It's almost down...sigh....

Still working on taking the tree down. It's kind of like ending a book, or a chapter in my life. I do it reluctantly. Mostly 'cause it's a pain in the butt, but most mostly because it's sooooo beautiful and I like beautiful things.I have some more ornaments I'd like to share. For those of you that like to sew, here are some ideas for you. For next year, of course.

This one is my pasta angel. My friend Carol showed me how to make these many years ago. You can see the Ziti with lines body (my body now has lines, too) , the bowtie pasta wings, the elbow macaroni that make up the angels elbows, etc. The head is a wooden ball and her hair is rice. She is holding a thumbtack for a candle. Then it's all spray painted gold and a ribbon tied to the back for hanging. Cute, I think. (OK, so the first one I show you is not a sewing project...)

This next one was made by my friend Jackie. The body under the dress is weighted down with something  inside: I don't know, rice or sand or beans, don't really know.  It's hard to see, but she has a little halo made from gold wires. She's about 6 or 7 inches tall. She sits behind the glass in my hutch cabinet next to the wine goblets, peering out at the goings on in my kitchen. I have many things that Jackie has made for me. 

This angel is very cute, I think !

I made this one. My sitting angel. She sits on top of the Hutch cabinet, feet dangling. Her dress is like a big bean bag and I put rice inside to give her some body and weight. For me, it takes cookies, cake and icecream to give me some body and weight. Which, by the way, I WILL be taking off this new year. I WILL, I WILL, I WILL.....

Oh well, the next one....

                      

                

This is an angel my friend Ann gave me one Christmas. I hang her on a closet door knob in my family room, where the tree is. She is about 6 inches tall and hand made by someone...

I have many, many things in my house from Ann, really nice things.

This is a heart ornament that I made for some of the folks I work with, oh, about 10 years ago. Maybe more than that. I made about 4 or 5 for my own tree.

I cut out a heart from some  vintage looking fabric a bit bigger than the finished piece I wanted to make. I drew a smaller heart in the center and stitched around it with my sewing machine. Then I cut the inner most heart away, keeping the stitching. I turned the piece inside out, and then stitched the outside perimeter with a zig zag stitch while at the same time stuffing some batting inside as I was stitching along. That was interesting to do :-p    I hand stitched a bell in the center and hot glued some greenery and a gold string to hang it by to the top.

Now, this one is difficult to see and to understand what it is. It's hard to photograph with a flash because, it's a mirror I cut into a square. I collected shells from the seashore and used them in this ornament. (In the summer, I'm not stupid.)

I bound the edges of the mirror and each shell with copper foil and soldered the entire business together. Sort of like doing stained glass without the stained glass. I soldered a jump ring to the top and tied a pretty maroon ribbon to the top for hanging. The tiny little balls you see in the middle are b b's soldered on.       

And finally, speaking of balls, these are my little nuts. My son made these with me when he was little. As you can see, they are walnuts, with acorn or hazelnut, I can't recall, heads. They are 

glued to little wooden stars I bought at a  craft store. I bought fuzzy little balls for their tiny arms and feet and even tinier fuzzy balls for their eyes and noses. Then, taking scraps of felt, he made their little hats. I don't know how he did it, especially the green jester hat that has 3 points on it! Scraps of leather made their caroling books, and off they went, caroling. Oh yeah, they are supposed to be mice.

I can't remember if they have pipe cleaner tails or not. I think they do, but they are now wrapped in tissue paper and in a box.

OK, NOW I can go and work on putting away the rest of the decorations....or maybe not. I don't mind having boxes and bins all over the house anyway.;-(

At least not for one more day.