A Homemade Christmas

After reading one too many Little House books (the current book being The Long Winter..... hmmmm....) the kids and I decided it would be fun to have a homemade Christmas this year. After pondering the gifts from last year, and most of us couldn't even remember what we received (or what I spent those few hundred dollars on), we all thought the season might have more meaning if we put our efforts into hand crafting the gifts this year. Our focus on the holiday is on the birth of Christ so we don't go too crazy with all of the extras anyway. The logic was that homemade gifts would grow in each of us the attitude to think of what others would want more-so than what we would want along with loosening the grip of our material wants. It has sort of morphed into a quest to not spend any money on these gifts as well and just use (mostly) what we already have. It has been a slightly painful process for some of us here, not mentioning any names of the certain male gender in the household, but it has also brought out the best in us, if not the procrastinater in each of us as well. There are a couple of presents that I have been let in on (and am sworn to secrecy until Christmas Eve) that are pretty amazing. We did break down last week and let the kids draw names for each other and will give them $5 each to buy gifts (as they wanted to go Christmas shopping something fierce) and Rob and I will still buy some stocking gifts for them to open on Christmas morning. So in all my spare time I have been working on gifts for everybody. For Micah I decided to make a two sided puzzle out of some scrap wood and an old calendar. I cut some blocks about 2 3/4", then sanded them all down. He loves monster trucks so I picked out 2 pictures and cut them to size with my quilting rotary cutter. Next I glued them onto the blocks. Then cut the next picture and glued it onto the other side of the blocks. Then I found some heavy books to set on top until the glue is dried. I will ransack the basement shelves to find some clear polyurethane to seal them with tomorrow. I also made a cute little Bob the Builder bag for him to keep them all in.

For Trent the mighty hunter I dug through my boxes and boxes of material stash. I found a deer print curtain that somebody had given me a while back, some left over batting and some orange material from mom. For Trent's birthday in the spring we had given him a new scope for his deer rifle but the scope made it too big to fit into his gun case. So I started cutting and quilting and made him a new gun case for the rifle. I still have (at least) 4 quilts left on my agenda to finish, plus finish some gifts for the girls and Rob has wanted a cover for his ice auger for the past year. And then there's Micah's presents to help make and if I can find some helpers I would like to make Christmas cookies for the neighbors and wrap up soap for all those wonderful library ladies. Poor Rob is at his whit's end wondering what to make. I told him some kitchen trim would be great, or a finished bathroom, or a nice big sunroom with a writing loft and a woodstove and a couple of patio doors and a covered porch and a grande piano would be just fine. Or maybe just breakfast in bed.