I finished this little house today. I like the color combination. The embellishments are copper colored. The base is 5 1/4″ wide and 3 3/4″ deep. The Putz measures 5 1/2″ tall, from the bottom of the base to the top of the foliage.
A tiny brown, glass bead serves as a door knob. The corrugated fence has two fence posts at the entrance. Both are topped with a copper colored pearl.
~~Rhonda
My first custom order. I made it for a local friend. She wanted gray and yellow and no green to match a particular room in her home.
It was the biggest Putz project I have undertaken. Here is a close-up of the first little house.
And the church.
And the other little house.
Top view. The cut-out in the base is to fit the village under a particular tabletop tree.
From the back…
The embellishments are clear plastic beads wired into leaves and flowers, bottle brush trees, pearl beads, and artificial foilage in champagne and white. My friend gave me some plastic round beads that were wired into sprays. I used those to make “trees” for the background. The ivory bottle brush trees were perfect with the gray and yellow.
Two little white glittered deer can be found in the front yard.
I hope she will enjoy it for years to come! ~~Rhonda
I finished this little white and blue church today. I had put it on the base and added the fence a few weeks ago, but had set it aside. It slipped my mind until I saw it today while clearing space on the craft counter. Decided to finish it.
The foliage is pink and a sort of blue/green. Not really teal.
The two small bottle brush trees are decorated with pink beads.
I’ll post it to my Etsy shop, ChristmasNotebook, tomorrow.
Besides the Putz church, I have this little brown and green house ready for embellishments. I have added the snow to the roof…just didn’t get a picture of that. I’ll try to get the house done in the next day or two.
A week or so ago, I had finished a custom order. The customer had given me a few things to add to it, so I completed that today. I love the way this turned out.
I also baked Peppermint Meltaways today. They are ready for the freezer. I packed a box with four kinds of cookies and a few other goodies for DD. DH mailed it for me.
Tomorrow, a friend is coming to help me decorate the “glass” tree (all spun glass and molded glass ornaments) and my dear daughter-in-law is coming to help with Christmas prep, as well. It should be a good day!
A big event tomorrow (Wednesday) is the opening of Breath of Eden Country Store. Among their wares are some of my Putz houses and Christmas ornaments that I have made. If you’re local, I hope you will stop by for their grand opening!
~~Rhonda
This is a very busy time of year for us and the past few days were no exception. As is usual this time of year, my sister Genny was here to help. We managed to get quite a bit done.
We put snow on the small tree that sits on top the dining room cabinet. Snow = cotton. I used to use shredded plastic snow, but I can’t do that in good conscience any longer. Plastic waste is so bad for our planet. The cotton gives us the same effect. Doesn’t look exactly the same, but it works. The two trees with cotton snow on them are taken to the attic for storage with the cotton and lights still on them. This year, the lights had to be replaced on the small tree, so we had to redo the snow, as well.
I opened the box with the Christmas tree toppers in it, so I put them on the candlesticks for display. We’ll probably use them on the cookie table for our Open House.
I made Macadamia Nut Shortbread Cookies with white chocolate chunks.
While baking, I noticed this onion. Seems to think it’s time for spring.
These items went to the freezer. Still some cookies and candy to make, but I am gaining on them!
DH and I put the red beads on the living room tree. With a little help from Clark. Winston was hiding on the box under the tree and watched the activity with a great deal of interest.
Last Friday, I finished this little house. So cute. It’s posted in my Etsy shop ChristmasNotebook.
Today, some craft therapy. I’m going to work on making a few more Putz houses. I’ll try to remember to take some pictures and let you see how I progress. Sometimes, I get so caught up in the project that I forget to document it with pictures!
~~Rhonda
Wednesday DH and I worked on the living room tree. It is a nine foot tall tree that sits on a two foot tall box. To take it to the attic for storage, the bottom four layers of branches and their lights come off. The rest of the tree stays intact and is carried to the attic in two pieces, with the lights on. That saves a lot of time each year.
