Tablecloth Finite!

I can see! I can see! LASIK is done. Vision is 20/20. Inflammation appears to be gone and I'm down to the end of my eye drops. Thankfully. Ryan and I are both more than tired of them and the trips to Calgary.

So I can see, but I'm extremely behind on every thing else.

Christmas? When? How long? Ohhh shoot.

I've had the transfers for the rest of the tablecloth printed out since before my LASIK, but that's about as far as they got. So after deciding I was done acting like an invalid, I wrangled Mom into coming over again. After all, we'd already wrecked the finish on my table, might as well not stop now.

There was a bit more double and triple checking going on this time to make sure we didn't have any years upside down, but it also went way faster. I wasn't quite so hesitant to iron them, plus there isn't 15 years of pictures for the little kids yet!

Storm's section

Blade's section

Hunter's section.

We were trying to conserve as much space at the bottom of the sections as possible. And Mother has strict instructions to not make the next 10 years of ornaments BIG.

It's a hard thing to get a full photo of!

So whadda ya think? Good enough to spill gravy on??

Christmas Memory Tablecloth Part Deux

Whew. What would I do without my mom?

I finished cutting out the rest of the pictures while chatting on the phone with my dad and waiting for my mom to arrive. We laid out all the transfers and thankfully they all fit with room for this years too!

I was a little freaked out to start actually ironing them on. I mean what if I overheated one? What if they moved and were wrinkly? What if, what if??

terrified to actually commit to ironing!

I bit the bullet though, and with mom helping to hold them and reposition any that moved around, I managed to get them all ironed on without scorching anything!

The real moment of truth though was taking off the backing.

Tada! It turned out sooo good.

Can you spot the oops?

I'm so thankful for my mom. I mean we may have wrecked the table's finish and we may have put one of the year's upside down, but without her I'm pretty sure I'd still be sitting here thinking about getting it done!

And now that I've seen results I can't wait to get the rest of it done! And make four wall hangings too.  I'm going to go back and grab another clearance tablecloth but this time not cut off the excess length and make four longer wall hangings with their names and birthdays at the bottom. I sincerely considered just cutting this one apart! I mean how often do I use a tablecloth? But mom wouldn't let me! I think she just wants me to do another one without the mistake..and possibly make her one too!

All the hand prints are true to life size, so next time you're here, feel free to put your (clean) hands on there and see how you measure up next to the kids!

Christmas Memory Tablecloth

So many titles for this post. The Never Ending Project. What the Heck was I Thinking?? How Long Can One Person Really Delay?

Every year for the past fifteen years my mom has gave me a tree ornament with the a picture of the kids and their hand print on the back. Well they started out as tree ornaments with Clayton but as he's gotten bigger so have the 'ornaments'. Usually I hang them on the wall instead on a bead rope with all the years in order. The kids love looking at them and remembering when. 

Earlier this year, I was purging out my Christmas stuff and thought I had better do something with those ornaments to preserve them. I debated laminating but some are too thick to go through the laminator. Or perhaps scrap booking them, but that idea was quickly tossed as I liked them out on display. Then I remembered when the quilt my mother-in-law made for Ryan's sister for her wedding. She took family pictures and used transfer paper to put them onto quilt squares for a really nice quilt.  I figured I had too many for a quilt but I could make a tablecloth with the same idea.

I decided to take a picture of each ornament, crop it out on Paint and flip it, paste it into a word document and print it out on some iron on transfer paper. Oh, doesn't that sound so simple? Like a quick little weekend project even? Yea, started this in April, crunch time aka Christmas is quickly approaching,  and we're not done.

The cropping took forever. I'm sure there are many easier ways to do it than the way I did it, but I don't want to hear about them as I'm finally done every last one of those 60 billion pictures. Work got in the way. Avoidance got in the way. You get the picture I'm sure.

Anyways, Mom and I stopped in Bed, Bath and Beyond and grabbed a really big white tablecloth that was on clearance. It happened to be so long that I could use the end of it as a trial area as I was going to have to cut it off anyways.

I wanted to see if the fabric was even going to hold the picture or not. It's not cotton like it's supposed to be but it was only 8 bucks for a huge tablecloth!

The test picture after washing. Success! Although I did learn not to leave the iron on as long as the directions said. You can see the outline of the iron in one spot where it got too hot.

I decided that I wanted the tablecloth to be just a little more, so Mom and I grabbed some green cloth from the fabric store and sewed on a strip around the outside and also down the middle, sectioning off each kid's area.

Ignore the fact that's it's wrinkly! I just grabbed it out of the bag a few minutes ago to take this picture. I've now got all of Clayton's pictures printed out onto transfer paper and need to cut them out.

Then comes the real test. Can I fit all of his pictures onto his area leaving room for this year's and possibly next year's too? Also, how long can I delay doing this? Will I ever get the rest of the kid's pictures printed out? Did I mention that we rarely, if ever, use a tablecloth??

I think I'll have a shower and call my mom. She'll make me finish it. And she'll iron for me too!