Holiday baby booties

 

For the holiday season I made Christmas inspired baby booties for Likka. I couldn't find a pattern for these so I made my own. It didn't really work out that well. I wanted the tip to be curled, but the booties ended up flat, so I adjusted the tip by hand sewing few stitches on the top. And I made the booties too small to begin with, they hardly fit Likka. Maybe I'll make new ones later.

 

The bells are so cute though because those jingle when she moves her feet. But she doesn't yet understands that she can control the jingling.

Soft book from scraps

As an attempt to one day use up my scrap fabric supply I made a soft book for Likka. I must emphasize the word attempt, because soft book clearly isn't one of the most efficient or a fast way to use the scraps, especially if each of the pages on the soft book contains some hand embroidered details. But the idea is what matters, right?

I have still some of the train fabric left and decided to use the locomotive image of the fabric on one of the pages. I wanted the book to have somesort of theme and because of the locomotive I chose a motor vehicle theme. Between the cover pages is felt from a wool blanket, the middle pages have this thick and hard fabric, so the pages feel a bit different. Also one of the pages has some cellophane in between them so it crinkles.

 

On the corners I sewed triangles to avoid the filling getting off from its position. The spine has some car ribbon which you can see best on the last picture. I really like the book, although on some pages I did a bit of sloppy work and some of the machine embroidery looks a bit bad, but I kind of like those self made looking details here.

Pacifier clip with a ribbon

Babies drop their pacifiers a lot apparently. And when the pacifier get's on the floor or worse yet on the ground, those get dirty or lost. That is not a good situation. That is why I made pacifier holders that can be clipped on to the garments.

I bought mitten clips from a store sometime ago for a different project, which I have not yet done, but I need only two clips for that and so I had two left. I think you can also buy these single clips somewhere, but I happened to see those mitten clips first.

I had cute train ribbon at home and some plain white ribbon where I painted dots with a fabric paint. Web has plenty of DIY instructions on these pacifier holders, like here and here. I used black velcro on both, I would have preferred white, but I've lost the white velcro I have or then I've run out of it. I need to do an inventory of my craft supplies.

Sorry about the awful pictures, it's so dark here these days. I think I could use a light box of some sort to photograph these small crafts I do.

Is it echoing here?

Hello...hello...hello

Am I hearing an echo from last year or actually from two years ago? Again I made a wreath for the front door. I over estimated how much material I have and used too much first and had to then ration it for the remaining parts so the wreath is now a bit bottom heavy, but I don't care.

I found the material for the wreath while on a walk with Likka. I know some of you have wondered where I collect all the natural materials. Well, by the side of the roads, this time the city (I assume) had done some logging by the side of one of the ring roads of Helsinki. 

There is always branches and other logging waste left over, so I collected some from there. Also parks and road sides have often fallen branches that I take with me if I need them. The road sides are also really good places to collect flowers.

Candy cane cable

The kitchen corner where we have the coffee maker, toaster and the electronic water heater has always looked really bad because of all the cables that are needed for the appliances. I have tried to hide the cables with not much success. Since hiding didn't clearly work, decorating should do a better job.

Sometime ago I saw a cable tuned with electric tape on some blog and later I have seen tuned cables everywhere in the blog world. Such a cool idea, I wish I knew who started this.

So inspired by all the blogs and the coming holiday season I pimped one of the cables candy cane red. I love it and amazingly I'm not annoyed by any of the cables now.

Anti winter depression lantern

These are NOT Christmas lights, this is a keeping-away-the-depressive-darkness lantern.

Had to mention that because for some people putting up Christmas lights in middle of November is just too early, but since these are not Christmas lights so this is ok. Do not pay attention that I've labeled this post to "holidays". Ignore that.

This lantern I used to have in the conservatory, but now since there are already the circus lights, I felt there would have been too many different lights if the lantern would be there too.

It's always tricky to run those cables for the decorational lights, there is no socket outside by the front door so the cord runs inside under the vestibule rug then behind the yellow metal cabinet to a socket by the toilet door. I think I did a good job hiding the cable this time.

Working on some details

When Benita at Chez Larsson posted this, I knew I had to cover up the old paint that shows under the molding in the kitchen. I was really lazy when I painted the wall and did not remove the moldings, but instead I taped the edge and that was not the prettiest way to do it. Ofcourse the old greenblue paint shows from between the wall and the molding and it just looked bad.

Not the wisest idea not to do everything well on the first time, since doing things in smaller segments takes more time than as a whole, but none the less things get done that way too. It really did not take long to remove the molding, paint underneath it and screw the molding back. I'm really pleased I finally did this.

(And apparently I had not removed the molding even when I painted the wall greenish blue.)

Personalizing a diaper bag

From the hospital where we gave birth we received a diaper bag with free goodies inside. It's a good bag. It's good size and from a material that can be wiped clean. The problem is that everyone has the same bag and so those can be easily mixed up. Also it has a logo of a disposable diaper manufacturer. There is nothing particularly bad about this manufacturer, it's as good as any, but I just do not want to advertise them.

That is why I embroidered an image on a fabric and attached that on the bag. The image I chose refers to Likka's real name. I used stain stitch on the edges of the image and loosely filled the areas with cross stitches in different shades. I attached the fabric to the bag with buttonhole stitch. And that's it, now it cannot be mixed up with all other diaper bags.

The christening of Likka

 

We had Likka's christening at our home. After the ceremony my dad gave a short speech and we had toast of sparkling wine. Then some general mingling together with four different pies, salad, coffee and cakes. A's mom made all the pies, I made the cakes.

Likka behaved really nicely during the christening, momentarily she cried a bit, but mainly she was just looking around amazed of all the hazzle around her.

The rose cake is made with a recipe from Kinuskikissa (in Finnish), only with different decorations and the other cake is a velvet cake with a recipe from ET magazine (not available online). Both were yummy!

Preparing for the christening

Some stuff to do for tomorrows christening of Likka