Happy New Year...and a post Christmas wish to everyone

Welcome to the eve of a New Year everyone.

I've been a bit absent over this last month, so it's time to catch up a little bit.

Firstly, Merry Christmas to you all. I do hope your Christmas Day was filled with love and cheer. My Dad is visiting from QLD and it was nice to have him here on the day.

My thoughts go out to my friends and family caught in the floods in my home town, Bundaberg and a very dear friend in Emerald. Both towns are in dire straits, so if you are able to donate to the flood appeals, please do so to help them out.

I've had regular contact with some of them and they are all doing fine, with no evacuations...yet. It's hard to believe the amount of water in the Bundaberg area. I remember the floods in the 70's, and yes I was 'very young' then.

A big thankyou in advance if you can help. 

So, the lead up to Christmas was pretty busy for me at work, including a quick 2 day trip to Melbourne to join the national team for some strategy days on what's in store for 2011.

Silly me, I decided a few weeks out from Christmas, I'd better get a move on with making the Christmas pressies for this year. I did OK in the end, thanks to some great ideas from you wonderful bloggers. I'll let you know who they are as I go along.

My boys have both moved into new addresses, and I thought as a surprise, I'd make them each a set of Christmas decorations. Darren's set was in green and Brendon's in blues.
 
I started with wreaths made out of circles cut from some Murobond paint chips I had accumulated. 

If you've seen the paint samples from Murobond, you'll know they are a decent size, so I was getting 3, 4 and 5 circles from each colour in varying sizes. I included some contrasting papers also. The project was finished with some small silver hearts and buttons for embellishments. Viola!...instant wreath in about 1 hour.
   

Then I moved on to making some birds from a post Tina at Rubie's Place featured. These are also featured on the 'Christmas Tree' we had at home this year. You'll see what I mean soon.

Next some wooden heart shapes covered on one side with a flocked transparency and a contrast blue (or green) on the other side. The wreaths and the ornaments were finished with a white or an ivory ribbon to hang them.

Garlands were next. Again, the theme of circles was carried through to these. There's also a photo of Brendon's tree (well branch) with the decorations.

With the decorations finished and mailed off, I settled in to making a present each for the girlfriends. Brenda at 'Hoo are you lookin at?' has fabulous fabric boxes. Mine aren't quite the same, but they were OK in the end and both the girls liked them, which is more important.


Sarah's is the owl and Natalie's was a shooting star.

The Christmas Tree was a bit different this year!!! 

There just wasn't any room in the house in Sydney to accomodate a long table for 12 guests, the loungeroom furniture and the usual Christmas tree. 

I used some brown paper to cut triangle panels to make the different levels of the tree then decorated it with bunting, christmas birds the same as the decorations I made for the boys, some more silver hearts, and circle 'baubles'. The tree was topped off with another dove.

I was really happy with it!! It all came together at around 11 pm on Christmas Eve.

This is what the normal tree looks like. It's quite big but beautiful, so we missed it a bit this year.

The theme for Christmas wrapping this year was white paper with a contrast tied off with twine and the gift tags I made in November for the 'Christmas Giveaway'.

Some other projects completed in the lead up to the big day...

A matching set of cushion and matryoshka doll for my niece in Bundaberg. The print 'In the Pink' is another great idea from Tina at Rubie's Place, using freezer paper as a template for the print.

 


Lastly, phew it was a busy week and a half, was a present for the wife of one of my co-workers. One of my products soon to be on 'jane on jane st'. Fabric Art similar to my Wallpaper Art. They will both be available soon and in 3 sizes. Stay tuned.

I took the photo at work on the carpet, with my phone, so it's not a great photo, sorry. The fabric is some curtain fabric offcut from Ikea. Beautiful colours.

So everyone, that's what I've been up to in the 4 weeks since my last post. I do hope you all enjoyed your Christmas and have a fantastic start to 2011.

May everything you hope and strive for comes to fruition.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! 

(Anyone else having trouble with Blogger formatting. It drove me crazy doing this post!!!)