Christmas Librocubicularist 2016

Since Christmas day was Sunday I am posting a day late. We had a great time. I worked on Christmas Eve and then we spent the whole day Sunday doing nothing. We exchanged presents in the morning, including a gift for Gilgamesh's first Christmas, had brunch, and watched movies all day (the final Harry Potter movies and Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer). I got a couple of ponies and a Lego mini figure pack, a Wonder Woman decal, the Jurassic World pack for Lego Dimensions, and angry panda socks to wear when I'm having a bad day all in my stocking. Then I got a cool coloring book and the best otter shirt ever as gifts from my wonderful husband. Plus a gift card to get a pretty book from Barnes and Noble, there is also a Zelda phone wallet still coming in the mail.

I'm upset because I have a few days off in a row and ended up with a sore throat. I'm trying to sleep and rest and feel better but it doesn't seem fair that I have to spend my holidays sick. It's extra frustrating because I can't keep a kleenex around without the dog trying to eat it. Then Monday we had Christmas dinner with my brother and sister in law and their roommate. We grilled the turkey and it turned out awesome. From them, I got a Wonder Woman coloring book and a LOTR Lego pack with Gimli.

Anne of Green Gables Cookbook by Kate Macdonald

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This cookbook is a collection of recipes that Anne made for various teas throughout the books. It starts out with some cooking tips and an overview of cooking terms. While I probably won't be making tea biscuits or raspberry cordial anytime soon the recipes seem easy to follow and good for kids to try. For me, this book is mostly about fond memories for the books. The cookbook is sprinkled with quotations from Anne and others in the series.


Cattastic Crafts: DIY Project for Cats and Cat People by Mariko Ishikawa

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book contains fairly simple crafts to make for your cats such as catnip mice or small shirts. My favorite cat project is a cat tower designed like nesting end tables, so you can spread it out to give your cats more room to play or stack it together to make room when you have company over for dinner. There is also a section of things to make for yourself that either look like cats (cat shaped tissue cozy) or use pictures of cats (cat t-shirts).

365 Things to Do with LEGO Bricks by Simon Hugo

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book has all sorts of cool things to do with Lego bricks. There are games you can make for both single or multi-player, as well as building challenges you can try. There are all sorts of things you can build for yourself such as a weekly planner that uses mini figures for each member of the family and a working mini battleship game. There are accessories for your home, some more practical than others. There's a desk organizer that looks very useful but also a kitchen utensil holder that makes me cringe a bit when I think of trying to keep it clean. There are also various Lego contraptions to make which sound like they'd be super fun for kids. Heck, I'm 37 and I think a paper airplane launcher would be fun to play with so it should be even better for kids. Overall, I think if you are a fan of Lego that this book will provide you with plenty of inspiring ways to use for collection.

DIY String Art: 24 Designs to Create and Hang by Jesse Dresbach

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book starts out with a very nice overview of materials, tips to prepare your board and pattern, and even a few creative tips for planning out your design. After that, it runs through 24 projects, each with a pattern you can print. They are rated in difficulty from 1 at the beginner level to 3 for more complex projects at the end of the book. The basic designs tend to be either outlines or filled shapes, while the harder projects include spirograph style circles and spirals.

Christmas Crafting

Last year at this time, I took a blogging break due to busyness at work. Since I've reduced my posting schedule this year, I thought I would be able to keep up without the break. That being said, I don't actually have a whole lot of to show you.

I decided to try my hand at designing some geeky paper snowflakes. After thinking a bit about this year's happenings in geekdom, I decided to go for Wonder Woman and Pokemon as my subjects. I know there are already a few Wonder Woman templates out there but with the new movie coming out soon I wanted to try my own version. My husband and a bunch of his co-workers were super excited about the release of Pokemon Sun and Moon so that seemed like an obvious and relevant thing to try. I had meant to make even more with other themes after that but time got away from me.

This was my first Wonder Woman attempt. For the most part, I think it turned out well but I thought giving the lasso more loops would make it fancier.

This is the revision. I really like how it turned out. I cut it out of tissue paper to make it easier to cut the tiny bits but that made it very flimsy, so if I was going to use them to decorate I'd probably use an Exacto knife to cut it from regular craft paper.

                                       

Then I moved on to Pokemon Sun and Moon. I started by making a snowflake with the Moon symbol on the outside. I didn't ever cut the center out which would have made it better but I still feel like it needs a little something in the center.

                                     
The second Sun and Moon snowflake where I placed the symbols in the other order. I like this version better because I feel like the Sun points on the outside make it more flake like. This one got folded a little bit unevenly so some of the outside points ended up cut off.

In other new, I've been sewing pillowcases. First, made a couple of simple ones as a gift for a friend of ours, using Pokemon fabric.

When we were first married I put up a string of lights on our four-poster bed at Christmas time but our current house doesn't have high enough ceilings for us to have the posts on. So when I found this amazing Star Wars Christmas fabric I decided we should make a pillowcase set to dress our bedroom up for the season again. I used a Star Wars font to create the embroidery designs for the edges, but right now only one of them is done.

I just need to finish trimming the jump stitches.

The other should be finished soon, and I'm also planning to make a sign for above the headboard using this design from Urban Threads. It will be stitched on the same purple fabric from the pillow borders and I'm replacing the pink hearts with a lavender.

Our tree is up and it has lights. So far it seems like Gilgamesh is going to leave it alone. He does bump it with his tail accidentally as he walks by and occasionally tries to drink tree water. I am going to try and add a few ornaments later today but nothing too low where it might get knocked down by a frisky puppy tail. Also, our cats will have to deal without the tree skirt. They love sitting on it like a blanket and watching the lights but Gil keeps trying to chew up anything fabric/ blanket like so I don't think we're going to put it out.

If you like the snowflakes I made please check out this post from last winter where I collected patterns for various geek snowflakes from around the web.

Merry Christmas Everyone!