Monday Motivation

Good thought!  :)

The Elf On The Shelf

What is The Elf on the Shelf? 

It's a really fun Christmas tradition you can buy in a box!  You've probably already seen or heard something about it?  It's become enormously popular in the States and has now made it to Australian shores.  Inside the box is an elf doll and a book...

In the hardcover book the Elf explains that Santa has sent him (or her) to watch over the children and family and report back to Santa every night during the Christmas season.  The Elf is a very good listener and is always looking for all the kind and the good things that children do.  (Of course, if there is some naughtiness going on then Santa gets to hear about that too. -  I personally don't love the idea of a 'Santa spy', but I do love the idea of being more aware of the good that people do, so I suppose it's up to us to put our own slant on it :)

Why has 'the Elf on the Shelf' become so popular?

When the Elf arrives the children get to name him/her.  This is important because, (as the book explains), elves get their magic from being named.  There is an Elf on the Shelf website where you can register the adoption of your Elf :)  Together your family read the book, which explains all this, plus the following:  

Rules:
* The children cannot touch the elf or he will lose his magic
* The elf can listen to what the children tell him, but cannot talk back, that's Santa's law.
* The elf flies back to the North Pole each night and tells Santa what he has seen - when he comes back he goes to a new spot in the house.

flickr.com

The fun is in the last rule!  By hiding in a new spot each morning around the house, the Elf and the family play an ongoing game of hide and seek :)   Some elves are quiet and reserved, while some just love having fun and pulling pranks. Elves are apparently very adaptable and tend to meld into the culture and the personalities of the family who adopt it!  :)

When does the Elf visit each year? 

In the States it seems common for the Elf to appear at  Thanksgiving, (the fourth Thursday in November).   I would think in Australia that either the 1st of December or the 25th of November would work, (or whatever you like, because it's your family and your Elf - so he'll probably fit in with you!), and then would not be seen after Christmas Eve?   

I love the idea I found here of welcoming your Elf when he appears each year with a Christmas breakfast!

You will also find some ideas here about how to welcome your Christmas Elf to your family, with some thoughts here about naming your Elf.

Once you go looking you will also find a lot of ideas to have fun with your Elf on Pinterest and Google images.  The best site I have found is over at mypidgeonpair.com where the Blog author is currently presenting a full month of 'the Elf on the Shelf' ideas, along with downloadable activities and cards to suit a family or even a classroom.  The author is creative and very generous with her ideas.   (She's an Australian too :)

Some other sites or pages you may enjoy are:  (click on the blue links to go to the page or site)

Where to buy the Elf on the Shelf?  This is especially helpful for Australia.  I bought mine from Bundles of Fun.  They were a few dollars more expensive than the Book Depository, but it should be here in a few days instead of a few weeks.  The Elf on the Shelf is quite overpriced wherever you buy it..  However, it would be easy to buy or make an elf yourself if you preferred, and introduce the story in your own words.   Like all family traditions, we can make it our own :)

Interview with the author    This gives an interesting and informative look into how TEOTS came about.

How to improve your Elf!   This is a tutorial about making your Elf bendable and 'grippy'.  This site also has more fun ideas here and here.  

Remember mypidgeonpair.com for lots of great ideas!

And don't forget the official web site.  Girl elves, and elves with a 'dark' complexion are also available.

While we didn't have a TEOTS while our family was growing up, we did have our own fun-loving visitors each Christmas season.  I bought a handful of bendable Santas one year, thinking that the children would enjoy them.  Over the years those Santas got up to a lot of mischief !  Of course we didn't usually think to take photos (doh!) but we fondly remember finding them using our goldfish bowl as a jacuzzi, mountain-climbing up our picture wall,  playing golf on the sideboard, and napping off in front of a movie.  They make their appearance each year when we unpack our Christmas gear and start to decorate the house.  I'll leave you with the few photos we did think to take..  

Will you be welcoming an Elf this year? :)

PS... 

As suggested, it would not be hard to make or find your own elf, as these additional photos show.  The first is of some shelf elf's that Jessima's Mum made as a Christmas ornament, although you could easily use one as your EOTS too.  All the materials needed can be sourced from a haberdashery shop like Spotlight.  He's cute, isn't he?  A good DIY project :)

Amy purchased her Christmas elf from a Christmas supply shop.  He has bendy arms and legs that make him easy to pose. Here he is, having turned all the milk in their house blue one morning!

Here he is reading  'The Little Christmas Elf' to Ken and the Barbies the following morning..

There are many ways to apply the tradition to our own family.  Just be flexible and just have fun with it! :)


PPS...

I just came across these EOTS photos here, of an Elf being introduced to Australia and its wild-life.  Funny!


   

   

  

    

                      

Homemade Christmas Present Idea: Ribbon Wands

http://www.bakersfieldmom.com

Last year I made a bunch of ribbon wands for Christmas gifts for our girls and a bunch of cousins.  They were really sweet and quick and easy to make! The oldest cousin I gave one to was I think 11.  I guess I'm partial to them because I did rhythmic gymnastics for a while growing up, so I think they're awesome :)  Our girls play with theirs all the time.

