The Toy Box Years: Christmas Crafts

The Creators of the Toy Box Years

The creators of the Toy Box Years are my two beautiful daughters and wonderful, handsome soldier husband.

"Nani" (our oldest) is a 11 year old 6th grader who loves Taylor Swift, ballet, books, fashion designing and sewing. Ask her what she wants to be when she grows up and it changes daily to anything from "an artist" to "a teacher" to "a singer/dancer". Nani is also currently fighting a battle against brain cancer -- recently diagnosed in June 2016.

"Nudgie" (our youngest) is a very smiley, very happy, very giggly, very spirited 8 year old 3rd Grader who's favorite toys are anything that gives mommy an anxiety attack - ladders, stepstools, the climbing wall at the playground. Like her sister, she has a love of reading and coloring, loves gymnastics and still provides mommy lots of snuggle time!

"My Marine" is my high school sweetheart. We've been married over 20 years and met when we were 17. (You do the math....) His favorite toys are Blackhawk helicopters, the lawnmower, our steam cleaner, and microbrew beer bottles. My husband is also my hero in that he proudly serves his country as a Blackhawk crew chief (hence his favorite toy!). And need I say that there is nothing hotter than my man in uniform!

All About Me......

Once upon a time I had a career and worked in the corporate world. Once upon a time, I dreamed about leaving that all behind to follow my true calling -- being a wife and mommy.

The first part of my calling was fulfilled in 1995 when I married my Marine (now soldier) and my love. Little did I know that being a military wife would change me in so many ways and that because of that, I would have an extended family all over the world from Japan, to California, to North Carolina.

The second part of my calling took a little doing, but I finally achieved that dream in 2004 with the birth of our first child, followed 4 years later by her baby sister.

So now, when someone asks me what I do for a living - I simply smile and say proudly that I'm following my calling - I'm a mommy and a wife -- and I couldn't be HAPPIER -- I'm living in the Toy Box Years!!

This past weekend we attended our Battalion's Christmas party - which was so much fun! And I'll be posting some pictures in the next few days!

The invitation stated "holiday dress" - which could be interpreted in so many ways. I wasn't about to drag out the glitter dress, but I wanted something fun and festive! So, for the girls, I decided to make reindeer t-shirts using their hand & foot prints.

I pretty much bought Old Navy out of their red, green, and white long-sleeved tshirts! Then I bought some brown and gold glitter fabric paint, velcro dots, large google eyes, and sparkly red pom-poms. And on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, we went to work!

(You'll notice that the finished tshirts are actually red - and not green as shown in the pictures. And that's because we decided that we needed to do them again after Nani lost her balance and added another brown footprint across Rudolph's face!)

I added velcro dots to the tshirt and velcroed on the eyes and nose.
Makes for easy removal for washing too!

The girls wearing their t-shirts at the Christmas party.
We got lots of comments on them!

And not to be left out - mommy had to make a t-shirt of her own to wear too! I came across the blog, The Paisley Abbey that same weekend. Courtney did a post about an appliqued t-shirt that she made and as a bonus, she was giving away a copy of the template so that you could make your own. I jumped right on that and emailed her and received my pattern right away. You can find that post here. So, here's my version of Courtney's t-shirt!

Thanks for sharing Courtney! I got a ton of compliments on this t-shirt too!

And happily I discovered the wonderful product of Heat and Bond! Oh, the things I can make with this!

So we don't have any snow on the ground. Our decorations and tree aren't up. But I AM playing Christmas CDs and I pulled out our Christmas movies this past weekend.

But the biggest thing that rings in the Christmas season here is the first of the Christmas crafts that I make.

I've been dying to make a little Nativity set for our entertainment center. We have our traditional one that we've had since we first got married, but I wanted something homemade. So I made this:

It was pretty easy to make. I actually made it while watching Dancing With The Stars!

I used two miniature clay pots which I painted brown and dark blue. The heads are those cute little wooden balls, which I left natural and just painted some eyes and glued on hair. Baby Jesus was a little wooden doll body with painted eyes. The manger was a clay plate painted brown with some straw glued on it.