"Oh, the cleverness of me"--a handmade nativity

I made this little nativity set because I wanted one that my kids could play with. My aunt says I need to make a pattern up for it and I am working on it. I hope you all are excited. It is just acrylic felt and DMC floss. I am working on making the bottoms flat, so they stand up better.


shepherd

Three Kings

Holy Family

dialogue between me and my son:
Boy: "Mom, why is there yellow around baby Jesus's face?"
Me: "Well, I wanted to show that he is from Heaven and special, so I gave him that golden halo."
Boy: "Why does the wise man have yellow around his face?"
Me: "Umm, well, because he is a king, so he has a golden crown, plus, I like yellow and purple together."
Boy: "Why don't the other wise men have yellow, too?"
me: "Sigh. I don't know."




I teach the 14 & 15 year old young women at my church. Wednesday night we had a program where we talked about "Be the Girl of your Dreams." We needed a castle, so I volunteered to make one. I took an old sheet, a sharpie marker and some acrylic paint and panicked. Luckily, my sister, Mary, came over and she gave the the courage to start. I sketched out what I wanted on paper. She suggested that I add in some random stones and said it looked great. So I took a deep breath and attacked the sheet with the sharpie. Then she helped me paint it. We mixed a little water with the paint because the sheet was soaking it up so fast. I am really proud of how well it turned out, even though it was pretty much all luck. The best part is, that now I have the sheet forever for when my kids want to play dress up. Lots of paint soaked through onto my table. Luckily, MOST of it washed off. *whew*


Last of all, I know yesterday, I said I don't like to put in too many links because it gets overwhelming. I know when I go to other people's blogs and the link list is a page long, I am like--how could I ever visit all those?
But I had to update my link list because it was woefully short. So, I added some links and I added a description of each one so you all could make better decisions about which ones to try. Rest assured, these are my most favorite blogs, nothing so-so here, only the most marvelous here.

All about Food

For New Years, You must eat black-eyed peas for good luck. I made Hoppin' John Soup last night and it was TAS-T-EE.
Here is my recipe. The best part is, that this soup tasted alot like a chicken casserole recipe that I got from "The Sweet Potatoe Queen's Book of Love" called Death Chicken or Zipadee-do-dah Chicken. But that recipe oozes cholesterol. It has cream of chicken soup, tons of bacon, and skin-on chicken pieces. My soup is pretty low fat and good for you! If you changed the bacon to kielbasa, it would probably be South Beach diet worthy.

Zipadee-Do-Dah Hoppin' John Soup

Brown 4 strips bacon in a pan with about 1/2 a small onion.
Drain one can black-eyed peas and 2 cans white beans.
Add 1 quart of chicken stock
1 tsp thyme
sprinkle with cayenne pepper
add 1/2 cup white rice and 1 cup water (or 1 cup already cooked brown rice)
simmer 15 minutes until heated through and rice is soft.

It is so simple, yet sooo tasty.










And I thought I would give an update on the felt food for christmas.
I made 8 pancakes (with butter and syrup), 4 fried eggs, 8 slices whole wheat bread, 4 puddles each of peanut butter and grape jelly, 8 tomatoes (or salomi, your choice) and 4 lettuce leaves.

I drew (drawed?) the patterns my self and just top stitched everything together. I added a little stuffing in the pancakes. If I can figure out how to post a pdf file then I will share the patterns I made.

**I figured it out! Here are the patterns I drew for felt food.
Bread & Fried Egg
Pancake and More


You can also find some cute patterns at Cherrymix.com

Freakin' Awesome Felt

This is made by Lilly Bean for Mahar dry Goods So I saw it yesterday and now I am debating because
I was going to make felt paper dolls for my girls for Christmas. But this is amazing. Here is another lovely I found amazing Are you drooling yet?