I spent a few hours putting on those four branches and than adding the lights. When that was done, DH put the popcorn and cranberry strings on the tree, under my supervision.
I made a fourth Putz church, using some of the new embellishments Middle Daughter brought me from the Big City.
The grands were here earlier in the week. They had fun making their own gingerbread Putz houses, using printable houses.
Rose Red chose the embellishments. I did the hot-gluing.
Snow White went all out with the embellishments. She had a ball. Even glittered the roof.
Tomorrow I will continue to work on my next Christmas Tree Lot Putz. It’s coming along well. I should have pictures tomorrow.
~~Rhonda
These three Putz churches will be posted to my Etsy shop, ChristmasNotebook, in the next day or so. I just finished them. Lots of fun to do.
This little white and pink Putz church is trimmed with silver glitter. I kept the design very simple by adding two bottle brush trees.
The second church is white with a blue roof.
I love to see them lit up!
This one is almost a coral color.
A close-up of the foliage embellishments.
I just started another Christmas Tree Lot Putz and will be posting it to Etsy when it is finished. More about that soon!
~~Rhonda
I finished three Putz houses today and worked on a couple of others. I am trying to use up the stash of houses I started during the past year or so and never finished.
I love the purple and green one.
The beads under the roofline show up better in this picture.
I think this little yellow and pink one is a charmer. I did add some foliage to the back and sides of the house, but kept it pretty simple over all.
This design is taken from a vintage Putz house. I drew the pattern several years ago and made this house last summer. Today, I put it on a base and added the arches and the foliage.
I have been asked to place some of my Putz houses and Christmas ornaments in a new local country store / gift shop opening in a few weeks. These houses will be part of that display.
~~Rhonda
I’ve been meaning to post but am so busy that, by the time I can, I am too tired to think about it. But I’ll take a stab at it now and see if I can get something coherant up. As most of you know, this is the busiest time of year for us. We are focused on getting the house ready for our annual Christmas Open House. It takes a lot of work and a lot of coordinating of what we’re doing.
Today, DH worked on the 9′ living room tree. We’ve had incandescent lights on it for years. The past few years we have had trouble with it blowing a fuse, so this year we are moving to LED lights on this tree. Not a happy choice for me, because I think colored LEDs are a bit garish and bright. But it’s a big tree and needs a lot of lights, so I am willing to make the change. Besides, burning the house down doesn’t seem like a good trade off.
Because we aren’t having the upstairs open this year for the party, we are juggling some of the trees around. We won’t be using the second 9′ tree for the nativity tree in the library this year and it is already strung with LEDs, so we’ll use that in the living room. I took all the lights off the first 9′ tree and we stored the tree without lights. If we need it another year, we can string it with LEDs. I will miss the incandescents.
In the afternoon, a friend stopped by to help me string popcorn and cranberries for the living room tree. It was great to have time to chat and catch up with her. We managed to string four and a half bags of cranberries (out of six needed for the tree). A second friend stopped by unexpectedly and she gave us a hand, too. It’s a good feeling to have that much of the project done. I’ll finish the rest tomorrow or Friday.
I have been asked to put some of my Putz houses and Christmas ornaments in a new gift shop opening locally, so I am going through my inventory and deciding what to send over for that. I am also trying to make some new inventory so I don’t have to take too much out of my Etsy ChristmasNotebook shop.
A friend stopped by to pick up a special order today. She wanted three yellow and grey houses on one base to use below a table top tree. Nothing green. The ivory colored bottle brush trees were perfect for this project. I am very happy with the way it turned out.
I finished this little Putz house this week and it is posted to my Etsy shop.
I also made this little house. I like it so much that I’m keeping it for myself. But I will be making a few houses in that color to post to Etsy.
I finished the little autumn house.
