Howling at the Moon

This year we will be celebrating New Years Eve in the house of our friends and besides several snacks I will make some decorations. It will be a real party, not just a gathering of a handful of people, as I was told. The first thing I made will be hanging above the drinks and snacks table.  www.betweennapsontheporch.net I cut the letters out of cat food paper boxes (yes) and sticked copper colored paillettes on it. Looks quite cheerful, I think! A closer look: May you all have a great New Years Eve! I wish you the best for the year to come!! ~*~ Last week my Peppermint Cushion was featured by Carolyn's Homework !   Thanks, Carolyn!

Hope you all had great holidays with lots of love, peace and happiness! ~*~ And now on to the order of the day! In just a couple of weeks my youngest daughter will turn 5! I can barely believe it! Where did time go?  Although I have been busy making X-mas decorations all the time, I found some time to make invitations for her party, too. 'Feestje' means 'Party' in Dutch.   www.betweennapsontheporch.net

I made another Peppermint Cushion for under my X-mas Tree! www.betweennapsontheporch.net ~*~ This week my small Cross Stitch Deer was featured by Carolyn's Homework ! Thank you, Carolyn!!

Just found the most adorable Origami X-mas Trees and just had to make them! Luckily I have some space left behind the windows for them! www.betweennapsontheporch.net Want to make the trees, too? Take a look here ! ~*~  I also cross stitched another deer head, because someone liked the other one so much, that she actually wanted to buy it!   This one has a larger frame, the thread is thicker and the stitches are bigger.

Since I bought three embroidery hoops the other day, here's another one. I like the reindeer theme and wanted to make this one from hama beads, but decided to read the hama pattern as an cross stitch pattern and made this: www.betweennapsontheporch.net ~*~ My X-mas Stocking was featured by The Craft Dictator and by Creating my Way to Success !   Thank you, Cara & Rhonda and Jill!

At the blog of Joann (not that I know her) I found this cute pattern for little socks for the X-mas Tree. After making the first one, I wanted more. With different patterns. www.betweennapsontheporch.net ~*~  My Crochet Candy Cane Cushion was featured last week by Sew Can Do , by Purfylle and by The Cottage Market !! Thank you very much, Cheryl, Stella Lee and Andrea!!

Yesterday was the yearly X-mas Diner at the Elementary School of my daughters. On the internet I saw these cute little reindeer cupcakes months ago and I knew that would be the thing I would make for their classes. In the supermarket they sell ready made cupcakes, so they only thing I have to do is add antlers and a nose, I thought. Of course I didn't think about sold out cupcakes for just one moment, but that was just what was going on when I did my shopping yesterday. And I couldn't bring up the desire to bake forty cupcakes now that I thought the treats would be finished in just an hour. So the bottom you see in the picture aren't cupcakes, but another cookie (Filled Cook(ie)s, people call them here in The Netherlands; the filling being a mix of sugar and almonds, that tastes a bit like marsipan). A good enough alternative, I think. www.betweennapsontheporch.net

Ellie Letty Red Velvet WANTED! Great Red Velvet Shoes

One of our X-mas Trees, with one of four empty, unfinished bookshelves in the back. The other tree is standing in our kitchen, I will show that one later.

Finally, finally, fi-nal-ly I finished my Peppermint Skirt (in the original pattern it's a LARGE throw), which I started making this summer. I hate projects that take lots of time, but this one looked so very nice that I just had to make it. So I started happily and crocheted for some days in a row, but than boredom came in, I saw something else I wanted to make and the throw found a home in the corner of the living room, hidden in a plastic bag, together with the hook and the yarn. But I really wanted to have it for X-mas, so with a lot of unwillingness I started again and finished it yesterday! Just in time!!     www.betweennapsontheporch.net  You can find the pattern here!

