Handmade Christmas week 6

This week you get 3 for the price of one. My friend and I have still been busily crafting away and I wanted to share her gifts because some of you may actually like animals and these gifts might interest you.

She made some neckwarmers too. Hers are made to curve more to the neck. Unfortunately I don't have a link to this one. She found it in a Christmas book. The next one is a doggie cape (it is the red fleece). Then the dog bone made from fleece with a squeeker inside. She designed them to all go together. You give the present to the dog and in the note it says "You can give the neckwarmer to your owner if you want." She also made some healthy dog treats to finish off the gift. Very creative if you have an animal lover on your gift list!



Then she made these creative little gifts to give to her grandkids. It is snowman soup with their own mug. For her autistic grandson, she gave him a mug that you can draw your own illustrations on because he loves hands on stuff like that. She is making the little felt bags to put them in. We are going to make these for our SOS parties that we are hosting this holiday season.







I was browsing another person's blog and saw that she is making notecards as gifts. We also did this for the kid's great-grandmother in Colorado. We also made sure they all had envelopes and stamps on them. I think that is a great idea for older people. Thoughtful cards to send, stamps already on them. Saves them trying to find someone to go buy it for them.

As always I am linking up to Handmade Holidays at Proverbs 31 Living.


Sidenote: My friend has cancer and we took this week off because she had to have a procedure done. She is doing better, but please remember her in your prayers this holiday season.

Handmade Christmas week 4

This gift was a little more involved. It actually required making sure that I followed directions well and took advice from others. We (like the 2 older girls and I) are making pillow buddies. My younger ones have been asking for Pillow Pets for awhile now. I just couldn't bring myself to pay $20 a piece for something I thought would be tossed in about 20 minutes. But then I felt them and they are so soft and cuddly and wonderful.

So I found this tutorial and off we went to the local fabric store. I am making 4 pillows for the price of 2. I am NOT an artist so one of the animals looks a little crooked. Since they kinda look like roadkill anyway, then it is fitting that they are a little sideways. haha!!

Bookstore Date

Recently ZK and I were able to go on a REAL date. Like leave the house without kids, go somewhere, one with adult stuff and just hang out. Although it seems like a lot of other people had the same idea. We still had a great time. Kudos to our friend for watching 2 of the kids that night and then having 2 more for a smores sleepover the next night. We had a very relaxing weekend. (even with a tetanus shot and refusing stitches because I am a BIG baby.hehe)

So onto the date. I know I have mentioned this site before but Darlin' Dating Divas have lots of great ideas for date nights and cute free printables to go along with them. The bookstore date was one of them. So all I had to do was print them, cut them and then give them. Easy-peasy!

It was fun to browse the books and look at ones that we might have skipped otherwise. There were 6 challenges to this date. You can go together to do them or separately. We choose together. I think that kept us on track because we might have gotten busy looking and forgot what else we were looking for.

Challenge 1: new recipe

I don't have pics of these, but he choose an apple cider that was grown-up and I choose Huevos Rancheros from a Williams-Sonoma cookbook. Oh the pictures of the food!


Challenge 2: a quiz from a magazine. We couldn't find one, so we opted for tips and tricks.

Challenge 3: a joke. That was fun.

Challenge 4: book from your childhood. ZK read it to me, complete with sounds and motions. Super sweet.

Challenge 5: A place you would like to travel. ZK chose Japan (although his first choice was Ireland and they didn't have a good book for that one). I think because the pictures of the gorgeous landscape appeal to his artistic side. I chose a route 66 book. I have always wanted to take a trip down the entire road, just stopping whenever we wanted too.

Challenge 6: find a poem. YIKES!! This was hard. They were either way over my head, extremely erotic or really stupid. ZK finally found a decent one and I went with erotic, but we ended up laughing because they were so weird. Should have used them for the joke part. HA!

Two tips for this kind of date. Don't' go on the weekend and pick a bookstore that you really like and that has lots of seating. The one we went to had taken out some seating to make room for games and toys. Disappointing! It was super crowded and this very nice gentleman gave us his chair so we could have 2 together. Also the Starbucks was crazy crowded with elderly people playing chess and students doing their homework. I wanted to knock a couple out of their chairs, but I refrained. Because of the crowd our order was wrong and we didn't realize it until we left. But all in all we had a great time. I would highly recommend it. It was a very inexpensive date with lots of appeal. We left a books in a stack by our chairs and our list of challenges on top for someone else to enjoy.

Handmade Christmas week 4

So here it is just a couple of weeks from Thanksgiving, which means that Christmas is right around the corner. Which also means that I better start wrapping up all the loose ends. We have several of our handmade gifts started, but finding the time to work on them without that certain child around is SO tricky.

So this week I am going to feature the food stuff that we make for lots of our friends every year. This year my friend, Dee, is coming over once a week and doing crafts with us. This has really encouraged me to keep focused and keep on track with the projects.

Yesterday we dipped pretzel rods in vanilla almond bark and then let the littles drown, I mean, sprinkle them with different goodies. We only got about 25 done so hopefully we will get the rest done today. We also have made pumpkin pie spice creamer, malted chocolate pancake mix, molten lava cake in a mug (we bought the mugs super cheap at various places)and bubble bath. I have saved all of the glass jars that we have emptied for the last couple of months. One of them is perfect for the bubble bath. The kids have really enjoyed making the tags for them too.

My mom works in a cafeteria so I had her save about a dozen of the big metal cans. We spray painted them and have been decorating them with Christmas stickers. They are really pretty and a frugal way to present our food gifts.

Handmade Christmas week 3

edited: A certain person found the link and sent it to me. So now I have it linked. YEAH!
updated: I can't find the correct link now. So basically you cut the squares out. Draw on them. Put right sides together and sew. Leaving an opening. Then turn right side out and topstitch to close opening.


Week 3! Woohoo! I can't believe that I have kept up with it this far. This week's gift is cloth napkins. I found this link a long time ago and thought what a great idea for the kid's art that would also make it usable. My mom loves cloth napkins and kept saying that she was going to need to get some more because hers were wearing out. I don't know if it was a subtle hint or not, but I took it as one.


We followed the tutorial fairly closely. Except that I went ahead and cut them into the squares. I bought a white sheet at wal-mart for about $3 and it made about 24 napkins that were 14x14. The kids loved this and they were so easy to do.


What are you making this week?









Someday I will have an fancy pants camera that can take good pictures without me needing to know how to work it. hehe