my King Winter in the Wood board.  (This is the overwhelming Pinterest board!)  I would love to see & hear all about your handmade decor projects, so please leave a link to yours.  We can have ourselves a Holiday Craft Along!

First up are these ornaments from Willodel blog.  She has written an awesome tutorial for them.  Mine will be slightly different.  I'll show you how they've turned out at the end of the week.  Join me, won't you!?

Until next time...

The Winter Book Basket

Our Winter book basket has come out of hiding.  I love putting away seasonal books because when we get them out, it becomes so exciting to see and read them all over again. Here are some of our favorites and even one I don't recommend. 

 

Peter and Lotta's Christmas by Elsa Beskow is a favorite.  I found this last year in our local used book store. I nearly did a flip and screamed out loud when I found it.  We do not live in a Waldorf community. Few that I've met have even heard of Waldorf so I was quite surprised to find this book. Nor have I found an Elsa Beskow book since, and you know I'm looking!  Christmas in Noisy Village is a new favorite of ours though this book is very old.  We found it at a local book swap for free and love it!

The Story of the Snow Children is one of Owen's favorites.  He seems to especially love the Sibylle Von Olfers books we have.  We love the quiet beauty and rhythm of The Tomten & The Tomten and the Fox books.  In my opinion they are must haves! 

The above smaller two books, The Night Before Christmas & The Gingerbread Man are classics and were mine and my brother's books when we were kids. My boys love them as much as I did.  Country Christmas is a book I don't recommend.  Though I love it!  Why you ask? 

Because it's horribly written and the illustrations are bad too but it's a scratch and sniff book!  Remember those!  And it still smells!  My Mom found it for 25 cents.  I love it because I'm quirky that way and how could Christmas be Christmas without a scratch and sniff ham I ask you?  My boys will take it or leave it.

These are some lovely books that tell the Christmas story.  Who is Coming to Our House is told from the point of view of the animals in the stable.  It's a sweet book and perfect for toddlers.  Santa's favorite Story is about Santa telling the woodland animals all about the first Christmas. My favorite line from this book is, "No, no, no" said Santa in a kindly voice, "Christmas hasn't got anything to do with me." Another favorite is This is the Stable.  The words have a beautiful rhythm and the illustrations are so magical.

I love the ethereal wings that just seem to hug the stable. 

There are many other favorites including all of the Jan Brett winter books, especially those about trolls!  We usually find a few Winter books under the tree on Christmas morning.  I hope to find Ollie's Ski Trip by Elsa Beskow and Winter by Gerda Muller.

What are your family's favorite winter books?