I wrote this draft a while ago when it September was just starting, and WOW, can you believe it’s almost October now?! WHAT. All the stores are putting out Halloween stuff and getting ready for “the holiday season.” NOOOOO IT’S STILL SUMMER, ISN’T IT? *sigh*
Anyway, September is one of the most birthday-heavy months with our extended family and friends, which is fun! But it means a lot of wrapping gifts. I put together a package for my dear friend Aria‘s birthday a while ago, and since it turned out so pretty, I decided to show you guys! 🙂 Continue reading →
I suppose you could say this is a Christmas haul post, but for some reason I don’t like the sound of “Christmas haul.” I don’t know why, really… I kind of have weird opinions. XD Anyway, I know I have fun looking at other blogger’s posts like this, so I decided to make one myself. 🙂 But it’s not only going to be a “haul” post: I wanted to show you the gifts I made as well as the ones I received. 🙂
Are you ready? Let’s do the former first and the latter later, shall we? Wow, that was fun to say.
~ Giving ~
I guess I’ll go youngest to oldest. For Carmen, my littlest sister, I didn’t exactly make her a gift. She got an American girl doll for Christmas, because to our delight and surprise, Megan won Maddi‘s amazing giveaway which Megan entered specifically with Carmen in mind!! (And yes, Carmen loves the Maryellen doll we chose for her. ♥) So my present to Carmen was letting her use any of my AG doll things she wanted. 🙂
For my brother Jeff, Megan and I picked out this hilarious book at Books-A-Million. XD He’s always a little… hmm, how shall I put it… rowdy with our cats, with the result being they kind of hate him, ( XD ) so Megan and I thought he would get a kick out of this book – and he did:
For my sister Megan, she asked me to make her some clip-art for her blog design “business” since she prefers the computer part to the drawing part. 😉 So I put together this binder for her.
For my brother Logan and my Dad (and actually for my aunt and uncle too), I made some candied pecans using this recipe. Our whole family loves them, and I don’t make them very often, so I like to use them as gifts. They are seriously SO GOOD! And super easy too! I wrapped them up in a decorative paper cone thingy for all of them, but unfortunately I didn’t take a picture of the wrapping. 😦
For Mom, the four older kids gave her a coupon for 4 meals made by us, which she loved because she doesn’t enjoy cooking all that much. XD Annnd I didn’t get a picture of that either. 😦
For my grandparents, my siblings, my two cousins, and I drew them a calendar. Megan, Jeff, and Logan did that last year and they loved it, so we thought we’d do it again with all their grandchildren. 🙂
Cover by me. 🙂January by Jeff.February by Logan.March by my cousin Leisha.April by Megan.May by Carmen. Isn’t it so cute? She’s actually a really good artist for her age.June by my cousin Jianna. I LOVE THIS ONE!July by Logan.August by Yours Truly.September by Leisha. So pretty!October by Megan. I really like this one too!November by me again. This is definitely my favorite of mine.December by Jianna. Wow. Just wow. Everyone was amazed by this – isn’t it gorgeous?! She’s such an artist!
For my two cousins, I made them each little clinging earrings to look like their cats, Trixie and Roxy respectively. 😀
Sorry about the bad picture. 😦 Anyway, this is Trixie…And these are Roxys. 🙂
~ Receiving ~
Now for the “haul” part! 😀
My parents gave me an amazing Windsor and Newton watercolor set, Pentel waterbrushes, and Arches watercolor paper! I’m sooo excited to use it all! I’ve used the watercolor set and brushes just a tiny bit so far, and I’m really happy with them. 😀 It’s especially nice to have good quality, fine tip brushes.
I really like this picture for some reason. 🙂 This set is really neat because each little cake of paint is in a removable compartment, so if you run out of one color, you can replace just that instead of the whole set! It also comes with a paintbrush and an expandable palette that you cans store in the container.
My aunt and uncle and cousins gave me this pretty washi tape! ♥
I love the lighting for this picture! My aunt figured out how to get my camera off auto-ISO, and now I can truly be on the Maunual setting! Hooray!
