A New Year's Tradition: Photo Craft

New Year's has totally passed, and I was just too busy to get to the craft that I had been saving for that particular holiday.   Oh well.  Better late than never.

Half way through December, in the midst of the holiday rush, it hit me that I would love to have some photos highlighting the best parts of the year to use as decor.  

But then it struck me that Christmas already has a million decorations ideas, why not use New Year's Day as a reason to look back at all the good times we had during the year?

 "And while I'm at it," I thought, "I'll do last year too (the first year of our marriage) so that eventually we will have New Year's decor that will chronicle our lives together."

 I wanted to do a top 10, but I just couldn't narrow down all the amazingness we've experienced in the past two years.  Too many foreign countries, new friends, weddings, and holidays to fit into just 10 photos.  So I added a few extra. 

 I printed them all in timeless black and white, and wallet size, so that even after 10 years we'll be able to store this decoration in a shoe box.

 And I bought teeny tiny clothes pins to attach them to twine.

 On the back I wrote the date and the event so that when we're 100 and senile we might know what we're looking at.

 And I added an appropriate quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson. "Write it on your heart that each day is the best day of the year."

Then one of my most sarcastic but lovable friends came over... And was inspired to make her own sarcasti-craft.

 Jokes on her:  I actually like it.  

She insisted that I write down the best thing from every day to add to the bowl.  That's too much pressure, but I'll definitely add weekly at least.

 Thanks, Di.

Cozy Crochet Slippers

 I'm on a slippers kick!

Also, I'm amazing with puns.

 Puff-ball ballet flats...  

Pattern here.

And party-button Mary Janes. 

Pattern here.

My craze was all started by this gift of SUPER CUTE and ULTRA COZY slippers from my amazingly crafty friend.  Look at those buttons!  She made those too!

GREAT birthday gift!

Unfortunately, her pattern is knit.  And I'm just not in a knitting mood these days.  So I got on Google to look up some free crochet patterns.  As usual, following the pattern gave me a seriously over-sized slipper.  History:  The first pair of slippers I ever made came out the size of bathmats. This time I was smarter, and tried them on multiple times throughout the process, reducing stitches, and deleting rows when I noticed them being gigantic.  Also, I got better at ripping out rows and starting over, rather than powering through.  That said, my 4th attempt was still WAY TOO BIG (pictured below).

Eventually, the pattern that worked for me was to do everything in HDC instead of DC, and to HDC2TOG all the way around to finish (yellow yarn).  This made an appropriately sized slipper that hugged the foot at the top.

Then I attached the puffs, because I love flair.

Too cute.

The next pair I made was similarly problematic with the sizing.  They fit somewhat snugly around the sides, but they were SUPER long.  To solve my problem this time, I deleted rows 10-13.

 Then I went to my button stash. 

 And decided a plethora was better than just one.

 Cute and cozy!

Now to find a good pattern for Alan...

Beard Beanie 2.0: Now With More Mustache

Remember the first week of this blog?  When I made beard beanies for two of my favorite guys?  Check out the pattern at Week 1: New Beards Eve.

After those first beards, I got some requests for a few more:
One for a creative friend...

 Who turned it backwards to make a "surfer dude beanie,"

And one for a friend in Chicago.

For most of the year, only a handful of friends checked out the pattern, but as the weather turned cooler, this became one of my most frequently read posts, with over 1000 reads.

So this year I updated it...

Merry Mustache Christmas!

Thank you to my gorgeous siblings for modeling the "handlebar beanie" a monster beanie.

I followed this pattern for the mustache, and then added three buttons to the back of it, so it can be removed from the beard. I also used a button on each side of the beard so that the beanie can be worn by its self.  

For the monster beanie I used my top down beanie pattern, and added some teeny tiny bunting for the teeth. 

Merry Christmas Clowns.  Love you both.

Beach Washed Christmas Tree

 Remember the beach washed wall art I made out of left over fence boards? 

Well I absolutely love it. 

 I love looking at it at night when I climb into bed, and being greeted by it when I wake up in the morning. It's one of my favorite crafts of the year.

And guess what?  I had enough wood left over for one. more. thing.

Beach Washed Christmas Tree!

I had 6 pieces of fence wood left over, and 4 fit together decently. (Pay no attention to the fact that the bottom board is a little wider than the rest.  I don't own a saw.) I used a fifth piece, along with some other scrap wood, to screw all the pieces together. 

Then I screwed in some little hooks, and strung some twine through it.  (I've found that twine is the BEST hanging method.)

Then I hammered in a ton of nails to outline the tree...

And strung a crazy amount of twine around the nails. 

A CRAZY amount. 

Beach Washed Christmas Tree, meet our other Christmas tree.  You guys can hang until I find you a more permanent home. 

Week 46: Christmas Cards

Hmmm... I'm doing some math, and realizing that I'm still way behind on my 52 weeks of crafting. Bummer.  AND  I'm struggling with how to post some of the crafts that I am making, because right now, they are all Christmas presents, and they're mostly going to blog followers.  So... looks like I'll complete my goal (duh) but do it retroactively.

My anxiety level tells me that we got a late start on this, but today Alan and I did some DIY Christmas Card photo shoots.  I wont share the ones we ended up using, but I'll show some of the rejects. 

So... our it's-raining-too-hard-to-go-outside idea was supposed to be and artsy version of the tree trimming picture.  Our tree is super tiny, which is perfect for our apartment, but we figured that would be fine. I had a vision of the camera focused on ornaments, with us blurry in the background.  Alan tried a few options...

Christmas balls...

 Adorable reindeer...

 And we trimmed the tree in the background...

Luckily it stopped raining, because we were not impressed with this idea. 

So we strapped our tree and a poinsettia to our bikes, and  took them to the bike bridge we ride across every day and started again. 

Photo shoots with Alan always start with a bunch of test pictures because he's so professional.  They usually end up with me doing something ridiculous in them because... well... I'm a jack ass.

 This is me riding my pretend bike.  Great form. 

Alan mounted the camera to the rail, put it on a ten second delay, and set it to take a million pictures at once. The first few involved us struggling to get going fast enough, and Alan yelling at me to quit blocking him.  (Attention whore.)

Then he crashed into the side of the bridge.  Ha. 

So I gave him some room on the next try...

And ended up out of the shot all together.  Looks like that was his plan all along, doesn't it?

 In this photo, you can see my poinsettia is attempting to commit suicide. It was real windy, and two of the branches blew off right after this shot.

So I used one as a prop in the next photo.  Unfortunately, it looks like I just fell asleep in it. 

I really loved most of the pictures we took, and it was a fun adventure riding around town carrying all of that festivity. Our Christmas cards are ordered, and should be here this week so my anxiety level should drop.  

Phew! Merry December!