can you believe it is possible to still be posting a holiday related post? its true. with our out of town trip last weekend and other goings on this week, we're still trying to clean up, organize and move forward around here. taking down lights today. putting away the last of the decorations. assimilating all the new toys into new homes. listening to some music and drinking some coffee in between... and now that almost all the gift giving is complete i can finally share some of the little handmade creations that were being secretly worked on throughout december. (so many times i wanted to post about these, but in the name of secrecy and surprise i held back) oh, and i can share two little surprises that i received as well. one thing i noticed about these creations is that there is a running theme (planned or unplanned i'm not exactly sure) of warmth. take a look...

warmth to hold. a little wool woodland mushroom that i needle felted for margaret one night. this ended up in our advent calendar.

warmth to wear. this turned out to be the season of hats for me. with two little ones for the dolls and two grown up ones for chuck and my dad. (i used the same pattern that i used in the summer, with a slight variation).

warmth to swaddle. the already mentioned doll quilts that came together without much of a plan...

more warmth to wear. a scarf. for me. "made by" margaret. unbeknownst to me, she stashed away a super long fabric scrap from a project i was working on (another gift that i forgot to photograph) and she presented it to me on christmas morning as a scarf. for me. i was pretty proud of this of course, and wore it all christmas day.

more warmth to hold. my other handmade-by-margaret surprise. a sweet, slouchy, super-sized, mug cozy for my tea and coffee. again, invented by her, on her own. she used another fabric scap and gluestick to whip this up. clever. and it makes me smile.
so that is some of top-secret craftiness that was going on behind the pre-holiday scenes here, in addition to the not-so-secret, produced in multiple quantity projects like the cards, the kids' silkscreened shirts (which i'm not showing yet because i've got 2 boxes that still haven't been mailed to their wee little out of state recipients), the cookies, etc... whew! looking back, that's quite a bit of elf-like fun and activity for one month (and really i do enjoy all the opportunities to create). no wonder we're moving a bit slower than normal around here. glad i could finally get a few details of these handmade projects out there. now its back to corralling pine needles.