The Crafty side of Christmas and a little visit to the Big guy from the North

Even though this Christmas has been a little hectic having a newborn, I did get around to making it a little crafty!! First was this wreath for the mantel...inspired by Pinterest of course!

Then, I made the girls' teachers each a coffee cozy and embroidered their names on them:). I paired that with a travel cup from Old Navy and gift cards to Starbucks!

Next up was our nieces and nephews, which we gave gift cards to. So I made each of them an ornament with their name on it and a pocket in the back for the gc.

For my sweet baby, I made some Christmas bibs...here she is modeling one of them!  How cute is she???

Oh, and a little pic of her getting in the Christmas spirit with her santa hat Gram brought her:)  Thanks Janet for the fun little hat...she loves it!!!

Finally, I didn't forget my big girls....They LOVE arts and crafts so I found this cool idea off Pinterest:

(click on the picture to go to the website for a tutorial....I kind of tweaked it a bit for my girls...but easy to follow and turned out great)

I appliqued a cute silouette picture on the front and embroidered each girls' name on their own tote:

It has a pocket on the right side and elastic on the left to hold colored pencils, crayons, or skinny markers:

It is made to fit a composition notebook and I found some that have a space for a picture at the top and lines for writing at the bottom...Kyndall loves to write and illustrate stories.  She can write a few words and tries to sound out the ones she doesn't know.  She almost always remembers her punctuation too:)

We opened them early because we had church tonight, and I wanted them to have something to do while we were listening to the preacher....I think they liked them!!  Look at those smiles!!!

Okay, on to this year's Santa visit....

It started out great!  All 3 girls ready to tell Santa what they want for Christmas and Avery even promised to get her picture taken this year (she screamed and cried and opted out last year):

Don't they look happy and ready to visit the sweet old man??  Well, we got there and Kyndall sat right up on his lap, Emery calmly laid in his arms, and Avery screamed and ran to Bits and yelled to Santa, "I don't want to go over there, I am scared, Don't come over here Santa!!!"  and this is the picture we got:

Oh well, maybe next year!!!  But don't worry, Kyndall told Santa what Avery wants for Christmas!!!  I do love this picture:)