Holiday Wrap-up

So yeah, I kinda took a bit of a blogging break there, huh? After a crazy Fall, I tried to keep December as stress-free as possible and that basically meant that sewing and blogging got to take a backseat to all of the other holiday activities. While I may not have been sewing, I was spending enough time in the kitchen to more than make up for it.

This year, I spent a full 3 day weekend baking and making sweet treats for co-workers and other friends and family. The goodies were packed into individual boxes and delivered over several days. I think I made somewhere around 600+ white chocolate pretzels snacks, 5 dozen gingerbread snowflakes, 20 dozen cakeballs, 5 dozen gingerbread cakes and a tray of brownies. Yeah, it was nuts. Pictures from the kitchen madness:

Two weeks later, we had my mom and brother over for a small Christmas Eve dinner before we opened gifts and generally made merry. I grabbed the ham from Honey Baked Ham shop so I could focus on the sides - slow cooker gratin potatoes, creamed spinach, roasted carrots with dill and roasted asparagus. For dessert, homemade pumpkin pie.

Add to that a ton of beer, wine and other spirits and we had a great night.

The next morning, Jim and I were up super early to head off to his parent's house for Christmas breakfast and more gift opening. The breakfast spread is always yummy and expansive including pancakes, breakfast casserole, fruit, muffins, bacon, eggs and a variety of beverages. That afternoon, we had the rest of the extended family (including my mom and brother) over for a full Christmas dinner. The average group is 40+ folks and I'm always amazed that we're able to get everyone seated in the house. See?

I had been asked to make a couple of appetizers, so I made mini caprese bites and a gigantor cheeseball (thanks again Winnie!).

The cheeseball was the hit of the pre-dinner hour. That sucker was gobbled up and only a few dregs were left by the end of the night. Guess I'll file that one in the "tried and true" favorites box. ;) Another rollicking good time was had by everyone, but I was pretty much exhausted by the end of the weekend. It had been a looong month.

We were the definition of boring for NYE, hanging out at the house with a homemade dinner, a bottle of wine and the countdown on television. Even though it wasn't terribly exciting, it was just what we needed. We managed to catch up on some sleep and get the house all put back together before returning to work that Monday, so I'm calling it a win.

And now, here we are in 2011. Crazy! I'm not one for resolutions, but this feels like it's going to be a good year. I figure if it's anywhere close to as awesome as 2010 was, then I will be more than thrilled. I'm back in the sewing room, which I missed terribly and am happy to be back to a normal schedule. Hope the holidays treated everyone well and that 2011 is starting off on the right foot for ya!

Pajama Party! KS 2257 & Simplicity 3696

With all this sewing the past 7 months, I haven't made a single thing for my husband. Poor thing. :( This is mostly due to men's clothing being much more labor intensive and tailored than simple women's clothing. It's not like I can sit down and whip up a quick skirt or dress for him. And then it dawned on me - pajama pants! This was particularly timely as the last few months of the year finally got cold enough at night that he started regularly sleeping in pj pants again.

When I went shopping for fabric in the fall, I couldn't find a nice plaid flannel print to save my life. So, I opted for a wacky golf print from the snuggle flannel line at Joann's. I mean, seriously, this fabric is ridiculous, but I thought it was a funny nod to his new obsession and a good way to make a wearable muslin without spending a ton of money on the fabric.
I was originally going to use a unisex pant pattern, but quickly realized that it didn't have a fly front, which just seemed silly to make for Jim. Instead, I bought Kwik Sew 2257, a basic men's pj pant. I have to say, this is only the second KS pattern I've used, but I'm becoming a big fan.
The fly front went together very easily and looked just like the RTW pants he owns. I also particularly like the method of making and inserting the elastic waistband. After folding down the fabric for the casing, you sew the elastic into a circle, slip it under the fabric and stitch the casing closed while stretching the elastic taut. The top of the waistband is then stitched to hold the elastic in place. Gives it a really clean look.
The only major change I had to make was to lower the waistband by about 2 inches, which included shifting the top of fly front down as well and shortening the length. Oh, and I omitted the tie at the waist because of a time crunch - oops. In hindsight, I could probably go down a size for him, as they're a little bigger through the legs than is really necessary.
I wrapped these up for him for Christmas Eve, so he'd have new pajamas to wear for Christmas. I know a lot of people have this as a tradition and I think I'm going to adopt it for our family. Since I knew he was getting pjs that night, I thought it only fair to have a new pair to wear as well.

After being unhappy with the sultan-esque lounge pants from Amy Butler, I bought this Simplicity pattern to give the wide leg thing another go. Not wanting to ruin another pricey piece of fabric, I found some snowflake flannel on the clearance table at Joann's and thought it very season appropriate. And, if I hated them, I was only out a whooping $4.

I'm happy to say that this pattern is a much better style for me. Still a wide leg, but more reigned in than the AB ones. The only change I made was to copy the waistband from the KS pattern, including using a much wider elastic than was called for in the pattern. This lowered the waist band by about 1.5 inches, which was perfect for me - they now sit just above my hips instead of at my natural waist.

And here we are, in front of my in-laws tree, in our new pajamas! We both look so happy in this picture, right?
For some reason he is fine posing with me, but ask him to pose by himself and you get this:
You'd think I was making him stand before a firing squad, not a camera. Although, I guess it's better to only have one ham per family:
Heh. ;)


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After several suggestions from some of the folks on Pattern Review, I think I'll recut the AB lounge pants using this pattern. There should be plenty of fabric and I think it will turn them into something that I'll actually wear instead of something that is just kicking it at the back of my closet.

