Found in a box...

 I wasn't even really aware I had kept this...

Back in 1991, I made applique'd sweatshirts for the family Christmas card photo...

(It's a good thing you can't see much of mine, it was pretty garish, lol.  I used remnants of a bit of piecing I did of some Christmas prints for another project).  Kids at this time were the Princess and the Artist.

Eight years later,  The Actor, age 5, wore the toy soldier shirt to his grandparents' house... pictured with his brother and two cousins...

A couple of weeks ago, I dug all the way to the bottom of the 'Christmas Shirts' box (which also has seasonal towels and oven mitts and such) and pulled out the toy soldier shirt.  I'd forgotten it was still here.  My Sweet Babboo still has his shirt, although he says it's  too small (hm).  Mine was put into a family reunion auction several years ago; I think the Princess's shirt got hand-me-downed to younger cousins, so I was surprised this shirt was still here.

It just happened to fit the Little Prince this year:

The only thing that these three photos have in common, besides the shirt, is the Artist.  

How fast time flies...

A little bit of the gold glitter paint that crisscrosses the soldier has broken off, but other than that it's held up pretty well.  Mayhap in two or three years Little Brother (and that nickname will change once I hit on the right thing...) will wear it as well.

Maybe I need to make a new batch of candy cane shirts.

They were complicated...I first sewed red ribbons (two different widths!) onto white fabric, then turned that into the candy cane applique's.  I have since found some candy-cane striped fabric, which works, but the ribbon looks so much nicer, lol.  I may even have a few extras in one of my scrap bins...

Yeah, that'd be crazy.  Better to just enjoy the old pictures, lol.

Santa Claus is coming tonight....

 ...at our house, anyway.

We have always done Christmas under our tree at an odd time; when the kids were growing up, it was always New Year's Day.  We were typically at grandparents' on Christmas Day itself, so we just made use of the whole 12 days of Christmas thing and had our traditional Christmas on January 1.  

I thought that would be a good preparation for the inevitable day when we had kids who needed to visit inlaws on Dec. 25; we could do our celebrating later on and it wouldn't feel like we were changing tradition.  Much, anyway.  Now, with kids who live out of state and have to be back to work on January 2, New Year's Day doesn't work for celebrating anymore...they need travel time.  But, no matter, we have almost a whole week to work with; this year we are gathering on the 28th.

And we needed three new stockings this year...two weddings and a new baby meant I needed to get crafting again. I have posted before about making stockings to match the original set we got in 1985, but this year was different because one of the stockings had NOTHING for me to trace/ copy...I was on my own.

And I realized I don't have a moniker for the newest grandson, the Little Prince's Little Brother.  I'm going to have to puzzle on that one for a bit; he's a corker of a kid at 10 months already.  But, meantime, his was the easiest since it was just another Teddy Bear stocking...and I'd already made two of those. 

I was a bit perplexed over the Dancer's stocking...she's The Artist's new wife...but when I took a really good look at his stocking I realized it wasn't going to be any harder to replicate than the teddy bears.  I just tweaked it a little...giving her horse blonde mane and tail and batty eyelashes, lol.

 But the Actor's stocking was the Jolly Old Elf himself...so his Little Redheaded Girl needed a legit Mrs. Claus on her stocking and I was stumped.

I took an applique pattern I'd used before to make stockings for my inlaws and also for My Sweet Babboo and me...Snowman/Snowlady...and adapted the Snowlady pattern but I wasn't happy with it.  I did the other two first while I stewed about Mrs Claus.  Last week, as I was finishing up the blonde rocking horse, The Princess was over looking at my handwork and I lamented to her about my lack of inspiration for the last one.  So she did what I should have done...hit up Pinterest and found a felt applique (for sale, of course, not a pattern).  It was quite different from my snowlady adaptation and I wasn't sure I was up to it, but she sent me the link to the picture just the same.

When I fnally couldn't put it off any longer, I pulled up the pinterest picture and decided it was worth a shot.

I think it turned out looking better than the modified snow lady would have...but it's still far from perfect.  I had problems with the sewing order...the arms  are UNDER the dress bodice but ON TOP OF the apron.  And, yes, I messed it up and had to do a plan B but if I don't tell you what I did you probably can't tell, lol.

It'll do.  If they have any kids, I will find a pattern for applique elves, lol.

So, here are the three stockings I made, pretty much since the first of the month, lol.  Nothing like waiting till the last minute...again...

And I kept the stockings out of storage last year so I could work on them before the last minute...oy, the best laid plans...Then, I had a minor accident with the Actor's stocking and an uncapped marker...sigh.  I managed to get the spot, which is fortunately on the back side, down to a rather large shadowy spot, but I'm not posting that, lol.

