Dreaming of cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudel...

Christmas Eve has finally arrived, and in ever, true 'Amber' fashion I was up into the wee hours of the morn working on some homemade Christmas gifts. I've been disappointed in myself this year because typically most of my gifts are things that I've made, but I honestly don't know what happened to the time this year, and well, time escaped me. So unfortunately I bought most of the gifts I'm giving - which I know the recipients could care less whether it's from the store or my hands, but for me, I just enjoy slowing down and taking the time to piece together something from my heart.

And now that I have all of you gagging, here are some pics of this years' Christmas project. I used some of the portraits I took of my nieces and thanks to Jeanne Winters' blog, I was given the idea of doing a collage on canvas for each of them.






I also found these pics from last year. My brother Jason built this picket fence bench and I painted flowers to match her room on the toy bins for Lauren for Christmas last year. I love it when we can do a project that is big like this and involve more than just me : ) For Madison's first Christmas my dad and I built a dollhouse bookcase for Madison - it is one sort of like my dad built for me when I was little. I'll try to find the pictures of that. Of course that was 10 years ago and I'll have to hunt down the picture or negatives. I hadn't gone digital in my photography yet!