  

Materials:

• Wooden dowels (allow about a foot in length per wand) - got these from Spotlight
• Thick Satin Ribbon (I used ribbon that was 5cm thick for most of the wands, 4cm for the wands I did for the 1 year olds like Ana.  I bought lengths that were 3m long for the bigger cousins which was a nice length, and I think Ana's is only 2m long - easier for the little ones to play with without knotting it up)
• Eye-hooks (these are something used for blinds or curtains or something?!  It took the ladies at spotlight a little minute to figure out what I was after, thank godness I knew what they looked like!...)  You bought them seperately for a few cents each :)
  
  

• Fishing swivels (yeah.. weird.  AND my first real sojourn into Anaconda.  But they're the secret to making the ribbon wands get the movement they really need!!  So there I was in the fishing section, choosing the most flexible and aesthetically pleasing kind of 'barrel swivel' I could find :))  Here are the ones I settled on...
  
  

• Optional: paint/wood stain
• Needle and thread the colour of your ribbon-ish (Okay, if it's going to annoy you, you'd better find a thread the EXACT same colour of your ribbon... I always kind of like that my thread's a tiny bit darker or lighter than the fabric I'm using... and still wondering why I do not celebrate a great deal of sewing success!! :))
  
  

How to make them:

1.     Cut the dowel to size.  I (haha - okay, James) cut most of the pieces about a foot long, but did a couple of smaller pieces for the babies.  For example the one we made for Ana was only 9 inches, or about 23cm long.

2.     Paint/stain the dowel.  We just stained ours (okay, James did this bit for me too :)) using leftover wood stain from some shelves a couple of years ago.  Here's the before/after wood:

3.     I'm sure I could have managed steps 1 and 2 myself, but James was happy to participate in making the gifts, which was nice... plus he took the wood to work and cut it on some big machine and it took 2 seconds...

4.     Screw in the eye-hooks, into the centre of one end of the piece of dowel - I ended up needing to use pliers or something to turn the eye-hook near the end, to make sure it was in nice and tight!

5.     Slip one end of the swivel onto the eye-hook, and close the eye hook up again nice and tight again with pliers or something (okay, I admit, James did this too...but again, it's all doable - I was just keen to get him on board Christmas-ing! :))

6.     Get out your ribbon!!  This is the bit that I really enjoyed, partially I guess because I actually DID this bit, but also because it's kind of nice and therapeutic to do a little hand sewing every now and then! Especially if it really is just a little.. :) I threaded the ribbon through the loose end of the swivel, and then I folded the end over a couple of times, then sewed it together.  I folded it over a few times so it wouldn't fray.. and then I sewed it all around the folds, as you can see in the pics.  My sewing is nothing special at all (except for therapeutic for me!), and looks kind of awful I guess, but you can't tell unless you're taking close up photos to put on your blog (sigh) :)  I'm sure you could do this and maybe make it look a little more professional!! :) 

7.    Grab a match/candle/lighter/whatever brand of fire you like, and burn the end a little to seal it and so it doesn't fray! :)

And you're done!! :)  Simple, cute and a lot of fun!!!  Hopefully whoever you're sewing it for, loves it as much as my little one does! :)

Poetry and Me

We're not really friends.

I always feel a little bad about this.  Like I mustn't be cultured enough or educated enough to 'get it'.  I've read Tolstoy and Dickens and I love history and classical music.... but try as I might, I just don't like poetry.

I don't even think it's that I don't 'get it'.. I've studied it.  I've read a fair bit of it... I just prefer prose. I love poetic prose even. But just not poetry.

*heavy, defeated sigh*

Well, actually, there's one tiny little kind of poetry that I really like.  I mean, it's the beginners poetry.... most people probably don't even count these as poetry.... but I love couplets.

Like really love them.

One of my favourites is a little Emily Dickenson delight that mum taught me many years ago:

They may not need me, but they might.
I'll let my head be just in sight.
A smile as small as mine might be
Precisely their necessity.

Lovely!

And, since we're on a roll, here's another one I read recently and have popped up on a card by my bathroom mirror:

But chief of all Thy wondrous works
Supreme of all Thy plan,
Thou has put an upward reach
Into the hearts of man

Isn't that wonderful? I love the thought, and how easy these are to commit to memory and pull out as life's situations dictate.

So... what do you think?  Do they pass?  Am I still cultured?

:)

xo Tammy

How Hard Can It Be? - DIY Upholstery

  

Have you ever noticed how surprisingly easy a lot of things are if you will just jump in and give them a go?   ...And stop thinking that you can't do something - at least until you are proved wrong!?

Have you ever tried upholstery?  I hadn't either, but I've written my instructions for covering these lounges, which was simpler than I thought it would be.  Below that are simple directions for covering a chair - something that anyone can easily do, no sewing required :)

These two lounges (you can see them a bit more here) were as cheap as chips when we bought them over twenty years ago - a few hundred dollars for the two of them.  Although they look identical, one is a pull-out sofa bed.  They were originally covered with a very cheap calico which, naturally enough, lost whatever good looks it used to have after spending several years with our several children.  It never really occurred to me to replace the lounges because we couldn't afford it at the time, so I looked around for some inexpensive upholstery fabric.  I found this light-cream coloured, raised and tufted material at an end-of-roll warehouse and bought about twenty metres very cheaply.  

