Christmas home tour almost there

Being from Norway my traditions are a little different than most people here. For example my house if I were in Norway would be dressed mostly in purple now to celebrate Advent. Then on the 23rd of December we go all the way and clean our house from top to bottom while finishing all our Christmas baking of 7 kinds of cookies before we decorate our houses for Christmas and decorate the tree in the evening.

Since I came here with only two suitcases four years ago I weren’t able to bring much of my Advent or Christmas decor. My mom has sent me some and I have picked up some on my trips home. Some I have made since I came here and some I have purchased.

I don’t have any Advent decor yet except for my daughters Advent calendar and my Advent star.

I have got my mantel done and all my little snowmen and Santas out on the shelves.

The little Santa in this last picture with a purple bow was the first little Santa I ever made in school when I was 7.

The painted wineglass with a candle between the angel and Mary with Jesus and Joseph  was made by my oldest daughter when she was about 18 months old. She attended a daycare in Norway and this was one of the activities the kids got to do making Christmas presents for their parents. It is precious to me.

Thank you for visiting me.

Linking up to the Shabby Chic Cottage

Family stockings

After Sofie was born last year I knew we I had to do something about our Christmas stocking situation.

We had stockings going in all directions from our mantel. There were my old one that I made when I were in fourth grade which had shrunk in the wash some ten years ago. My husband loved it as it kept it easy for him to fill it….

There were my husbands two that his mom insisted he had to have from his childhood and the one I made for him when we got married. He didn’t even remember the two his mom gave him….

And then there were the one I had made for Isabel when she was born. Hand embroidered by myself, I just never got happy with it. Isabel really didn’t like it either….

I didn’t want to buy any, but I needed it to be easy.

So out of felt, pompoms and rick rack came this….

Christmas trees and poinsettias

Linking up to Craft Envy and the rest of the party at

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Homemade gifts 2010

This year I decided to give only homemade gifts to my family. It is something I strive to do almost every year and fail miserably at.

Having no siblings my cousins became very important to me growing up. I have nine cousins and seven of them receive gifts from me. All together they have eleven children and nine of them receive gifts from my children.

My parents, aunts and uncles count a total of eight people, but only four gifts as only my parents get one gift each and my aunt and uncles get couples gifts.

So all together I needed to make 20 gifts, I almost made it.

So sorry about the quality of my pictures.

Kitchen towels and Potholders

These towels and potholders were a fast project that ended up being my most expensive one, but it is the one that I am the most happy with. The fabric just makes me so happy. I just wish my hubby would let me use all those colors in my kitchen.

For all my cousins.

Post it holder, Clothes pin, Clip board, Drawing box

These Post it holders are so easy and inexpensive to make and I think I all together made about 20 of them. I gave some to my cousins and some to my ladies at my MOPS table, some to my aunts and uncles and one to my dad.

I was able to find post its for only 50 cents a block and each holder ended up costing 1 dollar each.

These clothes pins were so easy to make and on a couple I put magnets for them to be able to hang somewhere and some I left as is so they can stand holding a picture or the likes.

They were quite reasonable priced to make. Altogether about 3 dollar a piece.

These clip boards where a tutorial I found here at Controlling My Chaos.

Only $2 a piece as the clipboards were a Dollarstore find and the paper is only about a dollar.

For the youngest kids I bought the smallest tin boxes I could find and converted them into little drawing boxes. I kept one for my oldest daughter and she loves it. It is so handy to just keep in my bag for those boring times at the doctors office when she has nothing to do.

The paper is just ordinary copy paper that I cut to the right size and what was expensive here is the Crayola Twistables that I bought, but they were just to cool to pass.

For some of my cousins kids.

I didn’t get all the way to 20 as I found it hard to make anything for teenage boys, but that was only four and I am really happy about making it to 16 this year.

Right now I am working on a playhouse for my girls and I hope I will be able to finish it before Christmas.

Thanks for visiting.

Marianne.

Linking up to Tatertots and Jello