Came across 2 Green Monkeys the other day.  Sarah, the owner had sent me an email about my daughter’s drawing and letting her embroider it!  I had actually planned on trying to embroider it myself (which would have probably taken forever), but this sounded like the next best thing. 

I have plans to make it into a patchwork type pillow for Natalie’s room.  I think I’ll love it and so will she.  I’ll be sure to share the finished project when I’m done.  In the mean time,  go check out her site and all the items she has to offer!

All the stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that Saint Nicolas soon might be there.  Blah, blah, you know the rest.  I’ve got my first Christmas stocking completed!  The embroidery was a killer for me.  Although I did manage to almost finish all of it in one sitting while I was at a craft show.  It was kind of fun to sit there are sew by hand.  I made some similar stockings a few years ago for my brother and his wife, very fun.

I should have named my kids Jo or Sam or something on that order.  Have you ever read the book Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes?  Well Natalie is a pretty long name, almost as long as Chrysanthemum.  It’s a good book to by the way if you haven’t read it already.  Anyway, the jist of the story is that all the kids make fun of Chrysanthemum because her name is so long.  A short name is quite nice when you’re embroidering it on a Christmas stocking.  Maybe I’ll take that under consideration for the future…

Of course I have to mention that Natalie’s name is kind of special in regards to Christmas (no, sorry she wasn’t born on Christmas or even close).  The name Natalie “is of Latin origin, and its meaning is “birthday”. Refers to the birthday of Christ, or Christmas”.  [according to thinkbabynames.com]  Pretty cool, no wonder the first song she sang was Happy Birthday to You. 

I think we’re going to take a trip down Christmas stocking lane in my next post.  I’ll get busy and round up some pictures of Christmas stockings of the past, this’ll be funny.  Oh, I almost forgot, I’ll post a tutorial on this by the end of the week as well!

I was pretty excited to makes these for the girls.  I figured they’d be able to get quite a bit of use out of a nice trick-or-treat bag.  I made one for each so far, Natalie’s isn’t quite finished yet.  Here’s Emily’s bag:

I used this tote tutorial to make both of the bags, it was pretty straightforward and I liked how they came together.  I thought it looked a little too simple after the bag was done, so I did some freezer paper stenciling and added the scary cat!  I embroidered the eyes with some orange embroidery thread to make the thing look even more menacing, meeoow! (Hopefully Emily doesn’t think it’s too scary)

Here she is in her fall dress that I made her earlier this fall.