My dear friend Marsha and her husband visited last Thursday. Marsha and I crafted and Paul watched soccer. He grew up in Brazil so loves the sport. It is always refreshing to visit with them and I enjoyed the day a great deal. Totally forgot to take pictures, though! I did take this picture the night before their visit.
And that is about as clear as my craft counter ever gets. So it’s good to invite friends over. Gives incentive to tidy up!
~~Rhonda
I managed to make four kinds of cookie dough this weekend. Baked three of them. And made a batch of truffles. Most are on their way to the freezer. Some will be on their way to Youngest Daughter in a small care package.
The truffles are Minty Cream Cheese Truffles. These are delicious.
I made dough for a double batch of Sour Cream Sugar Cookies. Those are waiting in the fridge for baking. The dough is very tender and needs to be cold for rolling. In a few days I will get to that and then I’ll have a pile like this. They will go into the freezer and we will take them out to thaw the day before the Open House. I’ll decorate them then.
Nutmeg Logs…I’ve been making these for a long time.
Elfin Bites are tiny shortbread cookies. One of my very favorites. Please use butter, not margarine, when making shortbread. There is a world of difference!
Holiday Oatmeal Cookies were next.
And with all that baking going on we also managed to make a loaf of sourdough bread. It’s too bad more people don’t know the pleasure of hot bread fresh from the oven.
On Saturday Older Son and his lovely wife cleaned out the kitchen pantry for me. We got rid of a lot and they organized the rest. My pantry is eleven feet wide, three and a half feet deep and twelve feet high. It holds a lot! The pantry has two smallish doors, one at each end. I like having it cleaned and organized just before the holidays. That makes all the baking and cooking so much easier to do.
I didn’t get a picture of the shelves on Saturday. Here’s a picture from a previous cleaning that gives you an idea of what we were dealing with. The six big shelves go completely across the back wall, eleven feet long. There’s a window at the south end, which I love.
My sister came on Saturday evening and on Sunday she finished the chalkboard tree and decorated the tree for the downstairs bathroom. It has a garden theme. I didn’t get a picture of that, either, but will at some point. And you’re going to love the chalkboard tree! It came out so cute! Thanks, Genny, for all that hard work!
Tomorrow, I am taking a break from baking and plan to relax with a little craft therapy. And probably an afternoon nap!
~~Rhonda
It isn’t very often that both my dear daughters-in-law are able to visit us in the same week. Younger Son’s wife was here for the wedding of her cousin and was able to stop by on her way back to the airport on Monday. It was wonderful to see her and to spend a couple of hours catching up. She was delighted to hug Winston and tell him how fluffy he was. Younger Son was not able to come, but they should both be back for Christmas. We are looking forward to that. The last time we saw them was last Christmas!
I decided to make an autumn Putz house, so began to work on that this week.
I had to remake the chimney three times to get it to fit correctly. Now I have to decide how I am going to embellish it without using snow.
Genny does most of the chalking on the chalkboard Christmas tree and she will be back this weekend to finish it, but I did a little work on it myself this week. I added some Christmas lights and some snow.
Older Son’s wife is here for a few days to help with the Christmas decorating. We started in the kitchen by taking down all the pie plates and washing them. She also washed the wall and the pegs the curtains hang from. And put up the Christmas curtains. Then we put the snowflake ornaments on the garland which DH had already put up in the windows.
The blue and silver tree in the downstairs bedroom is done except for the tree skirt and the tinsel. Both will wait as they serve as cat magnets and we don’t need that problem right now.
Clark and Winston were very helpful.
The aluminum tree in the bedroom is also done. It’s pretty simple so didn’t take long to put up.
I made the centers for Chocolote Peanut Butter Truffles. I’ll dip those in chocolate, then freeze them till right before the Open House. Then they will be dipped in white almond bark and topped with some cookie sprinkles. A picture from the past…2007 to be exact…
The next step is fluffing and decorating several trees. Back to work!
~~Rhonda