homemade :: holiday gifts

first of all i need to apologize for the blurry first photo. i forgot to take final photos of this gift until after i gave them. i had to take photos in the evening at my mom's house.....



this was my first official cross stitch design that i've ever done from scratch. i've done small cross stitch projects in the past from patterns, but had never designed one myself.



it all started when i saw the quote: "home is where my mom is" somewhere on the interweb. i knew i wanted to do something with it, and finally decided on cross stitch. i made one for both my mom and my mother-in-law.



i was surprisingly able to create these with mostly thrifted materials. the hoops were all thrifted, some of the thread, and even the aida cloth. i bought maybe 2 or 3 skeens of thread retail.

christmas vacation

what we've been up to on our christmas vacation (so far):



enjoying homemade pizza on christmas eve



being spoiled by grandma with lots of messy cookies when mommy isn't watching



building legos meant for kids twice his age



finding toys (old and new) in every corner of the house.

merry christmas :: star bokeh

as you know, i'm a major bokeh lover. i've always admired photos of bokeh with shapes of lights. i've read some about it but never had the time to try it myself. after calling it quits this morning on the work front i immediately picked up my camera and headed off to try my hand at some shape bokeh. it took a couple tries, and it's still not perfect, but i think i have the basic idea down. hopefully i'll have some time to perfect it over the holidays with all of the available lights!

i leave you with my star bokeh for the holidays. merry christmas to all!

family friday :: the christmas tree

i'm leaving you today with photos of this year's christmas tree. for the first time ever i'm allowing myself to take a blogging break. i was going to wait until next week, but i've decided after a year of hard work, i deserve an extra week! i may stop in to say hi, but chance are you'll see me in 2010! (if you really can't live without me, i'm sure i'll be around on twitter and facebook) happy holidays everyone!