My grandparents gave me this handy camera bag. It’s really neat because the compartments are attached with Velcro, so you can readjust them however you like!
They also gave me… The Keeper of the Lost Cities series! YAYAYAYAY! 😀 (Well actually Megan got half and I got half.) I’ve finished the first three so far, and they’re sooo exciting! Thank you, Clara, for introducing them to us. 🙂
And they gave me this cute little blank journal for Bible journaling. (I wrote the words with my erasable gel pen – more on that later.)
My cousins gave me even more lovely watercolor paper! (The Arches pad is from my parents, and the rest are from my cousins.) It’s so nice to have good watercolor paper to work with. *Happy sigh*
These next two things are from my stocking: One is this pair of cozy Cabin socks. My friend also gave me some fuzzy socks, and I am quite pleased. 😀 I LOVE FUZZY THINGS!
Purple + Fuzzy = ♥ Oh, and the cozy pajamas are from my parents too. 😉
The other is a couple of erasable gel pens I showed you in this post. And guess what? They really do work! It’s pretty amazing. See?
It does leave a little bit of a mark behind if you press down hard. But when you just write with it lightly, it erases almost perfectly!
Phew, that was quite a long post, but I hope you enjoyed it! What was your favorite thing you got for Christmas? I hope you all had a wonderful Christmastime enjoying being with your family and opening gifts and thanking God for the greatest gift of all: Jesus. ♥
***Allison***
P. S. Be watching for my end-of-the-year post! I hope to schedule it for 12:00 tomorrow night. 🙂 I can’t believe it’s almost 2017!!
The kids made this little tree for our mom’s birthday. It wasn’t that hard (well, we made it ourselves!) and it turned out great! I put together a little tutorial for you guys. 🙂
Pick your pallet. We have a huge pile of pallets behind one of our barns, so we had plenty of options. You don’t want the boards to be too far apart or it looks odd. This is the one we chose: (*Shudder* I know these next few pictures are terrible quality, but I can only say that the lighting in Dad’s shop is also rather terrible. XD )
Draw the line. We simply set a board on the pallet at the angle we wanted, and traced a line with a pencil. You might want to use a carpenter’s pencil or Sharpie so you can see the line better. You can measure and all that boring stuff if you want to be more precise, but we just traced. 😉
Cut it out. We – meaning my brothers – used a Sawzall to cut along the lines. This was definitely the trickiest part of the process, and my brother accidentally broke one of the branches when he stepped on it. O.o (We fixed it by first tracing the broken pieces onto an extra pallet board, then cutting it out, and then screwing it back to the tree’s “trunk”.) Make sure to saw the boards at the right angle so you don’t hit the back boards while you’re cutting the top ones.
Trim it up. You’ll have to cut or break off the back boards so they don’t stick out in front. We did this by a combination of cutting them off with a Sawzall and whacking them off with a hammer. (Be as careful as possible, though – don’t want to break any limbs (human or tree)! XD ) Lookin’ good!
Sand it smooth. We didn’t actually sand it completely smooth because we wanted it to have a rustic look, but it’s a good idea to at least sand the sawed off edges a bit.
Secure the branches. Some of the pallet boards were a little loose after all that, so we put in a few extra screws to secure them.
Paint it. Yay, now for the fun part! We painted ours all green, but you could also do red and green stripes, or leave stripes of raw pallet wood for a more rustic look.
Bring on the lights. This is optional, but we strung some pretty Christmas lights on it to make it more interesting. We used white, but you could also use colored lights.
Display it proudly. Ta-daa! You’re finished! You may want to stop at that, but on the other hand I think it would look neat to make a forest of trees in different sizes and colors. So fun!
I hope that wasn’t too confusing. Anyway, do you like how it turned out? I think it’s pretty cute! You can click here to see my sister’s post which has a bunch more pictures of us making the tree. Thank you, brothers, for doing a lot of the hard work for us. 😀 ♥
Merry Almost-Christmas! (HOW CAN IT BE SO CLOSE ALREADY?!)
