Christmas Projects Revelaed

For Christmas this year we decided it was a great time to do personal gifts for our parents, since they have a new grandbaby this year! I was so excited when I found a paint your own potter place around here, because I used to LOVE doing that when we lived in Starkville. SO therapeutic! And I would always see people bring their little ones in for hand or foot prints on things, so I decided we should do that for Collette this year. So we took her to the place, and just as we hoped she fell asleep in the car, so when we got there she was completely out of it! The lady who owns the shop (it's just a tiny little place, about a quarter of the size of the MS one) helped us do her footprints. We decided to do mugs with her footprints for all the grandparents, if she would cooperate. We painted her feet and she just kept sleeping, so we decided to take advantage of it! We put her feet of 5 mugs (4 grandparents and a great grandfather) and then since she was still sleeping so well we put her feet on a plaque for her nursery, and since she was STILL sleeping after that we put her feet on an ornament! (LL and I love to collect ornaments from trips and for meaningful things in our lives--we are getting a pretty good collection!) So I put footprints on 7 items, and then I thought I would NEVER get finished painting them but Collette just kept on sleeping and LL stayed to help me paint and we got it all done! The post time consuming part was painting all of the letters, because they didn't have any paint writers like I was used to at the other place. Anyway, I thought they turned out well, since I tend to be pretty OCD and probably could have spend HOURS on any one of those things. So I thought I would share the final results. Sorry about the weird shadows; it was hard to take pictures of them because the flash kept washing them out. Anyway, you'll get the idea.

Here are the grandpa mugs (LL's addition was the tiny cow in the bottom of the mug. He painted them all and they are fastened in there so they won't come off even in the dishwasher):




The grandma mugs:




The ornament:



The plaque:


I still need to get ribbon to hang the heart in her nursery, but I think it will be so cute!

Also, we got digital photo frames for our parents, and we pre-loaded them with pictures. We actually did a whole little photo shoot in our living room to get some good shots for the frames. My mom kept saying Collette looks like an Anne Geddes baby so we decided to take some shots like that. LL helped me with the lighting, and I took the pictures. He was in a lot of them (well, his arms or hands were, anyway). Anyway, they turned out really cute. I liked them so much, I decided we should get some for ourselves. Then I went to Kohl's (LOVE Kohl's)and took advantage of their sales and my 30% off coupon and got black 8x10 frames and made a feature wall in our dining room, which didn't have anything on the walls yet. So here are the pictures I decided to use (it was hard to pick!) and here is the finished wall:







Our dining room wall:



So my advice to all of you who don't want to pay for baby photography-- do it yourself! It's a LOT easier because you can just pick when your baby is awake and happy, instead of having a set time at a studio.

Anyway, those were my fun Christmas presents for this year. Just had to share. :o)