Our Homemade Christmas

I am such a gift person. I love getting them, and I really love giving them. We always put a lot of thought into our presents, and knowing that we wouldn't have a lot of money for Christmas this year, we began scheming homemade gift ideas months ago. Ideas are not hard to come by (thanks to Pinterest!), but considering how NOT crafty I am, we could only seriously consider those that take minimal skill.  Here are a few we successfully implemented:

For my mom, an avid reader and grandkid-adorer: a set of genre-specific bookmarks. I came up with this idea all on my own, and my fairly proud of it. I used pictures of the kids that we already had and paired them up with a book genre that sort of coincided. I used free editing software to add the genre to the picture, printed them out at home, and used clear contact paper to laminate them. If I were a more competent photo editor, perhaps I would have made them more slender, like a typical bookmark, but for simplicity's sake...

I ended up with ten bookmarks: sleeping Bash for nonfiction (supposedly boring, after all), Rory in an old fashioned hat and bonnet for historical fiction, carving pumpkins for DIY books, Rory screaming bloody murder with crazy bedhead for mystery/suspense, etc. My mom LOVED them!

I made these fire starters for my husband, who makes lovely fires in our wood stove to keep his family warm. I used pine cones from the yard, pariffin wax, toilet paper tubes (to set the pine cones in), and kitchen twine (for a wick). It was a pretty easy process; pouring the melted wax over the pine cones (I placed them in a greased muffin tin) that were resting on the paper tube segments, after wrapping some twine around them. When they had cooled, I popped them out and stored them in a cardboard box (maybe not the best idea for something that's purpose is to make fire). They work fabulously!

My husband is amazing. He is waaaaaaaay more crafty than I. Look at the beautiful scarf hanger he made his sister for Christmas! We're a good team; I found the idea on Pinterest, and he implemented it with his awesomeness. What you can't really see is the scroll work he did on all four sides, using the wood burning kit he got when he was like 13 years old. It's also stained and polyurethaned, and holds six scarves ever so neatly in a closet!

 Some other gifts we made that I didn't take pictures of include beef jerky, cookbooks for my siblings using recipes clipped by our grandma before she died, and a tiered planter made out of a pallet. I think we succeed in making gifts that were frugal, meaningful, but not kitschy over impractical.  I'm already a bit concerned about next year...