Holiday gift exchange 2015

I know it''s beginning of February but I did not get chance to write about the Holiday gift exchange yet.

It was wonderful last year. It is always a surprise on who your secret Santa will be and who you will draw. So this year I signed up for 2 exchanges. I sent two gifts, one to Illinois and another one to Virginia and received 2 gifts, one from Ukraine and another one from Latvia.

It is so much fun to open gifts like this! Both of my senders, Anna and Natasha, did a great job on their presents, packing and presentation. I loved my gifts and felt very special with  their lovely hand written notes. Thank you so much, girls, for your wonderful, wonderful presents!

First parcel came from Ukraine. I received 12 (!) beautiful handmade jewelry pendants from Anna (CreationsOfTrueFairy). One was beautiful embroidered and the rest of them were resin & dried flowers. 

Anna gathered the plants herself, dried them and even makes the gold framed pendants without the mold! Truly handmade, isn't it? They are so pretty, definitely conversation pieces!

 

My gift from Natasha (NatkaLV) came from Latvia and it was full of Latvians Christmas treats! I got a bag of cookies, delicious chocolates and even a box of Christmas tea! 

It was fun to sample them and also share with my friends during the holidays. Natasha also added a beautiful silver crochet snowflake and, as a special treat, fashionable lace boot cuffs.

Thank you so much, Anna and Natasha, for your lovely gifts!

Merry Christmas!

Peace, Joy and love. 

Merry Christmas to all!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all, my dear friends. May this Christmas bring you comfort, joy, peace and happiness to last throughout the coming year!

 

A Holiday tree cross stitch necklace DIY

This cross stitch necklace is a very quick project for the coming Holidays. I made mine in cheerful green and red Christmas colors but you can choose any colors you want.

 To make this, you need:

pre-made brass necklace with round pendant setting (I made my necklace together with Albina albinasjewelry)

white cardstock

white felt

linen to cross stitch

DMC threads

beads

Fabric/ paper and all purpose glue

embroidery and beading needles, scissors, i

How to make this:

Measure your pendant diameter and cut a circle from cardstock and another one from felt to fit inside the circle. Cut a 3rd circle from a linen fabric but make it overlap the cardstock circle, about 1/4" all the way around.

Fold the linen circle to find the center of the design and stitch your little Christmas tree. Carefully iron it and start to assemble.

Glue the felt circle on top of cardstock. Place the stitched design on top of your cardstock & felt sandwich and make some small vertical cuts all the way around the linen circle to fold the extra fabric around the base. Add some glue around the cardstock perimeter and fold the excess of linen towards the center to make a perfect round stitched insert for your brass pendant. Place it in between 2 sheets of white paper and put in under a heavy book for about 10 minutes to make it flat.

Glue your finished ornament to the pendant setting with all purpose glue. Place it under the book to grip for 10 more minutes. Sew the beads around the perimeter.

Here is a free cross stitch chart for you to make this, A Holiday Tree:

Happy Holidays!

Blue Christmas, A Christmas tree to cross stitch

While I am making some new small cross stitch patterns for the coming Holidays I'd like to add one to match the previous Snowflake one. You will find it here in my previous post. 

I made both ornaments a long time ago, both ornament look pretty together and continue the theme of a Blue Christmas.

Both of these patterns are very simple and you can finish your project over the weekend.

 

Please enjoy this free pattern. Happy Holidays! 

Sterling silver earrings giveaway on Irina's Cute box blog!

Aren't they pretty? These earring would go great with an evening gown. Which is always helpful since the winter holidays are not too far.  Stop by, leave a comment and you might be the one who will get these earrings for free.

This giveaway is open world wide and will run until September 7th, 2014. Stop by Irina's blog to sign up!

Hazelnut rugelach

We did not bake much this holiday season, just a couple of my favorite treats. One of them is hazelnut rugelach. This recipe seems to be complicated but it's really not and it's also a very delicious. 

I got this from Good Housekeeping magazine several years ago and I have baked rugelach every winter ever since.

I used some dried plums and cherries for my recipe and switch hazelnuts for pecans and it tasted as good as the original one.