I had in mind to make some kind of slip-covers - something that I could remove for washing.  I'd never done anything like this before, but how hard could it be?  I have resisted the temptation to find you a great YouTube video that might show how to achieve this because,..  well, it's probably going to seem a bit more complicated than the way I did it, so I thought I'd just tell you what I did instead.

I could have tried to remove the old covers to use as a pattern, but I decided that it would be easier working with the original fabric 'shell' still on, than with uncovered foam.  I used some un-needed cheap cotton fabric that I had at home to make my own pattern by doing this:

1.  I took off the loose cushions, then took note of the placement of the seams in the original covered lounge.

2.  Using my pattern fabric, I rough-cut larger than needed panels to match each of the panels on the lounge.

3.  One panel at a time and using basic sewing pins, I pinned each rough-cut pattern fabric panel against the original lounge panel, stretching lightly to keep it smooth.  (Keep the pattern fabric square to the grain of the fabric so that the material itself doesn't stretch.)

4.  Using a marking pen, I fairly carefully and lightly (so it wouldn't mark the lounge) drew the seam lines on the lounge (I could feel them through the fabric), onto each pattern piece.  (You could use a fabric marking pen for this, but it fades off after a short time.)

5.  After unpinning I, again pretty carefully, added a seam allowance around each panel and cut each of the pattern panels out, following my marking lines.

6.  (At this point, I tacked a few pattern pieces together, to see if they fit the lounge and to see if I seemed to be on the right track.  They seemed like they would be ok.)

7.  I also made pattern pieces for the four loose cushions.

8.  Before making any cuts on the good upholstery fabric, I carefully planned out the fabric to make sure that everything would fit and that the fabric pattern would work well on the lounge.   However, to save money on the good fabric, I planned to cut the pattern pieces that wouldn't be seen from heavy calico, instead of the upholstery material.  (eg  On the seat under the cushions, and on the back of the lounges.)  I also planned to cut some long narrow strips of the fabric to make my own matching binding.  (You can read how to do that here.)

9.  Using the patterns I had made, I now cut out the panel pieces from my upholstery fabric. (Again - I made sure that I had planned out all the pieces on the good fabric before I made the first cut!)

9.  Now it was just like a big jig-saw that I put together.  It was large and unwieldy but not too hard to sew.  Inserting the piping is always a little bit tedious and I actually got lazy with it (and I think was trying to get it done quickly for a party), so I never did do the piping around the front of the arms, unfortunately, since it would have looked better if I had.  You can see in the photos that I put it around the front of the cushions, up the centre back seam and along the front floor hem.  (Note: you will want to use a heavy gauge needle and upholstery thread in your machine.)

10. At the back of each lounge I used velcro down each side for easy removal of the covers for washing.  (I also used velcro to create an opening on the seat of the sofa bed, so the pull-out bed could be used without removing the lounge cover.)

I had no idea when I started if this was going to actually work..  But was a bit amazed and quite delighted to find that the covers fit like a glove, and peel off and on as needed.  Voila!  And Hurray! :)

We've had these covers on now for about 15 years, and so far they come up like new after each wash.  I wash them about three or so times a year.  I put them back on the lounge when they are still quite damp, and they fit very snugly and still do service after all this time.  (The photo above was from earlier this year.)

A much simpler project again is something like this chair.  Again, we bought this cheaply because it had only a basic calico cover.  Once I found some upholstery fabric I liked, (this was from an off-cut of a blind I made for our girls' room), nothing could have been easier:

1.  I worked out a placement for the flower pattern that I liked.
2.  I cut out a slightly larger than needed piece of fabric for each of  the chair panels.  I stretched and pinned these over the original fabric.
3.  Using a staple gun I started to attach the upholstery fabric to the chair by working all around each panel at the same time: one staple in one side, then one in the opposite side, then the other two sides, then each of the corners, etc.  (To keep the fabric square and tight.)
4.  Eventually, I stapled closely around all the edges, then closely trimmed off the excess fabric.

5.  Using a matching tape trim, you then glue the trim over the staples to cover them.   Easy!  

I did this chair about 10 years ago so I don't remember exactly how long it took to do but it wasn't long.  When the arm pieces got dirty after a few years, I pulled out my off-cuts and re-did them.

I'm sorry that I have such a terrible photo of these, but these are the dining chairs I've also covered (they're currently in storage or I could have tried for better pictures).  These took a bit of sewing and then stapling onto the under-base of the chairs.  It wasn't hard!

The best thing about trying out your own upholstery skills is that you can make your own fabric selections for your furniture. Have you ever found a great piece, but don't like the colour?  Maybe just have a closer look to see if it would be easy for you to recover with a fabric you like more..

 

http://anakral.blogspot.com.au

Once you get the hang of it..

You might not want to stop!

http://anakral.blogspot.com.au

http://anakral.blogspot.com.au

And don't forget - there are more than just chairs out there! 

Cynthia Bleskachek

Happy Upholstering! :)