It Isn't Christmas Anymore

I know that Christmas was SO last year (har har...) but I am a slacker and the only post I have for the whole month of December was on the 31st. And I didn't even write it. And it definitely wasn't for lack of material to blog about, I just never made the time to sit down and actually do it. So, though this post is a bit late, I am going to post it anyway.

A few weeks before Christmas, Bradford's mom let me know that she would no longer be stuffing his stocking for him and that if I didn't want his Christmas to be ruined I'd better pick it up this year. Or, something like that... Anyway, since Bradford no longer had a stocking to call his own and mine (and my family) are hundreds of miles away, I decided that to stuff a stocking there must first be a stocking to stuff! Ergo, I had a project on my hands. I guess I could have just gone out and bought a couple stockings and called it good, that would have been the easy (and sane) thing to do, but apparently I relish a challenge (and am not sane, but we all knew that didn't we?).

Having never made a stocking, or even thought of making a stocking, I only had a general idea of what I wanted it to look like. I went to the fabric store, picked out some fabrics I liked and that complemented each other, brought them home, scratched my head a few times, stared at them, scratched my head again, and then held my breath and started cutting. I did have the idea of drawing out on tissue paper what I wanted the final shape of the stocking to look like and I used that as my pattern. I laid it on the fabric and used a crayon to trace around it about an inch from the egde of the tissue pattern like so:


I had linen fabric for both stockings and then a red striped fabric for one and a green fabric for the other. I cut out four shapes of the linen and then two each from the red and green fabrics.

After they were cut, I laid two of each piece together, marked with my crayon where I wanted the stitch to be, pinned them and then sewed them, leaving the top open.

Next, I grabbed one of the linen stockings and one of the colored stockings, turned them both inside out, sewed the openings together with a bit of lace in the seam, then turned them back right side out and the result was a lovely stocking that was reversible to be either red/green with a linen cuff or linen with a red/green cuff. And I must say, they turned out MUCH better than I expected them to. My seams were clean and straight, the shape turned out well, and they looked pretty close to what I imagined.


I decided to dress them up a bit by making pins for each of them. One had a bow and snowflake (the bow I made and the snowflake was an ornament I found at the dollar store) and the other was a rose that I made from ribbon (which was surprisingly easy to make and turned out pretty). I made them pins so that if I wanted to reverse the stocking I could unpin and re-pin them interchangeably.
I really enjoyed making these and it re-boosted my desire to get cracking on the ever growing list of other projects I have brewing up my sleeve. Hopefully I'll be getting one or two of them knocked out this weekend. Wish me luck!

P.S. Yes, one of those projects is to fix my blog background. Promise.

Time is here

I love the Christmas season. Everything about it just amazing. I don't even mind the cold very much just because its so characteristic of the holiday. Though, we are all scratching our heads out here in Provo, wondering where in the heck they mis-delivered our white fluffy stuff too. I mean, there is only 2 weeks until Christmas and even the ski resorts are sweating it over. I sure hope something happens soon because if I spend $400 on a snowboarding pass I sure expect to get some of that snow to board on. Needless to say, I'm sure I'm not the only one here in UT Valley with crossed fingers. Whodda thought I would ever be hoping for snow? I tease my roommate, Mita, that its all her fault because she keeps praying that it WON'T snow. She is from Fiji and snow and cold are further from her favorite things list than lima beans are from mine.

I want to relish Christmas this year. I don't want it to rush by in a whirlwind and leave me wondering where the time went. There are so many exciting things that happen during this month that its easy for time to fly. I want to make sure that I absorb it and enjoy it. Most of that will be achieved by dressing myself in the spirit of Christmas everday before I set out. I should do that all year long but Christmas is always a good time to reevaluate and rededicate myself to that principle.

Bradford found an article the other day for a fun seasonal celebration. Its a spin on the 12 days of Christmas. Instead of doing 12 days of incremental gift giving, its a 12 DATES of Christmas. So every day, starting 12 days before Christmas, you go on a date and somehow tie in the number of the day before Christmas it is to the date. I thought it was a great idea and we wanted to give it a spin and start a tradition, but we ended up having a bunch of other events scheduled and not enough days to do everything (we would only be able to do our 12 dates on weekends and maybe one other weekday every week because of school and work)... Christmas is a busy time of year I'm realizing... Even though it didn't work out for us this year, I love the idea and I am determined to make it work for next year.

As far as the Christmas festivities go we have already gone to my work's Christmas party (which was dinner at a Mexican restaurant, Joe Vera's, and a show at Comedy Sportz, a local comedy club that I recommend to anyone who appreciates clean, silly, comedy), and a Kurt Bestor concert. I had never heard of Kurt Bestor until someone brought tickets to my work to give us as a thank you. Apparently he is well known in Utah as a Christmas music performer and Bradford knew who he was and liked him so I got four of the tickets and Bradford and I went to hear some great Christmas music with our friends Jarron and Olivia. I really enjoyed it. He's a very talented musician/composer and there were some touching Christmas pieces. Coming up on our checklist of Christmas events is the annual Mo-Tab/Orchestra at temple square Christmas concert. Though nothing can easily top the one with Sissel from two years ago, it should still be great this year. They gave out tickets in a "lottery" for this years concert. You basically just entered a drawing with how many tickets you wanted (up to 4) and what night you preferred them for and then they randomly chose people to get them. I was lucky enought to get four of them. I originally had four for the sunday mini-concert but then my old co-worker switched me for her saturday night ones because she can't go on saturday. Mita and Kimberly (hopefully) are coming with Bradford and me and I'm really lookign forward to it. I'm also going with Kimberly to her work Christmas party which is on Friday at Tucanos. Mmmm... I'm going to be missing out on a good chunk of Bradford's family's Christmas party but I can't pass up Tucanos! Or Kimberly for that matter ;).

Speaking of Bradford's family... Bradford's brother Richard and his family are visiting from Las Vegas this week and the women in the family (ie, sisters, sisters-in-law, girlfriend...) took advantage of the opportunity to go out for a girl's night to Olive Garden and then play games afterward at Bradford's parents'. It was sweet of them to include me, and once the hyperventilating subsided I was able to enjoy their company and conversation. I hope they can say the same of me... Unfortunately, I am shy by nature, believe it or not, and being in a group of just girls (let alone a group of people I don't know particularly well) is extremely intimidating for me, and I wasn't as active a participant as I would have liked. I am perfectly content to be a listener and observe things, but sometimes I'm afraid that people interpret that as me being indifferent and standoffish. Part of me wished Bradford was there to lean on and calm my nerves but I need to get over it already. After two years you wouldn't think it would be an issue to be around his family alone. That's my fault for letting it get to me so much and overthinking and letting anxiety take over... I wish I had a better handle on it. I can only get better, though, can't get much worse. That is my new resolve: to be less self-conscious. In all aspects. Its something that has been on my mind for a while now and I realize that its holding me back from being an honest depiction of myself. Anyway, off that vein...

I hope all of you have a wonderful Christmas season. Its such an amazing time of year and everyone deserves to feel a glimmer of the Christmas magic!