Sewing and Beyond with Mary Anne Ciccotelli

Tom gave me these roses – 36 of them to be exact. They are truly beautiful. I certainly love my husband.

Nursery Christmas Gifts This year for the Nursery children Tom and I made these little baby Jesus ornaments. This was actully plan B. We stayed up until 2:30am Sunday morning completing this project. (I am sure glad that my husband loves me!) It didn’t take long to make one, but when we have 28 kids in our nursery, it took awhile to make all of these. And then of course, they had to be wrapped.

On Sunday we decorated the Christmas Tree. I was feeling very nastagalic through this whole process. I guess it started earlier on my birthday when I remember the birthday just after my mother passed away. I was soaking in the bath tub and had dozed off. The phone rang and my first thought was – “Mom must be calling me to tell me happy birthday”. That would have been a REAL LONG DISTANT call. Anyway, I am going to share just a couple of the special ornaments that I have on our tree.

This orament was made by Emily a bunch of years ago.
Jennie painted this for me as a gift.
Just check Tom and I out at 2002 – now five years later we need six more of those little guys around us. Our family is a real blessing in our lives.
I can’t wait for Autumn to see this ornament. She is so in to all the princesses this year.

And last but not least, the ribbon birds. They were made by Russ’ sister(s) back in 1984 or 85. These birds always remind me of Jennie and Emily trying to decide (or maybe even fighting) who got to put them on the Christmas tree each year. Now that they have there own homes and are not here to help decorate the tree it does not seem quite right that I put the birds on. I was even tempted to save the birds and let them put them on the tree. But, I knew that Emily was arriving a few days before Jennie and that would give Emily an unfair advantage.

Each year I have a craft project for my sewing students to make the last week of classes before the Christmas break. Here are a few of the students busy at work. Just after I took this picture we had a power outage. My studio was filled with complete darkness and five screaming girls. I had to get out the flashlight and they continued on working. One student even did some hand sewing because of no electricity.
This reindeer is the new project for 2007.
As the years pass by the students have more choices of projects. Here are a few of the other projects that I have done in past years but students choose to do them this year.