Christmas Elfing

Yes 'elfing' is a verb. I had a handful of Christmas projects this year-- not too many but some that would be fun to share.

The sewing project for this year was for my mom. She recently got a very nice and very huge dining table so we wanted to help her dress it. In my family we have a gift giving name rotation-- which I love because instead of getting every person a tiny gift it allows me to focus on one member of the family and make/buy them something nice. This year Dennis had Mom... as you can see I helped but he contributed more than one might assume.

See the fish? and the scales? That's Dennis. He provided input for the design and ultimately decided on this one and he went to the fabric store with me... I did all the needle pushing though.

This shows the table runner's reversible-ness. And my foot in the bottom picture gives you a sense of scale-- yes we can pretend that's exactly why my foot is in the picture-- purely intentional!

This was our gift for my mother-in-law (Dennis got a nice frame for it once we arrived in California). When I was there last Summer I looked through her wedding album and took a photograph of one of their wedding pictures-- one of my favorites-- and painted this watercolor from that photograph... then I took a photograph of the painting to post it here. I think she really liked it. 2009 would have marked their 45th wedding anniversary so I wanted to do something special.

I had my sister Jayna for our gift exchange. I sent her a box of specialty groceries that are expensive where she's living if available at all-- and perhaps the best use ever of the postal service's flat-rate boxes! In that box I gave her a block of watercolor paper because I love these pre-stretched blocks of paper that don't buckle when painted. I look forward to seeing what she paints! I couldn't help but use the opportunity to give her a little painting to show my love. Again I worked from a photograph.

This is from a picture I took while I was visiting Jayna in Montreal. This is her friend Veronica. She was taking us to her marching band practice. She plays tuba. It was raining.