 

For the complete recipe go to Good Housekeeping or follow the instructions below:

Rugelach Dough

2 cup(s) all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon(s) salt

1 cup(s) (2 sticks) butter or margarine, softened

1 package(s) (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened

Fruit and Nut Filling

1 cup(s) hazelnuts, (filberts), toasted, skinned, and chopped

1/2 cup(s) dried pitted plums, (prunes), chopped

1/2 cup(s) dried tart cherries or cranberries, chopped

1/4 cup(s) (packed) light brown sugar

Spice Sugar

3/4 cup(s) granulated sugar

1 tablespoon(s) ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon(s) ground cloves

9 tablespoon(s) apricot jam

Directions

Prepare Rugelach Dough: On waxed paper, combine flour and salt. In large bowl, with mixer at medium speed, beat butter and cram cheese until creamy, occasionally scraping bowl with rubber spatula. Reduce speed to low; gradually beat in flour mixture just until blended, occasionally scraping bowl. Divide dough into 3 equal pieces; flatten each into a disk. Wrap each disk in plastic warp and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight, until dough is firm enough to roll. (Or place dough in freezer for 1 hour if using butter, 1 1/2 hours if using margarine.)

Meanwhile, prepare Fruit and Nut Filling: In medium bowl, combine all filling ingredients.

Prepare Spice Sugar: In small bowl, combine sugar, cinnamon, and cloves.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line large cookie sheet with foil; grease foil.

Sprinkle work surface with 2 tablespoons spice sugar. Place 1 piece dough on top of sugar; turn over to coat both sides. Roll dough into 12-inch round, turning round over a few times and sprinkling work surface with 2 more tablespoons spice sugar to coat both sides.

Spread top of round with 3 tablespoons jam, then sprinkle with about 3/4 cup filling, leaving 1/2-inch border around edge. With knife, cut dough into 24 equal wedges. Starting at curved edge, roll up each wedge, jelly-roll fashion. Place rugelach, 1 inch apart, on cookie sheet, point side down.

Bake rugelach 20 to 25 minutes or until bottoms are browned. Immediately remove rugelach to wire rack to cool.

Repeat with remaining dough, spice sugar, jam, and filling.

Enjoy!

December

Last December was so busy that I did not get chance to post much. So I am trying to catch up.

Thank you to all our customers, we are happy to make our items for you. Please enjoy them.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holidays this year. Lots of fun, lots of love and happiness around your family and friends. And of course, great gifts!

We sure did :) One of my biggest surprises this year was a colorful tube package in our mail box. There was a label, a pine branch and the Lowes logo. Inside of the tube was a live baby blue spruce tree with a bit of damp soil to protect the roots. This was a true surprise because we don't know how we got it.

 

I checked the instructions on how to grow the Colorado blue spruce and planted it in the pot. So this little Christmas tree is happily growing now in my garden.

Lowes Home Improvement store is my favorite place to shop for home and garden and I am always pleased with a customer service there. Thank you so much, good guys from Lowes!

Glamour Christmas balls

A Christmas tree covered in handmade ornaments is always so darling. Each and every little ornament is made with so much love and care.

I was thinking of some new ideas to decorate our tree this year and found so many of them online. I'd like to share one of these, the Glamour Christmas balls* made mostly with recycled materials. The idea came from Yulia ( bysiki shop on Etsy) who was making these for years for her holiday tree. Julia lives and works in Moscow, Russia and her shop is full of great products for a baby.

 

So to make these you will need:

a plastic grocery store bag for each ball (a great way to give them a second life!)

1" wide lace ribbon or lace fabric, cut into 1" wide stripes

sequins and beads

thread

fabric glue

needle

 

Form an even shaped ball from the plastic bag and secure it with the threads. Add some glue to the surface to make sure it will stay in place. Let it dry.

Wrap the lace ribbon around your ball. Now it's time to decorate! Sew the sequins and beads on top of your ball, while securing your lace from unwrapping with coordinating threads. Use your imagination to get the best result!

 

Make a loop for hanging and here it is! Your new glamorous Christmas ball is ready!

*Published with permission from Yulia bysiki

Think holidays

I wish I would take some photos of colorful leaves and pumpkin patches but we don't have them here. Instead we are finally spending more time outside where the garden is in full bloom. The weather is really pleasant and comfortable now.

We count the plants we lost this summer. A beautiful apple tree and some vegetables did not make it through the 115'F summer heat. So we replaced the apple tree with pecan and also added a fig and pomegranate trees, hoping that these will tolerate the heat much better.

When the pomegranate tree was finally planted I went outside and immediately notice that even thought it's not the right shape and kind, it still resembled a Christmas tree. The red fruits were covering the tree and it looked like Christmas ornaments.

 This simple fact put us in a holiday mood so we created some new items for our shop. Some colorful socks, some soft fingerless gloves and cute bottle covers that we made this November and are listed in our socksandmittens shop on Etsy. 

Hope you will like them!

Gift wrapping idea, a wine bottle cover

This knitted bottle cover is available now at our socksandmittens shop. We think it will be a nice way to present your bottle of wine during holiday season. There will be parties and celebrations so the bottle of wine is always a nice gift for the hostess.

