December can’t just be all black and white on the ol’ blog–it is christmas time after all. These beautiful colors came from my local thrift store and were absolutely free. I have always like the childcraft series and had my eye out for the “make and do” volume, but never could find it. The other day I was dropping some stuff at the thrift shop and spotted the whole series in the donation bin. I was tempted to swipe it, but the dude working there was right in front of me and besides stealing from charity is just bad mojo. So I asked him and he said the lady who gave it away was still there and I could ask her. She gave me a thumbs up and I threw all that awesomeness in my trunk.

It’s the 1964 edition and the illustrations are fantastic. The make and do volume is of course my favorite: the projects are super simple and make me feel like I could do them with my children, unlike when I look at Martha and feel like a second rate mom because I can’t deal with glitter.

There might even be some christmas presents in there for the kids to make, or if nothing else they have given me some quiet while the kids l0ok at all 15 of them on the couch, which is a huuuge christmas present for their mama.

I am super excited to tell you about this project. After much help from my computer genius of a husband, you can now buy (for the super cheap price of $2.50) and download my Advent Calendar Coloring Book.  Then check “make advent calendar” off your list.  Done and done. All the pictures were drawn by yours truly and I had a fine time doing it. We all should draw more often. And color more often too! Because of course after making a coloring book, I had to break out the crayons and pencils and color!

My daughter, who is my little tester, has colored three whole books already and advent hasn’t even begun. And really, you could print out a coloring book a day for advent, instead of coloring one picture a day.  My kids are coloring fiends, so that much coloring wouldn’t be unheard of. And of course you don’t have to use it as an advent calendar, but just color all the christmasiness to get in a happy holiday mood.

And as a special treat, I am going to have a page to print out and color everyday for advent on my blog. So be sure to stop by tomorrow for the first one!

I think it’s pretty easy to go crochet crazy. I had a great aunt who crocheted anything and everything: toilet paper cozies, sombreros for the tabasco sauce, ear cozies–not ear muffs, just two circles that fit around your ears! And now I see how you can go down that road. It’s just so easy to make up shapes as you go with crochet, increasing and decreasing wherever you choose and if you need to rip it out, it’s no big deal because it comes together so fast anyway. Which is why after only a few weeks after learning, I can crochet on the fly. This super ridiculous santa hat is a mash up of two other crocheted hats: the pointy hat I made for my daughter and the mustache hat on instructables. I can write up a pattern if there is enough interest, but really, if you can crochet you can probably just wing it.  Ho! Ho! Ho!

I wasn’t kidding when I said I wanted to make every project in the Kid’s Crochet book. And here are 2 more. This little pointy number is pretty fantastic. The super cuteness doesn’t really come across in the photos, not that I didn’t try–my children will. not. be. still! As with all the projects in the book, this hat went very fast and I didn’t have one bit of trouble with it (here are the specs). My daughter picked out the variegated yarn (she called it rainbow yarn) from Joann’s and I wanted to try to get another hat out of it, so I added some stripes.

To mark the back of the hat, I embroidered her name on some wool felt and stitched it in. She picked out the orange thread and damn if that child doesn’t just have some amazing, if sometimes crazy, color sense. What four year old picks out taupe yarn anyway? But she did and it’s beautiful. While we were at the store we got some yarn for a cardigan I want to crochet for her. Stupidly I didn’t bring the pattern and we ended up buying the wrong size yarn, but she chose three gorgeous colors: a purpley raspberry, a magenta and a taupe-y brown. I never would have thought that’s what she would pick.

The skull cap (a variation of the same pattern) went even faster than the first hat. I did run out of yarn, so I added larger stripes of the yarn leftover from his scarf, but the wool at the bottom is curling. I haven’t blocked it, but how do you block a hat? On your head?

Well after that last post I went for a little walk to gather leaves. There was one lonely tree left with leaves on it, but they were huge and yellow and perfect. The boy and I snipped off their stems and folded them a bit, then I sewed them together one by one with a simple whip stitch. He picked yellow thread to match the leaves, so you can’t see it. But I have plans to stitch something on them in blue. This was such a simple and beautiful project. I think making these will be part of our fall for years to come.