It's almost time for the Advent Calendar

It's almost time for the advent calendar again. Just two more days before it needs to be up on the wall. Time to get my butt into gear and get working on it!

In the meantime I thought I'd share an advent calendar I made for Ava back in 2009.

Ava tests out the advent calendar

This advent calendar was really simple to make and I was quite happy with the way it turned out. 

Christmas Card Photo Shoot

Now that Thanksgiving is over it's time to start working on Christmas preparations. Can you believe that Christmas is only a month away? No? Neither can I.

First up in the Christmas preparation list... Christmas cards.

It was a lovely day here in Berkeley today so we headed to nearby Live Oak Park to take some photos of the girls for our Christmas cards. Towering redwood trees, a stone wall, little bridges crossing a creek... it was the perfect location for our little photo shoot.

Here's a look at some of our photos from today.

Strike a pose

A Thanksgiving Turkey... Costume!

I've mentioned before that Ava had this idea in her head that she must dress up as a turkey for Thanksgiving. I thought this would be a fun idea so I got to work on making costumes for both Ava and Lola.

Lots of felt, coat hanger wire and hours later we had two little turkeys ready to celebrate Thanksgiving!

Here's a look at the costumes I made for the girls. They both happened to have brown onesie tracksuits in their wardrobe (as you do!) which made the perfect base for their costumes. With the addition of tails  (wired to stand up), turkey feet and beaks the girls were good to go. Unfortunately Lola wouldn't wear her costume for a photo so you'll just have to believe me when I say she looked adorable.

Turkey Ava flapping her wings

Happy Thanksgiving 2012

Thanksgiving is over for another year, leaving us with bellies full of roast turkey, maple glazed sweet potato, cauliflower gratin, roast brussel sprouts and home made pumpkin pie. So completely stuffed!

We had a lovely lunch at our apartment with good friends and (as seems to be tradition) a little too much food. Not that we have huge amounts of food left over mind you; maybe just enough for one more dinner for two. Not too bad.

Here's a look at our Thanksgiving lunch with the Autumn Leaf Turkeys that I made used as place cards.

Leaf turkey place card

Autumn Leaf Turkeys

Happy Thanksgiving!

I had intended for this post to go up last night but a little technical glitch (I reached the limit of Blogger's included photo storage space) threw a spanner in the works. All sorted now.

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In the lead up to Thanksgiving our apartment seems to be full of Autumn leaves and turkeys. So I thought, why not combine the two in a fun craft project? Why not indeed!

Ava has a five day weekend for Thanksgiving and the weather is pretty grey today so it's the perfect opportunity to work on another fun craft project: Autumn Leaf Turkeys.

Autumn Leaf Turkeys

Sneak Peak : Turkey Costume

Remember how I mentioned here that Ava wants to dress up as a turkey for Thanksgiving?

Well, her request got the better of me and I started thinking of ideas for a costume. I know there's no need for costumes for Thanksgiving but I just couldn't help myself! Plus it gave me an excuse to get out the new sewing machine and play :)

Ava's costume isn't quite finished yet but I thought I'd share a little sneak peek of some of what I've come up with so far. So here you go, one turkey beak and and two turkey feet!

The rest of Ava's costume will be revealed on Thanksgiving so stay tuned!

Ava in her turkey beak

Ava's turkey feet

Autumn Leaf Garland

Autumn really is such a beautiful time of year. The trees are so full of colour in various shades of reds, oranges, yellows, browns and green. And as the trees shed their leaves, so too do the gardens and sidewalks become full of colour. While I love seeing the leaves scattered everywhere I'm sure that those of you who have to sweep them up aren't quite so fond of this time of year!

Over the past few weeks the girls and I have been collecting Autumn leaves as we walk to and from school. I wasn't really sure what we were going to do with them but we kept on collecting them anyway. I really wanted to preserve the beauty of Autumn by bringing the colours into our apartment.

I've come up with a few projects for our collection of Autumn leaves and here's the first one: an Autumn Leaf Garland. It's pretty simple to make and I think it looks lovely hanging in a window.

Autumn Leaf Garland