Since the holiday season coming up (SO SOON, right?!), I decided to make a gift guide, just for fun. 🙂 I wanted this to be more of a creative, unique gift guide, not just your ordinary bath bombs and bracelets, you know? I organized each section into related gifts – so you can give a book lover the whole package or just pick a few things. Also, you can click on each picture to go to its listing for more information. Are you ready?
Bath & Beauty
A pretty bar of soap is nice, but not very unique, right? Enter Soap Rocks! These beautiful gem-like soaps would make a great small gift or stocking-stuffer.
This is not your run-of-the-mill necklace: how cute is the real-live succulent pendant? Yep, there’s an actual plant growing in there!
Clinging earrings are so fun – and adorable too! You can also break out the polymer clay and DIY them if you want.
Books
Instead of just giving them a book, get creative and pair the book(s) on their wishlist with these fun add-ons:
A funny-but-true “Book Dragon” mug + their favorite hot drink (a package of coffee, a sampler of tea, or a hot chocolate mix)
And a super-fuzzy blanket for maximum coziness while reading.
If they love books but don’t know what to read next, here are a few suggestions: (search for them on Amazon)
The Mysterious Benedict Society Series by Trenton Lee Stewart – one of my favorite series! Four kids embark on a mysterious mission to save the world that involves tricky riddles, quirky characters, and lots of suspense! (That was a lousy summary – trust me, you just need to read the books. XD )
Keeper of the Lost Cities Series by Shannon Messenger – now I have to say that so far I’ve only read the first book, but I really enjoyed it! At the age of five Sophie Foster discovers she can hear other people’s thoughts, and she has no idea why. One day she meets a boy who explains everything – and from then on Sophie’s life is turned upside down. She uncovers bits of her surprising past and works hard to save the future while struggling to keep up in a world that is in many ways the opposite of her own – a land populated with elves, where magic is as real as the danger that threatens them all.
The Green Ember by S. D. Smith – I’ve heard great things about this book, and I really want to read it! I haven’t read it yet, so I don’t know in depth what it’s about (other than rabbits and adventure), but the Amazon listing and reviews should give you an idea. 😉
Photography
Camera strap scarves come in myriads of designs. Shop around for one that fits her style!
Or you could buy an actual camera! Isn’t this little guy a cutie? Just a note: make sure to add some compatible film to your gift so she can actually use it. 😉
Check out these cute photography tote bags to hold all the photo goodies! (There are a bunch of other designs on this site as well.)
Crafts
The listing says this sweet little sheep is a great needle felting kit for beginners. Is she not the cutest thing? ♥ I just want to squeeze her!
I absolutely love creating fairy gardens! There are so many great kits to choose from, but here is just one cute one I found. It’s also a lot of fun to put together your own fairy garden kit – craft stores such as Hobby Lobby and Michaels have adorable miniatures, dried moss, and pretty containers to pick out.
Art
This book is filled with super creative (and often hilarious) art prompts that will get you moving as well as drawing! There is tons of inspiration on Pinterest for this type of journal as well.
Coloring books are all the rage, and why not? It’s both relaxing and satisfying to work on. But chances are, if she likes coloring, she already has an adult coloring book (or two or three), so a coloring calendar is a fun alternate option. She can create art throughout the year while making something beautiful to hang on her wall.
Writing
This writing journal is great for busting that writer’s block. It’s chock full of creative writing prompts, from funny to thought-provoking.
Pair the writing prompt journal with these amazing erasable gel pens! Yep, you can actually erase the pen marks!
That was a lot of fun to put together, and I hope it gave you some ideas! Which of these things do you like the most?
***Allison***
P. S. As you’ve probably noticed by now, I changed my blog design! I got a new theme and drew the new header. Do you like it? I have plans for the sidebar and pages as well. 😀
Anyway, do you like how it turned out? I think it’s pretty cute! You can click 
Allison Marie 