little birds handmade

a small world

Look! My presents are finished, wrapped, and under the tree!

Well, not really, but I did get the doll house presents wrapped and a tree skirt made. The presents are Legos wrapped in magazine clippings. This is the extent of the work that I've done on the doll house, and, while I have a few other bitty things planned, it will have to be presented as a work in progress on Sunday.  I'm looking forward to a year of tiny crafting.

Look at this treasure Mia can hang in her house. An itty-bitty cuckoo clock! It came all the way from France via Eireann. Isn't it great?

We've had a lot of bumps in the holiday road this week. Miles is still quite sick, and I had to take my mom to the emergency room last night (She's okay!! She has cellulitis which can happen easily to someone like her who has had surgery for breast cancer. She's a real trooper.) I'm letting some things go and simplifying others. It will all get done.

I have the auction site for the Kim family just about ready to go. We'll launch the site tomorrow and reveal the list of participating artists. The auction will begin January 3rd with an opportunity to bid for the five following days.

See you tomorrow!

rescheduled

 Another gift. These oven mitts are really easy and fun to make. I just make mine up as I go along, but I know that Denyse Schmidt's book has an oven mitt pattern if you'd like to give it a go.

I have a guest post over at Kiddley in honor of Santa Lucia Day. Mia was up really early today with her crown on, ready to serve everybody breakfast. Unfortunately, I was up really late with Miles whose fever was so high that he was hallucinating (frightening!...he's much better today, thank goodness), and I didn't have it in me to get up and make saffron buns.  We decided to reschedule Santa Lucia for the solstice. Someone's ready...

addictions and obsessions

Another button wreath. They're addictive. A couple people have asked where I get all my buttons. Mine all came from estate and yard sales or thrift stores. I've been collecting them off and on for ten years.

A work in progress:

A dollhouse for Mia. I really wanted to build one from one of those fancy kits, and I hope we will one day (or design our own), but this was an inexpensive and quick solution. It's from Joann's crafts, and I bought it with one of those 50% off coupons, so it was really reasonably priced (and already assembled).

The open interior is great for play, too. I hope to paint the exterior and maybe decorate one of the rooms in time for her birthday in a few weeks. The rest of the house we can work on together. I was rather obsessed with miniatures as a child, so this whole project is pretty thrilling for me. Any great miniature/dollhouse crafty links I should know about?

Thanks for looking, listening, and commenting this month. I'm going to take a little breather, but I'll be back next week sometime. Happy December!

button wreath

A little button wreath inspired by pixiegenne. To make mine I hot-glued buttons (I have so many red ones!) to a cardboard donut shape backed with some decorative paper. Speaking of donuts, this is the prize for my mini compound word project winner.

If I post tomorrow, I will have met my goal of posting everyday since November 5th. Despite the fact that it's been a super busy month for our family, I've enjoyed taking a moment (okay, several moments) everyday to post. It really never felt like a drag; it felt very natural :). That said, I'll probably be taking a bit of a blogging break the next week or so.

I really love Alicia's post today. I could say a lot about this subject, but not nearly as eloquently as Alicia, so I'll just say, "Amen".

cupcakes ahoy

the (goodie) bags are packed...

... and as long as no one else gets the stomach flu Mia was up with all last night (miraculous recovery today as usual) or the cold/fever I've had the last few days, then we're in good shape for tomorrow's party...

spotted

A quick freezer paper stencil on a linen cover I made for one of those long body pillows. It was meant to be a little grouping of pebbles, but looks a bit like leopard spots, no?