Felt strawberries

I had a lump (benign!) removed from my abdomen a few weeks ago. It was supposed to be simple day surgery but after an overnight stay in hospital, a minor infection and my DD reopening the wound by accidentally jumping on it, what was meant to take a week to recover from has taken three.
So all my big plans for what I would get accomplished in October kinda went out the window but hey at least I have my health and am back on track now :)

The only sewing/craft related thing I had really managed to get into while recovering was a start on these felt strawberries which I found on Lit'l Brown Bird's Passion Blog (there is a free pattern that you can download!). Originally planned on making like five for my kids but then I thought it would be nice to make some for a couple of my kids friends and then I thought "Hey wouldn't it be great if they had like a PUNNET each of felt strawberries to play with and I can box them up and give them to them for Christmas wrapped up like real strawberries..."
So now I have THIRTY freaking felt strawberries cut out and waiting to be sewn up AND embroidered AND stuffed ...and did I mention by hand?

At least being hand sewing I have been able to get through a lot of them while lying on the lounge. Had to reacquaint myself with how to do french knots for the seeds but seeming as I am doing so many of them have decided to change it to a simple running stitch as its heaps faster (for me anyway).
I figure they still look like seeds and the kids probably won't even notice...

Am planning on making up a whole range of felt food for the kidlets but I think next time might be more restrained when it comes to quantity ;)

Craft ideas from Martha

I know I've been living under a rock (or so it would seem) but I have finally gotten around to looking at Martha Stewart's craft site and (to my surprise) there are quite a few projects that I really like!
 I say "to my surprise" in that I never followed any of Martha Stewart's TV shows and none of her books have really appealed to me. To be fair though MOST of the books that I have seen- being public library stock- have been a fair few years (or decades) old and maybe a little outdated... so perhaps something more recently published would be more up my alley? Think I need to do some inter-library loaning :)

Anyway I found the website itself to be incredibly useful and teeming with heaps of crafty ideas that I am keen to add to my forever growing to-do list. It was pretty easy to navigate my way around and from what I can see alot of the projects are from previous years magazines. Some projects have free patterns or templates to download and there is even a holiday clip art craft section with lovely fonts and images to use.

As the kids are starting to understand the concept of celebrations and holidays I have been thinking it would be nice to make them some individual Christmas items this year:

This stocking advent calendar  would  be perfect for small hands (no little doors or bits to break) and reasonably quick to whip up. However unlike the example given I would probably only put up one stocking up at a time- rather than the whole month- to stop them being raided by inquisitive toddlers. 

These Keepsake Stockings are cute and are designed to have an ornament added each year. I have already stocked up on Christmassy type fabrics but given my lack of free time (and ability to be easily distracted lol) a felt option is good to have on hand as a backup...love things that don't need seam finishing!

 This Nutcracker stocking set is lovely as well, but I think I would probably have to wait a year or so until my kids are old enough to understand the story. However I do have a friend who collects nutcrackers (yes Fleur I'm talking about you).

 If (like me) you tend to collect/hoard bits of pretty paper/card /ribbon etc for future use, and storage space is at a premium, then these Recycled Ornaments are a great way of getting rid of old Christmas cards. Like how many daggy reindeer/candles/Santa pictures (with writing on the back of) do you really need anyway?

Also here in Australia Christmas time is summer time and in Perth its usually HOT (35 degrees Celsius at least), so I think these baby bloomers would be great for the twins to run around in. Unfortunately a size isn't given but I don't think they would be super hard to grade up.

Now just to squeeze a few more hours into the week to get it all done!