PJs

I can't believe I still haven't posted all my Christmas projects!  I even wrote them all... they're all just waiting for me to add pictures and I haven't even done that.  Better late than never though I guess.

This Christmas was the year of the pajama in our house. I made 8 sets of PJs! They were all simple draw string pants with coordinating T shirts (I never imagined how difficult it would be to find plain solid color Ts!) that I appliquéd. For most, I used this method to draft the pattern from an existing pair of pants and added a plain or ruffled hem.

It just doesn’t get any better than sisters in matching Christmas PJs!
I even used a simplicity pattern to make tiny versions for my girls' dolls (you'll have to take my word for it though... I didn't take a picture and they're both tucked into bed with their "mommy's" at the moment).

A second set for family friend’s kiddos (& doll).


For this year I’m thinking I should do a flannel version and including Mom & Dad in the fun!

Date Nights!

My Doug is really difficult to buy for. He’s very particular about… well really everything… so I have more success with “abstract” ideas, like this Love Notes Jar I made for him 2 Valentine’s ago, and a glass blowing class I got for him for his last birthday. So I was really excited that he LOVED the idea I came up with for him this Christmas… date nights!

It isn’t a difficult gift to put together, but it does take some time and patience; I started working on it 6 months ago. The idea is to plan for a date night every month of the upcoming year (or maybe for a Valentine's gift you could do every weekend of the coming month?). I have something of a little “addiction” to those discount sites like Groupon and Living Social. I love that you can get a great deal and discover something new and fun going on in your town! I started watching for deals on things to do that would make a great date night and didn’t expire until into the future year (a hazard of planning too far in advance). I kept a calendar of when the deals I bought expired and made sure to plan around those and still end up with one date per month.

When it was time to put together the gift, I made a calendar template for each month that fits on the front of a 5x9 manilla envelope, printed out one for each month and adhered it to the front of 12 envelopes. I printed off the vouchers, put them in the envelope for the month that we’ll be going on that date, and made a decorative band to slip around all the envelopes to keep them together.

I wasn’t able to get vouchers for every month of the year yet, since some of the deals expire within months that we already have a date for, but I was able to get quite a few; things like a wine tasting, dinner and a movie, paddleboard lessons, comedy club, and swimming with the manatees.

I love this gift, for so many reasons! Committing to a date night every month will be a great way to make sure we’re spending quality alone time together (unfortunately, it’s easy to just pass that up when you have 2 little ones), we’ll get to do lots of new things we haven’t tried before, putting photos and memorabilia from our dates in the envelopes will be a convenient way to keep track of some of the fun stuff we did throughout the year, but I think my most favorite thing about it is that I can just keep it going every year and completely eliminate the painful task of gift giving for my picky (albeit wonderful) husband!