Christmas at Home

Well, I can tell I was officially burned out and exhausted by the time Christmas morning actually came around, because unfortunately I didn't take many pictures of the girls opening their presents.

To add to the excuses I made in my previous post, I had three huge projects going on this fall—designing my fabric collection for the Connecting Threads fabric design contest, making a quilt for a magazine, and making a quilt for a book. Between those three things, Christmas preparations, our normal day-to-day stuff, and the trip to Michigan (by myself because Bob was working), I was ready to collapse by December 25! I will definitely try not to do anything like that to myself again. (But no guarantees, of course—I mean, it was a fabric design contest, a magazine, and a book. How could I say no to any of those things?)

That's a long way of saying, bear with me here. Hopefully it won't be a continuing problem—I promise I will continue to do my best on this blog. And yes, we did have a fun Christmas anyway. Here are the shots I did get.

Claire's big gift theme this year was "Little Mermaid." Anything and everything related to Ariel was asked for from Santa at some point. But in particular she asked for Flounder and an Ariel who was wearing a dress (as opposed to Ariel with a tail). Here she is opening Flounder.

And here she is opening ... an Ariel with a tail. Oh well, she looks pretty happy anyway. And Santa must know what he's doing, because Opa and Grandma H. got her an Ariel in a dress later that day.

Claire also got this keyboard. Why? Because it was $12 and Santa needed to even the gift score between her and Elsa.

Elsa got Twister. She had no idea what it was, but seemed pretty psyched anyway.

And a big ol' bag of kiddie tennis balls so that she can play tennis with Daddy. : )

One of Elsa's biggest gifts was a Hello Kitty kids' sewing machine made by Janome (I've neglected to take a picture of her sitting at it, but she looks adorable). She has been wanting me to teach her how to sew, and I knew it would be a fun project for us to do together.

Our first project was this stuffed elephant (she named her Pumpkin). I did all the cutting, pressing, and hand-stitching, she did all the actual machine sewing, and did it remarkably well, if I do say so myself. We've also been working on a little patchwork doll quilt.

Among other things, the girls also got Tag books, an interactive Tag world map, and UDraw and Littlest Pet Shop for the Wii. Elsa got Claire a Dora Magical Fairy doll (that was Elsa's idea, based on a previous request by Claire), and Claire got Elsa some Zoobles (a specific request because her friend Eliana has them).

And I think that does it for Christmas 2011. On to 2012!