It's beginning to look at lot like Christmas...

... thanks to wonderful Christmas programs! Here's Drake's:

I love the twirling! And the little bow at the end!

Gracie's Christmas Recital

Gracie was absolutely thrilled when she learned how to play Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." And it was the first song she picked to play in her Christmas recital. She was less thrilled when her piano teacher mentioned that she could bow after she finished playing. In fact, this completely unglued her. It was as if *this* were the thing that finally made her realize that, hey, maybe she'll get this thing called Stage Fright. She completely fell apart. She wasn't going - AT ALL.

After we talked her down (and I maybe pushed her a little bit towards the piano), she did fine.

Insanity

How did this happen to me?? It started off innocently enough: I wanted to make the kids something for Christmas. Fine. I blogged about the little house pouches I made for them, which turned out super cute.

But then I went crazy.

I was so inspired, I got all crazy-innovative and came up with this:

Finger puppets! Fairy Friends on the left, Sea Creatures on the right.

Somehow I got to reading about egg cartons and ways to reuse/upcycle them, and my brain started working. I came up with this idea to sew puppets and use the egg carton for storage.

But it couldn't be a plain old egg carton. No. I had to decorate it. Ideally, I'd like to use fabric that reflects the puppets inside: marine fabric for the Sea Creatures and foresty fabric for the Fairy Friends. But the owl motif is what I could manage on the short time frame.

For days (DAYS!), I've been trying to reverse engineer the whole thing. It's one thing to make a little pouch (with a pattern). It's a whole 'nother thing to figure out how to cover an egg carton. All those little holes! And the pointy things in the middle! So, I've been cutting up carton after carton and designing a pattern (using scrap paper, of course). I took an old t-shirt and started cutting it with the pattern. I'm sure I've violated about 174 sewing rules so far.

Bundled up, ready to go to a restaurant, or on a plane.

But I got it done. It's only one egg carton, so they'll have to share for right now. But I hope they like their puppets.