homemade gifts

Spoiler alert:  If you're related to me, you may not want to read this post, as you may see something that I've made you for Christmas!  :)

I really like homemade gifts.  I love receiving homemade gifts.  I mostly love making homemade gifts.  I think it gets a little tricky when you put a lot of time into making a gift, and the receiver doesn't necessarily recognize or appreciate your efforts.  And that can be a major bummer if you put a lot of thought, care, and time into making a gift.

I feel like Christmas time can be really complicated.  There's come to be a cultural expectation that we will give and receive gifts.  But in so many ways, gift giving has come to be all about consumerism.  That's one of the reasons that I like to make gifts for people.  Plus, generally speaking, my family and friends have enough "stuff."  Working daily with folks who are homeless, I'm aware how much I value my relationships with friends and family members.  Without their love and support, it's not that difficult to imagine myself in the place of many of the people that I work with.

So this year I decided to try to make gifts for almost everyone on my list.  Again, because there's such cultural pressure to give gifts to so many people (all your relatives, your co-workers, your friends, your child's teacher, your hairstylist, the list goes on...), I tried to keep my gifts simple.

This is an easy gift idea that works well for family, friends, or even folks at the office.  I discovered this project idea over at MADE.  Instead of me recreating her excellent tutorial, I'm going to send you to her directions here, which are really top notch.  Have I mentioned how much I like her blog?  It's really a winner.

Here's a few of my additional suggestions:  I bought 1/8th of a yard of felt in some pretty basic colors: red, blue, green, yellow, and purple.  Felt was on sale at JoAnns for $2.99 a yard, so all that cost me about $1.75 total.  I also bought 1/8th of a yard of a nicer felt in off-white.  In the cheap felt they only had a really bright white, and I liked the slightly off-white color.  That was $9.99 a yard (!), but I didn't buy much, and I used a coupon.

Speaking of which, did you know JoAnn's has coupons that you can load onto your phone?  I used The JoAnn app (it's free!) to download my coupons, and it worked slick!  No more forgetting your coupons!  If you shop at JoAnns ever, I have to recommend it.

OK, back to the project.  I also bought matching thread to sew on my letters.  I used a sewing machine to sew them on (the only part of this project that really couldn't be done while watching tv---unless your sewing machine is near a tv).  It would be easy enough to hand sew on the letters if you don't have a sewing machine.  I also bought some thin crochet yarn (you could use what you have on hand--I don't crochet!) to sew the pieces of felt together.  I had ribbon on hand.  I also stuffed mine with some fake snow.  You could easily use cotton balls, tissue, or whatever else you have around, or not stuff your ornaments.  I liked the 3-D effect.

To make the circles, I traced a juice glass.  To make the letters, I picked a font that I liked, set the size to 150, and printed out the letters for my relatives.  I then cut them out with scissors, and traced them onto my felt.  Ta-dah!  Easy!  (If you're a fancy scrapbooking type, I'm sure there's an easier way with your fancy-pants machine!)

I completed this project over the course of a few days while watching TV in the evenings after the kiddo had gone to bed.  I found it very relaxing, and I think they turned out great.  Let me know if you try it!  Again, you can find the original tutorial here.