Kristen's Birthday-

This was perhaps my favorite present! Steve came home and said he brought a wiener dog home from his mom's house. I was rather not impressed til I looked out on the porch and saw this little guy! I call him Schultz.
The kids gave me this gift--it is perhaps the most used of all my gifts and is very warm and cozy.
Mom's box arrived and this is a shawl Janet made me-it is very soft and comfy. The cats adore it! It is in the shape of a triangle.
This great book was fought over for a couple of days before everyone got thru reading it. Now, it resides in the little house awaiting a time when it can encourage more giggles!

when you don't have snow-----

You gotta make your snowpeople anyway you can! This first little guy is actually several recycled things. His body is made up of 3 Ovaltine containers wrapped in fun foam. I don't recall what I used for his hat (he was made a couple of weeks ago), but I definitely used a ton of hot glue to hold it all together. The snowman comes apart for easy storage.

Here are my sister and brother snow people. I wanted to make a family when I saw some clever ideas online. I knew we had some white upholstery tubes and I had Steve cut them into different lengths. After they were cut, they sat around for ages on my craft table til the creative bug finally bit! The sister was fairly simple. Her hat is scraps of polar fleece sewed together and tied at the top with a bit of pipe cleaner (chenille stem!) and her scarf is a longer bit of the same fabric. The brother was harder to make. I wanted a 'straw' hat and was coming up blank. I didn't want to buy anything and so I had an idea. I found a very aged basket and cut it up and bent it to fit the shape I wanted. It had a hole in the top, so I stuffed a bit of blue fabric in it to and added the foam sea creatures to make it more festive. His scarf is a bit of island fabric and his nose is a wooden peg.
The mom in this snow family is wearing my favorite bit. I made her hat from an old tissue box (I actually think it was Kleenex!) and flowers, feathers and yarn. I learned how to make hats during Music Man at THS and never thought it would come in handy for a tiny art deco thing! She has a bead nose and ended up a tad shorter than I anticipated! The dad was frustrating. I wanted one of those old DQ sundae cups for a ball cap, but couldn't find one anywhere!!! His nose is a part of a bullet and his hat is a 'just do it' sewn fleece snow hat. His scarf is also a scrap of fleece and the mom's shawl is another scrap of fabric. All of the hats are detachable for easier storage-
This critter is my favorite one EVER. I knew what I wanted to do with this, but wasn't sure how I was going to get there. The 'hat' is an old sock--most of it is stuffed inside the tube. I had a heck of a time with the ears and had some fun foam cut out, but they just were not right. I wanted to crochet a tail, but couldn't find my crochet hooks. I had no clue what to do with the whiskers. However, inspiration struck when I was choosing all the eyes and noses for my family (I recalled I had a snowcat rubber stamp and borrowed some of the ideas for this little guy!) His nose is a tiny button and his eyes are plastic jewels. I did discover when hot gluing the eyes on, they were not the same color! However, I rummaged around in my craft debris and found another green eye. (they had spilled in the bottom of my google eyes/jewels/tiny pom poms box!) I was cutting out the hat for the brother when the bottom of the basket fell apart into small sections. I looked at them and grinned! Huzzah!!! One strip of whatever the basket was made of and cut into lots of thin strips made GREAT whiskers!!!! I then remembered I had a bit of furry white fabric left from something (proof--save EVERYTHING!). I even knew where it was and it was perfect! I cut some triangles and glued them to the foam ears I had made and added teeny pink foam triangles on top of that and glued them all to the sock. The fabric for the tail naturally curled up in a tube shape, so I let it and glued it on as well! Jonathan calls the kitty Arctic Cat---which makes me laugh, cuz it does not look like a black and purple snowmachine!!!
Anyway, these are my Cylinder Snow Creations! I was pretty impressed and reckon there are more things to do with those darn upholstery tubes than you can imagine!!!