As a note, this year I actually noticed a manufacturer's tag in the stockings.  Facepalm; I hadn't paid any attention to it at all in the past.  They were made by Russ; I did a quick google search and actually found Ebay listings for the three original stockings ...Used Santa and Teddy Bears, selling for about $8 each, and New Rocking Horses (3 of those!). Selling for about $16 each.  So they are not particularly valuable collector's items, lol.

The Flute Player chuckled that I had no idea what I was getting myself into when we got those first three stockings...

ETA...and here's a picture of the whole lot of them with their stockings.  Prince Charming's is just barely visible behind the Princess....

Left to right: The Little Redhaired Girl (who is married to) The Actor: The Flute Player and her hubby The Jokester; The Artist and his wife The Dancer; The Little Prince, Prince Charming, The Princess and ...The Little Prince's Little Brother, who shall have a nickname before long....

That was not the plan....

 It has been an ...interesting...couple of weeks in these parts.  I typed up a whole backstory and deleted it; it's tedious, lol.  The upshot is that my hubby went to Indiana to help his mom, came down with covid after he arrived, and I tested positive for it myself after I found out he had it; I was on meds for a sinus infection after a negative covid test earlier.  

So I spent last week at home with the cat.  I didn't really feel bad, and I never developed the bad cough and sore throat that other folks have had, but I had zero stamina.  Just walking up the stairs pooped me out.  I did manage to get some of the Christmas decor up, around working from home, but the sewing stuff I intended to do last week just didn't happen.

But I got the lights swtiched around on the porch rail garland.  That was a PAIN.  Because, stupid me, I made assumptions.... I ASSUMED that the white lights I bought from Hobby Lobby were the equivalent of the colored lights I'd bought from Hobby Lobby and switched out all the purple lights with the white ones, only to find that it didn't work when I plugged them in (why didn't I check after switching one light?  Well...it matched visually; I thought it was the same....bonehead  move...).  So I had to take all the white lights back off and put them back on their original string.  Then I got a couple of the multi-color light strings that had been on the bushes two years ago and pulled red, green and yellow lights off and stuck them in the spots where the purple ones had been on the garland lights.  I even switched out about 1/3 of the blue lights.  Once I verified everything was working (I learn slowly but I do learn), I put the colored lights back on the garland, then I wrapped the white lights around the garland also.

More than one way to skin a cat, right?

The photo still looks a little blue but in real life the white makes it sparkle...I like it, even though it's a cooler white than I have on the bushes.  My thumbnails have pretty much recovered.

We put the tree up before my Sweet Babboo left town, but it took me a while to  get  the needles it shed  vacuumed up so I could put down the tree skirt and the traditional Christmas book selection (a tree's gotta have something under it, lol).  The teardrop lights that failed utterly as outdoor lights last year look really nice on the tree, although I do have some mini incandescents on it too, so I can run the 4 ornament spinners...  It is an artificial tree this year since it went up so early.

We got a new tree-topper this year...I liked it when I got it but when we got it out of the box we found that it is one sided; the back is just lights and wrapped cord, lol.  

Later on I managed to get the rather pitiful throw-back tree up on the porch...

My grandmother had an aluminum tree with a rotating light when I was little enough to believe in magic, lol.  This one came from a hoarder's stash about 10 years ago.  I don't know how long it will hold up but it is fun and nostalgic on the sun porch.  About half the ornaments on it were some that my grandmother bought late in her life. 

I had to move furniture around in the family room to get what we call the 'stocking tree' up.  We used a little tree by the fireplace to put the stockings around before My Sweet Babbo added the mantle; now we can hang the stockings but the tree is a tradition.

Putting up the tree only takes about 45 minutes...and most of that is fussing with the multi function lights. But moving the furniture about did me in.

Each one of those tasks took a separate day.  So, while I did putter around in the sewing room a couple of times, I don't really have much to show for it yet.  

But at least the house is mostly festive; I have a few household decorations that I opted to forgo this year.

I totally missed the church Christmas production this year.  I wasn't able to be in it or really do much,  due to the craziness of the fall, (koff two weddings and three out of town trips koff) but I did intend to hang out in the dressing room with safety pins and such if anyone needed costume help.  But, nope, couldn't make it work.  It has felt WEIRD, let me tell you....

But the retest was negative Sunday evening so I have been back at work this week.  It was nice to hear an actual human voice, lol.

Now I just need to finish getting the Christmas Epistles out and sew up the stockings that are hanging over my head yet...I have two weeks...

(Postscript:  My dear MIL had apparently already had this particular variant or was protected by her booster or both as she did not contract it whilst My Sweet Babboo was holed up in the bedroom.  He did wear a mask when he came out, but they did eat together, so I can't help but think she was exposed.  So glad she is still healthy)