Here are the final mouse shirts I made for the trip. These are for me, my SIL and her three kids.

Ok, I know you are probably getting sick of Disney stuff but only a few more posts and we'll be there and back and there won't be any more so bear with me :)

Here are some mouse ear french barrettes. I followed the tutorial at Brooklyn's Bows. I changed the alligator clips to french barrettes and just covered the top with a 3/4 inch ribbon. Since I did not have any red satin ribbon, I opted to leave off the bow. Next time (should I ever make these again!), I would not use glue to hold the ribbons together but instead sew the edges together. I think it would look a bit neater and hold just as well if not better.

Also, used the method I've discussed before to make two headbands out of a pretty sheer wired ribbon.

I finally finished Boo's Christmas present! Yes, I know, I'm a little bit late. Well, it's done in time for our Disney trip and that's what matters.

So, after biting down on something that shouldn't have been bitten last month, Bug lost her wiggly tooth on Sunday. We were driving in the car to a family Christmas celebration in Michigan when she called to me and said her tooth had gotten really wiggly. I looked back and her mouth was covered in blood. She wanted us to stop the car and pull out the tooth. At a gas stop, Chip tried to pull it out but didn't think it was quite ready. When we got to the family party, she was afraid to eat because she didn't want to swallow her tooth like her Uncle Matt did when he was little so she asked her Uncle Mike to pull it out. (Uncle Mike had pulled my nephew's tooth out while there were here for Christmas.) He couldn't get it out either and told her it was ok to eat. A few bites later and she handed us her tooth with a big grin. Tooth number 1 - age 4!

Here is the stock of Disney barrettes I made for the girls to wear. I'd found some similar on etsy but decided to make them myself. They are fairly easy to make! You need some alligator clips, some ribbon as wide or wider than the clips, a hot glue gun, some buttons in Mickey shapes (purchased on ebay but available at JoAnn or any scrapbook store) and sme shelf liner if you want to make them non-slip.

Cut the ribbon long enough to cover the inside of the clip, pull it over the top and end and go alng the bottom and inside. Use hot glue gun to adhere the ribbon. Decide on placement of buttons and glue on. Add small scrap of shelf liner for non-slip grip with hot glue on the inside bottom of the barrette. Voila. You're done!

For my sister-in-law, I attempted to make a skirt out of a men's dress shirt following this tutorial. I hadn't realized how difficult it would be to take the measurements from my brother (he measured the waist of her favorite jeans with a metal measuring tape) and create a skirt that would easily fit over her head. The design did not have any zipper or buttons to make it easier to put it on. Of course, I didn't realize that fact until I had spent quite a bit of time working on it. I sent it, not completely pleased with the results but with the caveat that I would either fix it when she was around or that she could sew the bottom up to be a bag! She had the idea to make it into an apron! It's nice to have a crafty sis-in-law!

For my brother, I made a red wings t-shirt using fabric paint, contact paper, a clip art design and an incredibly soft t-shirt from Walmart! I think it looks quite good (Sara tells me he didn't realize it was handmade at first!).

For all the grandparents and dad, we revisited our summer craft and made mouse ear shirts for our trip to Disney World. This was a bit more difficult with larger shirts and we used several different stamping techniques for patterns.

For my parents, brother & sister-in-law and grandmother, I made up some fused Target bag tote bags. Each bag took 12 plastic bags to create. I made each one with a different color handle so that if we are all together with our bags, we can tell who's is who's.

Finally, the kids made wooden magnets for all the grandparents, great-grandparents and aunts & uncles, inspired by the Angry Chicken blog. To make these, I purchased a package of small round wooden disks, some strong magnets and some diamond glaze finish from Michaels. Using scraps from my paper stash, I cut the paper around the disks using my exacto knife. We used a glue stick to adhere the paper, then painted a diamond glaze over the top and sides. Boo then used the hot glue gun to glue on the magnet. While she liked the challenge of the hot glue gun, I think the girls favorite part was simply picking out and lining up the paper!

So, as you can see, we were quite busy the month or so leading up to Christmas, even if we didn't really have any original ideas! It was so much more fun to give the gifts of our time and skills to our relatives than things that they would just wnat to return anyway! Hopefully they all liked the gifts they were made as we don't do exchanges :o)