Homemade Holidays

Every year I say I'm going to cut back on how many gifts I need to buy for the holidays and every year that goes by the wayside pretty quickly. This year, though, I really made an effort to make gifts for individuals that are part of the large groups that receive gifts from me.

The first group is my besties at work. I have a group of about 8 women that I'm close with and they help keep me sane and happy at my job. We always exchange small tokens of appreciation with each other during the holidays to say thanks. They are all pretty avid readers (it's no wonder I'm friends with them) so I opted to make beaded bookmarks for them. I LOVE the way they turned out! While they are popular items on Etsy, they aren't usually sold in regular stores, so everyone was very pleased with them. They are really easy to make, the materials are inexpensive (especially if you're making them in bulk) and they are so pretty. I work in a really large office and even aside from my besties, I have interactions with a large number of fellow professionals as well as support staff each day. While I don't feel compelled to buy some large for each of these people, a small token of appreciation goes a long way to building goodwill in the office... and helps to ensure that when I need something done in a rush job, they are willing to help quickly. :) This year I opted to make the Martha Stewart Gingerbread Snowflake cookies. I made them last year for a holiday cocktail party and they were a huge hit. They're not technically difficult to do and they taste so yummy, but good grief are they time-consuming. I doubled the recipe because I needed 3 dozen cookies, but I forgot that my cookie cutter yields more cookies per batch than the recipe states. Which meant I made 4 dozen. Yeah, I'm tired just thinking about it. But, they turned out great and everyone that received one was very happy with them. My last big batch of homemade gifts was for the girls that I met 4 years ago while planning my wedding. We do a big holiday get-together every year and several people usually bring "party favors" for everyone - a holdover from the wedding planning days. Almost all of these girls have DSLR cameras, which made my choice of party favor pretty easy - a padded camera strap cover to add a little pop of color to the camera. I used the basic template here, modifying to add a lens cap pocket on each side of the strap cover. I tried to pick fabrics for each girl that fit their personality and style, so there was a wide range of colors and prints. I like how they turned out and am excited to make one for myself. :)

And now it's time to start trolling Etsy again so I can figure out what in the world I'll be making next year!

Merry Merry

I hope everyone had a very merry end of the week. While our Christmas plans encountered a few snafus, we still had a really lovely Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. My mom had been planning to come down and spend most of the week with us, but her back decided to go out on her the Saturday before Christmas. Oy. Multiple trips to the chiropractor didn't seem to help much and the decision was finally made to put her on muscle relaxers to help the back spasms. This basically meant she was at home for the rest of the week as even without the pills that made her sleepy, driving wasn't really an option. :( My brother and I decided to skip our plans to get together for Christmas Eve since my mom wouldn't be there to join us and his work schedule made it easier to just meet up on Christmas for dinner.

This left Jim and I at home, with a very mellow Christmas Eve day and night - something that both of us really enjoyed. We drove around to look at lights as soon as it got dark and then headed home to make our normal Friday night dinner of steak and potatoes. Add a bottle of red wine and we were ready to tuck in for a quiet night at home.

After dinner we opened our gifts to each other - something that we always do just the two of us. I got some awesome kitchen goodies inspired by Thomas Keller, some CDs (Glee Vol. 2 baby!!) and a beautiful necklace that was a total surprise. He did good! Jim got some new sports binoculars, assorted tee shirts (his favorite being the Three Sheets Drunken Monkey shirt) and new golf stuff. Needless to say, we both felt very spoiled. The next morning had us up early to head out to my in-laws house for breakfast and to celebrate Christmas with them. This is a tradition we've had going for several years now and I love it. It's loud and chaotic, but it feels like something out of a movie. The food was awesome, as always, and the company was even better. After breakfast, it was time to open (more) presents. I got some cute clothes (including a really adorable retro print lady coat), a gift certificate to Barnes and Noble and some more fun kitchen stuff. Jim made out with more golf stuff and some assorted clothing. Hilarity ensued with he opened two sweaters back to back and they were practically identical. His mom had completely forgotten what she had bought earlier in the month and accidently bought a twin to the original sweater. Too funny. A flurry of other gifts were exchanged and everyone was very happy by the time the tree was bare. It was then a mad dash to shower and get ready to head down to Orange County for Christmas Dinner with the big 'ol extended family - approximately 40 people this year, kinda on the small side actually. :)

Dinner was a loud and chaotic and full of food and booze. Basically, a great night. I was really happy that my brother was able to make it down to dinner - it was nice to spend Christmas with him and catch up a bit on what he's been up to recently. I also got to finally meet Patty, Jim's uncle's Glen of Imaal terrier. OMG! She is just too freaking cute! Such a sweet little pup. Instead of exchanging gifts with everyone, the family does a men's and a women's grab-bag. Folks put in a gift around $25 and then we use similar rules to a White Elephant exchange to determine how the gifts are passed out. The women's side is always very tame and gifts are typically clothing giftcards, scarfs, CDs, etc. The men's side, however, is just crazy! Almost every gift includes booze of some sort and each family trys to work together to hoard the good stuff. It's hard to explain, but absolutely hilarious to watch. This year Jim put in a Snuggie with a bottle of Maker's Mark in the bottom of the box. My brother ultimately got it and was very pleased with his win as you can see. :)
At the end of the evening, we took Jim's youngest brother back with us to my in-laws house and had a traffic-free ride back, filled with lots of chit chat. The next day found Jim and I at Disneyland. It was crowded, but we've definitely been there on far crazier days. We missed our annual holiday trip to the park last year, so it was nice to squeeze a trip in this year.

As you can probably tell, we really had a great Christmas this year aside from my mom not being able to join us for the festivities. I'm very lucky to be have married into such a warm family and that I've been able to meld my family with my husband's big old extended one. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend as well and that it was filled with food, family and love.