Pinterest Inspiration

Pinterest has inspired me to make many crafty things on my own. It's a fantastic place to get ideas and this year I decided to home make gifts for teachers and our moms.

Teacher Gifts:

I must confess, I'm not an expert knitter. I'm just starting to get my feet wet on this whole new avenue, so I made these pretty simple. It's just a basic knit stitch over and over until it was long enough to fold over. Then I sewed the two sides together and slapped a button on them. For presentation, I got three empty coffee cups and taped a gift card to the coffee place on top!

Mother Gifts:

These are the yarn wreaths I made for my mom, mother-in-law, and step mom. They are thinner than your normal yarn wreath, but I'm happy with the way they turned out. I bought the wreath at the dollar store and then took three different colors of yarn and wrapped around until my arm was about to fall off. Then I followed a very easy tutorial on how to make felt flowers. I can't WAIT to give them to the moms!

I've been trying so many ideas from Pinterest and I hope to blog about all of them. Some have worked wonderfully while others have been disasters. Stay tuned!

Happy St. Nick!!

What a cultural change moving from Wisconsin to Minnesota! One would think since the states our neighbors, that they have a lot in common, but the heritages are very different. I grew up in Southeastern Wisconsin an area a large amount of German immigrants found attractive. Many of my friends and relatives celebrate St. Nick which is on the night of Dec. 5th he comes and fills your stockings with oranges, apples, peanuts, chocolate and little presents. Today, my Facebook page BLEW UP with friends back home describing how St. Nick went for them and their families. My friends in Minnesota are silent, today is just another day to them, and they're all turning their heads wondering what is up with this peculiar holiday.

Minnesota has a large Scandinavian population. So, color me surprised when I found out that next to no one here knows what St. Nick Day is all about and why we celebrate it. It was off to the trusty computer for research in order to gain knowledge on exactly what this day means.

Low and behold! I find out that it is actually a precursor to Santa Claus! In our house the two holidays and gift giving old men were very separate. I think it was my mum's Catholic roots and German influence that kept the holidays separte. St. Nick was just that a saint. He was Turkish and lived from 280-343. He went around putting coins in people's shoes when they weren't looking (hence treats in stockings). December 6th is known as St. Nicolas Day and so even though mainstream has combined the holidays, we keep it separate in our home, and we can explain the tradition to our Viking neighbors.