A Homemade Christmas!

Well, it’s over for another year . I’m so sad how fast Christmas comes and goes again. My body is probably ok with it though, I’ve had so much on the go the past couple of weeks(and that is so not the usual for me, I gave up the crazy busy life years ago now), I guess it has all caught up with me. Even after almost 7 hours sleep(a lot for me!) I’m absolutely exhausted today and my back right from head to tailbone is in so much pain I likely won’t leave my heating pad all day.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! Hubby and I didn’t get each other anything, we just bought for the kids. We’ll see if we can afford to take advantage of after Christmas sales and get each other something.

I’ve already been sharing some of the recipes that I made and used for gifts this Christmas(I have plenty more!), well now it’s time to share the non-food stuff!

I only have one little niece, I have 2 older nieces who are grown and married now, but they are the kids of my brother who lives in Arizona so I’ve only ever actually seen them a handful of times. My only sister has the only girl that I get to actually see as she’s growing up. So needless to say not having a girl of my own I have this extreme urge to spoil her! This year I did well not to struggle with the ease of going overboard and instead made her something that I think will look absolutely adorable on her.

This was the first thing I ever sewed(besides just mending) other than an apron I made my youngest several years ago, but I had my mother in laws help with that one. This one I did on my own just from looking around the internet at some tutorials on making similar dresses. I’m so thrilled with how it turned out, it will have to be worn more like a tunic though because it’s not quite long enough for her(I just used pre-cut pieces of fabric from Walmart).

The dress/tunic for my 4 year old niece:

Next is a toolbelt I made for my 2 year old nephew. It’s my sister’s boy and he’s the last “baby” in the family since we are all done having kids. I made this out of a placemat and got him a set of Home Depot play tools to go with it, definitely happy with how it turned out too!

The toolbelt:

And the last thing we made 2 of(hubby helped and actually did almost all of this one for me ). These were Magnetic boards for my nephews, 10 and 6.

The magnetic board:

There you have it, my partially homemade Christmas! I gave each of them a non-homemade gift as well to go with it and tins of homemade fudge and cookies.

Even though I started planning these gifts early this year I want to plan even earlier for next year. I just don’t know what my family is planning on for gift giving. They tried to change it on me this year and I am still quite pissed off about it, I have no interest in changing how we give gifts. We buy for only the kids and my parents and I like it that way. So now I’m afraid if I start too early they will pull the same thing and try to change it again after I’ve already done most of my Christmas shopping.

Have you done some homemade Christmas gifts this year or in years past?

Jolene