Makes: I Love Pinterest!

The girls and I have been doing crafts lately, for Christmas ornaments and for fun.  All these projects were ideas I found on Pinterest, on which can be found all manner of amazing things!

A wedding invitation ornament, for my recently married good friend.  The leaf embellishment is from the wedding favor.  It turned out so pretty!

 Combination of the wedding invitation idea and a mod-podge project I saw, I curled up strips of sheet music and filled the plastic ball.  Love how these turned out!

  These toddler discovery bottles were based on a pin from Disney Family Fun.  I used empty plastic spice bottles.  I hot glued them to within an inch of their life, but they still leaked, so I resorted to the butterfly duct tape.  These are so fun!

I saw the jingle bell wreath on Pinterest, with a ribbon bow.  I didn't read the post before I made ours, so I didn't know that they used copper wire to get it really round.  Mine slumps a little with a pipe cleaner.  I do like how they came out, though!

 I crocheted this scrunchie to make an Elmo for my camera, like I saw on this pin.
(sc around a hairtie, join, ch 3, 3dc in each sc around, join, finish off)
I cut out eyes, pupils and a nose from felt and tacky glued them to the scrunchie.
I really hope this will help me to get my girls to smile for the camera!

Hope you are listening to Christmas music and making lots of Christmasy things too.  This is such a wonderful, crafty season.  :)

©2011 Alli Hyer, all rights reserved.

Free Pattern: Travel Wipes Cover

This pattern is a crochet cover for a Huggies travel-size box of wipes.  Paired with a paci pouch, it would be a wonderful baby shower gift!  A little more trouble than the usual glue fabric and ribbon method, but I've always liked the Huggies box better than the Pampers one.

Make sure you leave the top open with the button closures, so you can get the cover off to refill the box with wipes. 

This is the thick-and-thin pattern.  Stay tuned for the all double crochet pattern to match the other paci pouch.

Free Pattern: Baby Earflap Hat - 6 months

Premie size here
Newborn size here
3-month size here
9-12 month size here
Toddler size here
Youth/Adult Small sizes here
Adult Medium/Large sizes here

Makes: Operation Christmas Child

 
This week I made a Boutique Granny Stripe Bag (Tangled Happy) for our Samaritan's Purse Operation Christmas Child shoebox gift.

I've been doing a shoebox gift almost every year since high school; it's a great way to keep perspective going in to the Christmas season.  These kids won't get any Christmas presents besides through the Operation Christmas Child program.  And Samaritan's Purse gives more than just the gifts, they follow up with the kids and teach them the true meaning of Christmas.

If you want to give a shoebox gift, it's super easy, and it's always a lot of fun!

I usually go to the dollar store, to keep the bill down.  I got a reusable "shoe" box, and, as it suggests on the site,  some school supplies (a notebook, mechanical pencils, solar calculator), some hygiene items (toothbrush, toothpaste, soap), and lots of fun stuff (flip-flops, hair ties, hair bands, glow sticks, a flashlight with extra batteries, a solar moving flower toy, a klick-klack wooden toy, a jump rope, stickers, hard candies, and, of course, the awesome crochet bag!).  All of that cost about $18, so with the $7 donation for shipping, my total came to only about $25!

I love to imagine what a fun gift this will be for a girl, and this year my #1 can understand it, too.  We really enjoyed picking things, thinking about the girl who gets our shoebox.

And because we made the shipping donation online, we can track our gift.  We printed out our tag with a barcode on it which will be scanned and the destination country will be emailed to us.  It will be so interesting to find out where our gift is headed!  With the tag and a rubber band around the box, we are ready to take it to the drop-off location this week, Nov. 14-21.

What a great gift God gave to us when he sent his son as a baby to earth.  Giving a gift to someone in need is a little expression of our thanks to him.

Free Pattern: Crossed Texture Hat - Premie

Newborn size here.
3-month size here.

This is a thicker texture that I've seen a lot on Etsy.    It is simple, though it might not be a great starter project for beginners.

Free Pattern - Fuzzy Bear Hat With Ears - 9-12 months

Find the 6-month size here.
Find the 3-month size here.
Find the newborn size here.
Find the premie size here.