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.

Meal Planner

I'll admit that I can be a bit of a food hoarder.  I love to cruise the aisles of the grocery store, checking out this and that.  I also love a good sale, and can stock up on lots of food, that then never quite makes it to the table.  I'm trying to be better.  So tonight I made a Meal Planning board that we'll hang in our kitchen. Every Sunday we'll plan out a week's worth of meals, and then shop for what we need, but also plan in advance for meals that we'll take directly from the freezer or use up other food we've stockpiled.  Sounds easy, right?  We'll see.  But this board certainly was a fun and easy craft!  My friend Lisa originally emailed me about this project over at Make and Takes.  This is my version.  Let's get started!

First off Supplies:

I bought a 10x10 inch frame at Michael's today.  Frames are 40% off this week, and there's a coupon in this week's ad for an additional 20% off.  This frame was on clearance, and with the additional savings, it cost me about 3 bucks.  I also picked up some stickers for the lettering (I chose "mini black letters" by Sticko), and a sheet of scrapbook paper.  I couldn't decide color what would look best in my kitchen, so I got two, just in case.

The first thing I did was take the mat out of the frame and use it as the guide for cutting my scrapbook paper.  

I then cut out all the letters and laid them out on my paper to get a visual on things.

I started at the bottom, and worked my way up peeling letters and sticking them onto the paper.  If you chose a paper like mine, you can use its pattern as a guide.  Unfortunately I didn't think about that until it was already a little wonky.  Oh well.

Then stick your paper under the glass, reattach the back of the frame, and use a dry erase marker to plan your menu each week.  End result:  Meal Planning Board!  If you change your decor, or move, you can easily paint the frame, switch out the background, etc.  Easy, cute, and practical!