Our Gifts - Part Two

And finally, here are Preston's gifts that he made for Elliott and me:
I have been asking for individual family portraits from him for a few years now and by George, he finally started! He painted my portrait first. So for the time being, it looks like I might be a little narcissistic. Just a tad. But he promises the others are coming soon, so we'll keep it up waiting patiently for the other two portraits.
You may remember these prints? Well, I contacted the artist to see if she could make them larger and she said she couldn't. So Preston decided he would paint a similar one himself. Elliott LOVES it. Like, screams "horsey!" every time he goes near his bed and stares at it for a minute, loves it. Does a heart good.

Our Gifts - Part One

We decided to make a lot of the gifts for each other this year for Christmas. Some people in our family are more talented (ahem - Preston!) then others (me). But we really enjoyed making them and we all have loved the outcome! Here are the gifts I made for Preston and Elliott:
The oh-so-popular notebook shirt. I made the mistake of thinking I would prefer to make it with fabric markers rather than fabric paint. Even though I do like the "hand drawn" look from the markers, it took way too long to do.
This is a fishing pole. Elliott was using "mommy's pretty" (my necklaces) to fish off of the coffee table. So I thought this would solve that problem and it has. It's a dowel rod, hand painted (not taped - again, I wanted that messy look), and I drilled a hole towards the top and strung it. Originally I tied the string on, and it was not working. So I drilled. Yes, there was smoke and yes, I had to take a drilling break every 2-3 seconds or else I am sure it would have caught fire, but it works! 
One of the gifts I made for Preston was an NYU hoodie. He kind of collects them from the universities he has attended. So I looked up pictures of some examples and designed my own. The font was tough to make, but after that it was pretty much the basic freezer paper, fabric paint project. Except for the zipper. That zipper! The "Y" had to go right in the middle and therefore over the zipper. But it all came out in the end. The important thing is that he loves it.

Part two (Preston's gifts) coming up Monday!

happy (new year's) weekend

How are you celebrating this NYE? We're throwing a mini-shindig here, just us and a friend or two :) We'll have some minor decorations, yummy food, our ball drop and we'll be filling out these awesome resolution cards. I hope you have a wonderful new year's weekend friends! May 2012 be wonderful, successful and bright!

p.s. There's still time to vote for Elliott if you so desire (please do!) 

{Beautiful glitter candles}

{I want this...badly}

{A perfectly easy DIY NYE}

{Sparkly (unicorn?) party hats!}

{Pure awesomeness}