The 10 year tree skirt project and my favorite housework excuse sign...

The natural lighting is terrible again today, so I'll post a few more crafty photos.  Someone needs to remind me to take lots of photos on the next day when I have good lighting.  That may be awhile this time of year!  This is a gorgeous star/snowflake chain that my talented daughter made.  Her nimble hands can make the tiniest of crafts!  If you haven't made one yet, you can get the instructions in my Crafting for Christmas post.

We've been working on this tree skirt for almost a decade now.  I bought a big piece of felt and cut out a circle.  The gold trim is hot-glued on.  Every year we draw around the kids' hands with a marker, then trace it with gold fabric paint.  This year my oldest son's hand took almost an entire small bottle of paint!  The kids write their own names under the handprints, but I've removed the names from this photo.  I couldn't remove the chihuahua, though, she loves to lay on this tree skirt and thought I was spreading it out on the floor to make her more comfortable.  This link is to the paint I like to use, I had a different kind this year, but it didn't cover as well.  

Also, I should mention that when we first started, I tried to put the paint on the kids' hands and have them make a print.  It didn't work well at all, and was EXTREMELY messy.  The next year we just started to do outlines.  I let the kids write the year above the hands, lots of cute backward numbers!

And I will leave you with a little crafty painting that I made, it seems appropriate today, my house is a wreck with remodeling projects and the Christmas cookies we baked last night...if you would like to mess up your kitchen with some really yummy cookies, you can read about them here.

This is just a quick sign that I made up to use in case of emergencies.  It truly explains what is going on in our house right now.  Even the sign itself is painted to look a little dusty.