My own handmade Christmas

Here I am always encouraging people to either make or buy handmade presents for Christmas. I bet you think that I go to Walmart for all my gifts. So, here is so proof that I actually practice what I preach.

Jamie got my favorite handmade gift - a papercut portrait of Victor Wooten. I got the idea from a tutorial on a great blog, Dude Craft. I sent Paul Overton, Mr. Dude Craft, a picture of my Victor portrait and he actually posted it on his blog today. Jamie also got 5 passes that he can use to get out of doing dinner dishes.

I made Kinsey a wristlet from some fake leather (actually I think it might be car upholstery vinyl) that my Mom got at a tag sale several years ago. I knew I'd eventually find a use for it. She had wanted a cute Juicy Couture one for $79. (sorry honey). I did the strap so that she can useit as a wristlet or convert it to a regular short strap.

I think it turned out pretty well given I didn't use a pattern and it was last minute sewing. You can't see it, but I even put a pocket on the other side.

I think her favorite handmade gift was my stocking stuffer, a bottlecap keychain with an image

of her new crush, teen singing sensation, Justin Bieber. If you don't know of him, you can see his You Tube video here.

On niece, Mei, is totally into horses right now. We sent her all of Kinsey's old horse books (recycled gift, next best thing to a handmade gift) and a bottlecap keychain with a cute horse image. Seth has become a skateboarder dude. So, he gets all of Jamie's too small skateboard t-shirts and a personalized skateboarder themed notepad. His initials are BSB which I related to Born to be a Skate Boarder (get it?) Rhys at nearly age 2 gets a polarfleece quillow. They also each got one of my handmade ornament kits so that they'll be ready for next holiday season. Here's a picture of Seth's notepad.

My parents are always tough to get presents for - my siblings are smart and get them food products. I, on the other hand, keep giving them handmade items. I hope they like them. Their gifts had a morel mushroom theme this year. I made them a needle felted morel mushroom tree ornament, felted them a bar of soap and made my Dad a bottle cap keychain with the Yankees logo on it. I also bought them an adorable morel mushroom ceramic tile from another Etsy seller, Lesperencetiles. I had an extra day to wrap their presents and was able to spend more time on it. Look at these cute packages - I love the morel mushroom foil hangtag.

Some of the other handmade items that made their way to people this holiday season were zipper pendants and brooches, felted soap, handmade ornaments, many bottles of our "famous" caesar salad dressing that David made, felted acorn package toppers and ornaments and packages of post-its that were covered in decorative papers.

What a wonderful holiday season it was!