Crafty Christmas #2 (The final saga)

Yeah, yeah, it's a bit late for me to still be recapping the events of Christmas. Sue me. (Really, don't. Though we don't have much to be taken from us...a half-renovated home and two vehicles with 130,000 and 230,000 miles. Pretty disappointing, I'd say!) Anyway, here are a few details of some of the other gifts I made for Christmas.

Ceramic tile coasters
I was mainly waiting to post about these because I didn't get to see my bff while I was in Alabama for Christmas, and I made Katie a set of coasters that she didn't get until sometime later in January. I didn't want her to read about her gift before seeing it!!

Using this Tutorial, I made four sets of four coasters. All you need are tiles, scrapbook paper (or napkins, cards, etc), mod podge and a clear acrylic spray that is waterproof. I went to Home Depot and bought 16 ceramic tiles for a whopping $0.16 each! I had mod podge, bought the spray and also gathered some new scrapbook paper that I felt would match the living rooms of three of my friends. I've never seen Katie's current living room, but since she loves purple, I figured going with a purple/lilac theme was a safe bet.

All you do is mod podge the tile, put the paper down, mod podge on top (several coats) then do several coats of the acrylic spray. Again, check out the tutorial, but this was super easy. I've since made more and I actually like cutting the paper to have a border. The tiles are 4.25 inches square, so I found cutting my paper to an easy four inches around allows me to get the cleanest, neatest look.

Tea wreath

In the first Christmas post, I showed pictures of the enormous rag quilt I made for my friend Sarah. Because that was supposed to be her gift for Christmas 2010, I also made her a tea wreath. Sarah lives with three other women, and they are near the women's college so they have a ton of girls at their house all the time. They drink lots of tea, so I thought this was a cute idea to display your tea offerings. This was the Tutorial I used. I cut out a big circle of cardboard to start:

The tutorial says you can glue scrapbook paper to the wreath for this project, but I made a mess with that. Plus, my 12x12 paper wasn't large enough. I half-panicked and looked through my fabric scraps. I found one that would work and plugged in my hot glue gun. The fabric worked so much better and was much easier to glue and stretch around the cardboard. 

I then glued scrapbook paper to the clothespins and glued the clothespins to the wreath. I added some tea and voila!

Oh yeah, I also added the twine to hang it. I glued it in place between two clothespins so it wouldn't move.

Book letters
For two of my friends I decided to cover wooden letters with book pages. One of these women just finished her master's degree in secondary education and wants to teach English, so I figured it would be the perfect thing to hang in her classroom. Here's the Tutorial for those of you who want to give it a shot.

I needed scissors, an old book, a glue gun and a letter, which I bought at Michael's using a coupon.

Rip out book pages and cut them in strips that are close to the width of the part of the letter you are working on. Roll the strip, gluing at the end, then glue the roll to the letter. I hope Buffy and Ashley didn't read too closely...I used pages from a book Andrew and I had to read for premarital counseling. We didn't love it and decided to recycle it into Christmas presents :)

Book art!

Moisturizing hand scrub
For my step-sister-in-law I made this lemony moisturizing hand scrub: Tutorial.

I had olive oil, sugar and Kosher salt, bought lemon extract really cheap at Wal-Mart and grabbed some lemons at the grocery store. Follow the tutorial for amounts, but I decided in the end using a little less olive oil and more lemon extract worked best. If you cook a lot, this helps rid your hands of smells from chopping garlic and onions and keeps them soft and smelling nice! You can keep it in a jar under the sink or in the fridge if you might not use it often. My friend Kristin made some for friends and herself and found it goes pretty quickly though!

I also made an ice cream sundae basket for some friends and sewed an apron for my mother-in-law. You can find the basket on my Pinterest, but basically, package up goodies that can be used to make ice cream sundaes!! Cones, candies and I made a chocolate sauce, too. Just don't include the ice cream...unless you are running by the store on your way to gift your present!

