Feltalicious Holiday Garland

I bought a great applique letter pattern from designsbyjuju.com to use on t-shirts. I love the cute curvy puffiness of this pattern. But my kids are a trifle too old for cutesy tees. I didn't want to waste the pattern, so I stitched out the letters for Merry Christmas and suspended them from ribbon. This little holiday spice will hang by the chimney the day after Thanksgiving.

In the meantime, I realized, of course that a Give Thanks garland would keep us focused on giving thanks until the thunderous hordes hit the stores.

Another use for this sweet pattern would be hair clippies. I used a few other patterns on colorful felt to make these sweet little pony decorations. On the back, a hair clip is inserted through a slit in the felt and secured with craft glue. Slip it above your pony tail or (as the girls are doing at our middle school) wear a huge clip right at the forehead. I don't totally get the look, but I'm not in 6th grade, so there's that.


To do it, simply stitch out your applique on felt using tear away stabilizer, trim away excess fabric. To make a clip, snip a little opening, slide a clip in, and dab a bit of glue. To make a pony tail holder, simply cut another smaller piece of felt, glue down the holder, then stitch the felt down, without going through to the front.

Denuding the tree

Time to take Christmas down and put it away for another. I greet this time with less than enthusiasm.

When we put the tree up, and get out all the ornaments and the sweet little decorations we've picked up over the year, we have fun. It is exciting to watch the kids look at their little selves, to remember my own past Christmases, to recall where and when certain items came from.

It sits in the corner over the season, an object of expectation. Gifts pile up underneath, friends come and admire, the lights glitter and flicker with impatience.

Christmas morning arrives, the tree gets less attention. After the initial lighting, the tree stands alone while underneath its limbs, the kids have removed everything for them in little stacks and begin ripping into gifts.

Later that same day, the tree, once such a symbol of promise, even just yesterday, now is obsolete. Of course you can't take the tree down on Christmas day so it stands. And stands, and stands.

The next few days it is still kind of cheery but mostly an wanted guest you're not sure how to get rid of. Finally, you tell yourself you'll take it down. And still it stands. You can't quite summon the energy to take it down. You know it means cleaning, and rearranging and organizing, and really, haven't you done enough of that already?

Down it must come. After the initial complaint of motivation, you quickly get the job done. And slowly you realize you like your house normal, without the tree, without the Santas, and the red and green and the extra stuff. It looks clean, tidy, kept.

I wonder at how fickle we are.