Family Christmas Presents

For Christmas this year I made 14 of these puppies for all my siblings and Seth's and both our parents. Around October I started compiling all the anniversaries and birthdays of everyone and their current emails, addresses, home and cell phone numbers, etc. I then separated them by family because obviously Seth's family wouldn't want my family's birthdays and vice versa. I chose a painting for each month that went along with that season and then put three addresses pages on the back with paintings and a cover so all together everyone in our families gets all the family information compiled and put with 17 of my paintings from 2007 and 2008. I then went and bound them and sent them off to everyone. We have ours hanging inside the pantry. My favorite thing about them is that it's good for every year since it doesn't go by days of the week. You can just flip it to the next month and turn to the back where all the information is to be able to call, email, or send a card to the family member with a bday or anniversary.

Below are some pictures of what a few of the pages look like. You'll notice on the month of December there is a little Penelope's birthday on the 13th of that month. :) We put some photos of her and a few videos on our family blog here and here. She's such a sweet little baby. We feel so blessed.

Finished Result

I finished the calendars for my sister and brother's families on Thanksgiving so that I could mail them out the next day in order to get them to their houses by the 1st to start counting down December. I didn't quite finish mine that weekend. I was worried about getting the others out in time and put work into theirs first. After I got theirs out I realized I had lost a bit of steam. Also- the Saturday after Thanksgiving I spent in the hospital thinking I was having problems with my blood clot and found out I was just contracting a lot. The nurses thought I was in active labor and kept me for a bit monitoring me, but I was released in the middle of the night with a shot of Demerol in my back side. Needless to say I have still been contracting and uncomfortable and the last thing I've felt like doing was sitting on a chair for another hour to finish sewing up calendar. (Good news- my inducement date is set for the 13th instead of the 15th now... THIS SATURDAY!) Finally today I finished my calendar. My little girls have been just getting the ornaments that would have been in the pockets each day to hang on the tree without actually grabbing them from the pockets- that is until now. :)

Here's some close up pictures as well. My sister did such a great job on her pockets (#3, #5, #8, #12, #13, #15, #16, #21, and #23). She embroidered the tree as well and put our name on the bottom. After making the rest of the pockets all I had to do was sew on all the pockets above her embroidered numbers and sew up the trunk and star and sew the back of the tree to the front. I think we made a great team. I loved calling her and working out details and it was fun to work with my own little girls here. They had a great time gluing the characters on the pockets and helping me to make these trees. I loved being able to spot something at Pottery Barn and make our own version. It was more fun that way and cheaper. I'm excited to think up a cute Halloween calendar in a few months and work with Krisser again.