Documenting the belly

I'm terrible at actually taking pictures of how I look pregnant. Mainly because I decided early on I wouldn't take pictures of my belly changing each week and post them on Facebook...totally cool if you wanna do that, it's just not my scene. Because I wasn't taking them to constantly update my "virtual following," I sort of just forgot to do it in general. I do, however, have a few pics from the journey to this point that I will now share with you. Beware, one is of a naked belly. It'll be okay, you can make it through :) On to the fun...

On the left, we have Baby Floyd at 17 weeks. This was taken about midnight after we got home from one of Andrew's company Christmas parties. I wish I had taken a picture the next morning, because my belly wasn't nearly as "pronounced" then. On the right, 28 weeks. I took this last night after I got to my brother's house in Alabama. Quite the difference...meaning, I actually look pregnant now! And yes, I am in maternity clothes. If you check out the timeline page, I finally bought a few things about two weeks ago and have been incorporating them into what I can still wear of my own clothes. 

Now let's look at me at 20ish weeks, Christmas time:

If you know my brother at all, you can probably envision the events/conversation that led up to this moment. His wife is pregnant with my nephew right now, and Jonathan claims he is gaining weight alongside Brandy. To prove this, he would often stick out his stomach and say they were having twins. Before this picture, he was teasing me that he looked more pregnant than I did. I'll let you be the judge; however, if you look at my belly at 17 weeks, then check it out again at 20 or so weeks, it sort of looks bigger at 17! (I told y'all I had a case of a disappearing belly...)

Since I'm in Birmingham right now--technically Homewood at O'Henry's--and I have the time, I'll share a few of the events of yesterday. If you read my Facebook status updates from the airports you probably got part of this, but I had several funny things happen yesterday as I made my way down the East Coast.

1) Security at Bradley in Hartford: the full body scanners were on yesterday, and I didn't even think about it. I personally have no problems with airport security--do what you gotta do to keep my plane from being blown up, I say! And to my defense, there are a TON of things you can't do/have to remember/be cautious about when you're pregnant. It's a little insane. Anywho, the first TSA man asks me if I have anything in my pockets, a belt, etc. I reply, "Nope, they're maternity pants!" I have no idea if he understood this, but they don't even have zippers.

He sends me on to the next guy, who puts his hands out to illustrate his point, right in front of my belly. He says something to the effect of, "Now ma'am, if you don't want to do this because you're pregnant, we can send you right over here." Click! Duh, a full body scanner would probably not be great. I thanked him graciously and went through the older, "maybe you could sneak something through" metal detector. The TSA man on the other side looked at my boarding pass and said, "I'm very glad you didn't go through that scanner." Such nice people in Hartford!

2) Getting my bags from security. As the TSA lady was quietly calling for back-up into her radio, I knew she was looking at my bag. I can't currently reveal the entire story, as it involves gifts for the 14 hostesses of my shower on Sunday, but basically, I had a tiny carry-on suitcase filled with a taped cardboard box, filled with heavy items. I know, this doesn't help much. Check back with me in a couple days and hopefully it'll make more sense! Another TSA lady takes my suitcase, which weighs 20 pounds, over to the table to put that weird swabby thing inside the suitcase. We have a conversation about what is actually in the box, and as she opens it she exclaims, "Well look at you! These are so pretty! You made these? How?" yadda yadda yadda. We then have a conversation about the wonders of Mod Podge and being crafty. I'm glad she was impressed with my presents; let's hope my hostesses are!

3) The winner of the most annoying Delta agent award goes to....the lady behind the counter at my gate! She totally stressed everyone out by repeatedly telling us how to load our carry-on items quickly, begging us to check a carry-on since 142 people on the plane meant not everyone could put bags overhead and constantly counting down the minutes we had left until push-back. Seriously. Shut up and smile! It's not my fault Delta only gives you 40 minutes to turn a plane around. Luckily I found a teeny tiny space for a very nice man to put my hefty carry-on of breakable goodies. I was going to put up a fight if they made me check that bag.

Both flights were a tiny bit bumpy, Baby Floyd was restless through most of them and I didn't follow my husband's instructions and put that suitcase overhead myself for my last flight. I know, I should've said something to someone, but I was trying to be efficient and quick. I got to Birmingham, had a fun dinner with my dear friend Mabes and slept well at my brother's house. Better still....I'm wearing flip flops today!!!