Tag Archives: holiday


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Crafting With Kids – Easy Photo Ornament

It’s December 1st, and although stores have been in Christmas mode since even before (American) Thanksgiving, we’re now “officially” close to the holidays. Here’s a quick holiday project that’s easy enough for kids to make (with minor supervision). These easy photo ornaments are a great way to share cute images and make great gifts for grandparents. They can even be used as gift tags!

I used extras of my kids’ Santa’s lap pictures, but you can use school photos, family portraits, even pet pics!

Materials needed:

All materials as shown were found at my local Dollarama, though I’ve linked Amazon’s versions for delivery convenience.

For an ornament style, have draw or trace a circle around the desired part of your image. You aren’t limited to circles, of course, and can draw any shape you like. Cut out your shape and outline it with your choice of glitter glue. You can add other embellishments if desired, can trace only the outline as above or a later pic below, or fill in a part of the image as seen in the following images. Set aside to dry fully – at least a few hours, or overnight.

Prepare your tulle or ribbon as follows: make one large bow, one small one, and then tie two bells onto a 10″ length of tulle/ribbon, leaving about 3.5″ between them. You can trim the tail ends later. If unable to thread the tulle/ribbon through the bell’s loop, a yarn needle can help. You can also use the yarn needle (or the scissors or a hole punch) to make a small hole in the top center of the image.

Stack the small bow on top of the large bow and use the tulle/ribbon with the bells to tie them together, allowing the bells to dangle below. Cut all tails to desired length.

To assemble: Cut a 10″-12″ length of yarn. Loop through the hole in the ornament. You can use the yarn needle to thread the yarn ends through the knot of the large bow, or tie the yarn directly around the center of the bow bundle, between the two bells. Knot the two ends of the yarn together to create a hanging loop.

These hold up pretty well! While the step-by-step images were taken in 2017, the photos from here onward were taken in November 2021. This is an early, more simple version I’d made in about 2015.

The example ornament has the center spot in our wreath and it’s lasted quite well. I’ve written the date and kids’ ages on the back, and they create a nice memory during the holiday season.

Happy holidays!

This post may contain affiliate links. This means I might make a small commission on purchases made through the links, at no cost to you.


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happy new year!

It’s 2013!  If I go back through my archives I’ve been blogging since September 2004.  In September 2014 I’ll have been blogging for 10 years.  Whoa.

It’s a new year, and instead of making resolutions to DO, I’m making resolutions to TRY.

I’m going to TRY to blog more.  I’m going to TRY to knit for ME.  I’m going to TRY to publish more patterns, or at least let you know about ones that have been published.  (Did any of you know I’ve got a pattern in the Interweave Knits Holiday Gifts Issue?  Didn’t think so).

We started the new year off right by doing something different.  We took a family vacation!  Plattsburgh, NY is under 2 hours away, and there’s a hotel there with lots of activities for the kids.

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(ps that tarp isn’t because of any leak- they were getting ready to fill it with balloons to drop at midnight on NYE)

There are good restaurants in the area and right near a 24 hour Walmart, a Sally’s Beauty Supply, a Michael’s… 😀

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We drove down with 5 other families that have kids about the same ages, and in the hotel were other groups of 2-5 families that we all knew, so we were always around friends.  We did a lot of shopping, a lot of socializing and I even managed to squeeze in a bit of knitting while the boys watched TV as we changed for dinner.

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I worked on my fun fur vest…no pics yet ‘cus I keep forgetting to take one.

Speaking of shopping in the States…the shopping carts for when out with kids are awesome!  If the store doesn’t have a double-seater cart, my boys have to take turns walking, or scrounge around for one of the few carts with a car attached to the front.  But checkit the carts at Price Chopper:

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Awesome no?


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covered in icing

My day  ended covered in icing.  Always, when I make the birthday cakes, since the parties are usually on Sundays, I bake on Thurs, dirty-ice on Fri and decorate on Sat.  So today was decoration day.  I knew better than to risk starting to make my buttercream while the boys were up, but I wasn’t worried about getting a late start because of how much I got done being home yesterday.

In the afternoon my neighbor brought her 7-month-old daughter over for us to babysit, and my boys had a BLAST playing with her.  She was seated in her Bumbo like a princess on a throne, and the boys didn’t stop parading in front of her trying to make her laugh.  First Jakob would do somersaults across the room, then Henri broke in with a guitar solo, and Jakob wouldn’t be outdone, so he grabbed some maracas and got in on the performance.  It was a riot.

Luckily she practically put herself to sleep just before the boys went down, and I was able to get to work on the cake.  But I forgot to take pics with my cell, and my camera isn’t with me at the moment, so instead of cake pics, here’s an update on the holiday gifts for the boys’ daycare teachers.

This is what each teacher (5 in total) got.  A red platter, topped with a back scrubber, a crocheted chain-8 dishcloth, a crocheted soap-saver bag with a scented bar of soap inside, and a crocheted bath puff, all wrapped up in cellophane and tied with a ribbon of red yarn.

The chain-8 and bath puff are the standard patterns I’ve been using for years, and are linked from the projects on my Rav pages.  The soap saver I just made up on the spot, and is basically just a sc1-ch1 pattern around, with a drawstring near the top.  All was done with 2 shades of holiday Bernat Handicrafter cotton, plain white Handicrafter, and a 4mm crochet hook.

I’ve made these as teacher gifts before, but both my boys are with new teachers now so none of these 5 have received this gift before, so I didn’t mind recycling the idea.  The daycare owner, however, has already received this gift, so I needed to come up with something new.  She also happens to be pregnant, and due with a little boy any day now.  So she got this:

It’s 2 shades of Bernat Baby Coordinates from my stash, worked in a simple granny square, using a 4mm crochet hook.  I would have liked to have gone bigger, but it was late, she was leaving on mat leave the next day, and my hand was starting to cramp into a claw.


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how to start the year off right

All of my boys and I stayed home New Year’s Eve ‘cus both kids had fevers and Yannick’s been on NeoCitran for a week. We all had a nice dinner together then the boys (Yannick included) invented a game with a blanket spread over the floor as “water”, and pillows to be “islands” to jump across. If kids missed a pillow and fell in the water, the Tickle Monster (that would be Yannick) GOT them.

And this ensued:

I think they’re all feeling better, what about you? 🙂