We knit these cozies out of acrylic yarn so cleaning them  is easier. They can be machine or hand washed, then lay your cozy flat to dry. These will fit standard wine bottles or any similar size round bottles.

 

We made several of them in different colors and I will be adding them to our shop shortly. They can be made in custom colors or yarn also, just let us know what you have in mind.

End of summer sale at Socksandmittens

We are back from our wonderful trip to Canada and getting ready for the Fall and Winter season.

We are slowly adding some new items and also reducing prices on selected items. If you are planning ahead for the coming Holidays and looking for some hand knit gifts it might be a way to get them for less!

 So there is an end-of-summer sale going on right now in our Socksandmittens shop. Please visit our SALE section to see the selection.

Christmas wishes

 The gift of love.
The gift of peace.
The gift of happiness.
May all these be yours at Christmas.

Have a wonderful Christmas, everyone!

A gift exchange present

The mysterious package from Israel came in the mail yesterday and I could not wait to bring it home to see what's inside. My husband tried to ask if I want to open the parcel on December, 25th but it was too late. The wrapping paper was flying everywhere :)

 What was inside: 2 bars of chocolate, coffee, a cook book of Israel recipes with gorgeous photographs, little menorah figurine, a bar of soap from the Dead Sea, a picturesque New Year card from Jerusalem and absolutely fabulous set of beaded earrings and necklace in shades of blue. 

 I can not believe how well necklace and earrings suit me. The blue colors are going great with my skin tones and it looks perfect. I am going to wear them to our New Year celebration this year. 

 I chased away some sweets-loving family members before I was able to take some pictures. When my son finally got a chance to sample them he was surprised because inside one of the chocolates had crystals that popped in your mouth.   The piece of chocolate started to explode in his mouth. That was funny :) My son never had a candy like that so it was a really good surprise.

This is an absolutely gorgeous gift from Svetlana Lirigal and it is part of our annual Christmas gift exchange for the Russian Artists Team on Etsy. 

Sveta designs beaded jewelry and you can see her wonderful creations in her shop on Etsy. I am looking at my jewelry set and I am loving it. Thank you so much, Sveta, for this wonderful gift!

A gift from a friend

December is a very busy Month but it is also the sweetest time of all. Time for gifts, pleasant unexpected surprises and cozy nights by the fire place.

 Pleasant surprise of this week - a gift from Lana BelleCoccinelle. 

It came in a mail last Wednesday and I immediately got into the Christmas spirit :) Inside was a box of chocolates, a card and two cutest linen coasters with dragonflies on them. How sweet! 

 

I love good needlecraft work and these coasters are perfect. Lana specializes in embroidery and sells coasters like these in her shop so I would say her customers are buying a quality product.

 They are so pretty and feminine. I am already using it to protect my office desk from my hot coffee cup.

Thank you, Lana, you made my day!

Happy new Year!

Have a wonderful New Year, everyone!
May all your wishes come true!

Merry Christmas

Have a wonderful Christmas, everyone! Peace, Joy and Happiness to you!

 My best wishes for the holiday season,

Tanya

The holidays with galafilc

I have been in Europe right before the Christmas once. It's wonderful and it's truly feels like you are in a fairy tale city. Every house is decorated with care and falling snow is just making this picture even more magic.

Holiday time in Poland, where Galina*  (galafilc) is from, is beautiful. So I asked Galina to share with us some holiday thoughts and it truly put me into a Holiday spirit!

1. What does December mean to you?

December means winter for me and snow and the holidays. 

You have to think of gifts, you have to think of what to cook for your holiday table. Here in Poland you will receive your gift on Christmas eve. At night the family will gather together around the holiday table to greet Christmas and share the meal. By tradition the  number of dishes on the holiday table are 12. The meal is simple but sophisticated. Some believe the 12 dishes will bring you luck in the coming year. The guests will share the oblatok, wish happy Christmas to each other and then will be looking for the gifts under the Christmas tree.

2. What 3 things give you the most Holiday spirit?
The Christmas tree, of course! I love it when it is decorated with colorful ornaments and lights. The gifts are carefully wrapped in a pretty paper or hidden in a packages. The aroma of cinnamon, clover and candied fruits which is widely used in cooking at this time of year. You can find them in a poppy seed roll or a Christmas cake but also in some dishes with fish and vegetables.

3. What warm things you would always recommend to have in your wardrobe?

I would always have a good warm sweater with a big collar in my wardrobe. Of course, colorful scarves, hats and mittens. The bright colors will help to brighten the gray days and the dark nights. 

Some warm socks are should always be on hand. They are even warmer when made by your mother or a grandma :)

 *Galina is a creator of many wonderful felted scarves, jackets, mittens and so much more! Visit her shop to see for yourself!