update!

i can't believe we're less than two weeks away from christmas!

i'm so excited, i love christmas. it's the most drag queeny holiday of the year, the perfect excuse for glitter and glam, which is totally up my alley.

and it's also an awesome excuse for crafting, and as usual, i've planned more crafting than i have the energy for (you'd think i'd get used to this by now, but i still expect myself to do the same amount as i could 5 years ago!).

since i've been working, it's taken me so much longer than i had hoped to finish putting the apartment together - the kitchen's barely been touched at all, and i'm still missing curtains in the bedroom, i still need to paint shelves, etc, etc!

i had decided that i'd have the house done by december 1st, and i'd start xmas decorating then, but of course, that didn't happen. the house wasn't done, i didn't have the energy, my back hurt to much to get the decorations out of storage....

so yesterday i finally hauled the rubbermaids out and packed them into my car. they were incredibly light, since they're mostly just glass ornaments, but all the bending and such pretty much wore me out. i was so impatient to start putting things up as soon as i got home!

so far i've sorted all the ornaments into piles for each tree, and i've assembled one and a half trees. i put up the tree in my bathroom, but it needs a few more ornaments, so tomorrow i'm going to the mall across the street to pick up a set i saw the other day, and then it'll be done.

i got the tree in my bedroom up, which is really the easiest one, since i use the same ornaments on it every year! i did use a different topper this year, and i love it - i don't know why it never occurred to me before! that tiara's been sitting on my shelf for years.





the tree itself is one i spraypainted years ago, looking at it today, it could use some touch ups! the garlands are black and silver scarves that i found at a dollar store, and the ornaments are mostly all from micheals, oddly enough. the purple and red balls are from micheals, and so are the glittery purple sprays of fake foliage or whatever they're called (is there a word for them?). the lights are purple, though they look sort of blue in the picture. i picked them up at halloween one year, so they have a black cord, not the usual green one available at christmas.

i'm super excited to put up my big tree this year, because i haven't had space for 4 years now. i have a large collection of vintage ornaments (and i've pared it down considerably too!), and they'll all go on it. there's a bit of a problem because no one can FIND my big tree though! my dad borrowed it to decorate at work one year, and since i haven't needed it, we're not sure where it went after that. i went out and bought a pre-lit tree that goes together in just 3 pieces, and now i'm not so sure i even WANT him to find my old tree, with it's millions of branches to assemble!

i have so many crafty things i want to do right now, i've obsessed with wreaths, and have so many ideas - more ideas than i have doors to hang wreaths on! i bleached a bunch of bottle brush trees and wreaths the other day, and now i'm dying them. one colour in particular is coming out SO vibrant, i just love it.

i bought my trees at dollar stores this year. it was marginally cheaper to buy them at micheals using a 40% off coupon for the big bag (and frankly, JUST marginally. micheals is so expensive), but the ones from micheals rusted much easier, and have plastic bases, which don't paint as well.


i'm trying to do some machine embroidery, though it's slow going - for some reason my machine is only stitching at half the speed it used to stitch at. weird, i know! no one can figure out why - the dealer that serviced it, or the brother technical support. and even though i'm using the same designs i used last year, i'm having difficulty with some of the stitching. words look wonky.

i don't know. i might just be imagining the wonky thing. maybe they were wonky last year, and i just didn't notice!

i did stitch up a shirt for my dad the other day - he called me up out of the blue and needed me to do it super quick for him. they'd had a co op student working with them for the last few months, and yesterday was his last day, so they wanted a t-shirt for him. it was originally going to say "#1 examiner" or something, until he got the idea to write "cougar bait" on it, at which point he phoned me again, all excited! apparently all the middle aged women that he works with just loved the co op student, and they teased him about older women all the time. dad found this image online, i have no idea where, and sent it to me. i digitized it with PE Design Lite, and stitched it on the upper left side, and then stitched the workplace and the year on the sleeve. for such a rush job, it turned out pretty well!


this is a screen print from the digitization, i didn't have time to take a picture of the actual shirt.

and that's about all i've been up to. a few little xmas presents that i'm trying to get done in time to send out, and i need to get my cards out soon too! i'm super duper close to being finished an embroidery project, but i set it down for a bit while i worked on a project that turned out awful - it's so frustrating! i haven't done much cross stitch, but that's okay, because i still haven't posted the last pieces i did!