Bought more embroidery hoops and made this with some left over embroidery thread and some felt. Another not too much time consuming item to decorate for X-mas! www.betweennapsontheporch.net

When we eat soup, I always serve bread with it, but we always have a lot of left overs. In my youth we had a goat who loved the bread we didn't eat, but the goat is long gone and since we live in a city now, we are glad we have enough garden for ourselves to sit outside. Keeping a goat to eat our left overs isn't an option anymore. So I had to find another solution for the bread residues. Breadpudding!   www.betweennapsontheporch.net Here's a simple recipe, so you have your pudding in the oven within ten minutes! What you need: * 500 grams of white bread (if I don't have enough I top it up with ready made cake, but that makes the end result only better) * 1/2 liter of half and half milk * 3 mixed eggs * 2 teaspoons of vanille essence * 200 grams of sugar * 500 grams of red fruit (strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, redberries etc) What to do: * preheat oven at 180 degrees Celsius * heat the milk until almost boiling *...

For a while now I see embroidery hoops appear all around the internet and I think they look quite nice. Just didn't know what to embroider. But now that X-mas is all around us, I got some inspiration.    www.betweennapsontheporch.net

Last week I went to one of my favorite furniture and decoration store, Loods 5, and beside some very nice items for my living room and kitchen I found a nice book about paper cut decorations for all sorts of parties, fiestas and feestjes. Among others there is of course the X-mas theme. I made a start today with something to cheer up the window and with a label for a present, that I used to decorate one of my wooden candle holders. www.betweennapsontheporch.net After cutting the paper I painted it in my favorite color of the moment: red copper.   Made a paper cut label for my wooden candle holder, too.       

Sassy Kitten Gloves by Wheels&Dollbaby WANTED   Nice Gloves!

So I hoped my husband would have finished the mantle before X-mas and I could hang some X-mas stockings from it, but unfortunately we just finished plastering the walls, so stockings hanging from the mantle will have to wait for next year (although last year I was pretty sure we would have stockings hanging from the mantle this year). The good thing is: bookshelves are finished! Great place to hang stockings from, too!   www.betweennapsontheporch.net I made this adorable little stocking that my four year old wants to wear all the time, so I hope it's still worth to look at as X-mas arrives. You can find a pattern for it here . The other stocking I made last year. A pattern for the flowers (African Flowers, they're called) you can find in my tutorials .

  www.betweennapsontheporch.net Months ago I made a chalk board on the door in my kitchen for my daughters to draw on, but the only who is actually using it, is me. This time I used it to draw a X-mas Tree on.  Underneath the tree: our cats Dolly, Ronnie and late Sjakie.

Ever since I made the Moroccan Bolster this summer and started with the Peppermint Throw ( I will show you later), I had this idea in my head and now that X-mas is here, I finally had made it: the Peppermint Cushion. Made with red and white of course, and so matching my tree in the kitchen. I love how it came out, because some, well, quite a lot actually, look better in my head than in reality. www.betweennapsontheporch.net Here it is!

 Yesterday I bought a beautiful turquoise bottle and some fake cherry blossom, both to match with my Cherry Blossom Trunk.  I have two more bottles and today I made some items to style the bottles for Christmas.  The Peace Sign is made of a piece of cut cardboard that I covered with little rhinestones. The little stars are made of polymer clay. I cut the stars with a little cookie cutter.  www.betweennapsontheporch.net The star hanging from the large bottle in the back, I made a while ago. A couple of weeks ago I bought a little deer skull. The embellishing I did right after I bought it, but to bring the deer in X-mas mood as much as I am, today I made him a nice garland to trim up his little antlers, too. ~*~ This week my Star Pendant and Star Garland were featured by Rooted in Thyme and The Cottage Market !! Thanks, Jodi & Stan and Andrea! 

You never can be too early with your wishlist: Fool Fedora by Magid Candice Gwinn Honey Dress by Trashy Diva Alpine by Miss L Fire Cutout Satchel by Leaders in Leather Sweat College Jacket by Rumble 59 Parfum Love Rose by Lena Hoschek SK8 Reissue Leopard Leather by Vans Boden Roll Neck Sweater by King Louie Button Gloves by King Louie Femme Coat Black by Lena Hoschek