Christmas Gifts 2013

For Christmas this year, we (primarily) made all of our gifts.

We did buy just a few, because we felt that they were needed or nice additions to our homemade gifts. This does not mean that we are abandoning our tradition of making everything. We still firmly believe that our gifts from the heart are a great blessing to others, and will continue to make our gifts as usual. There were just a couple of things that we thought were a good idea to purchase (more on that at the end).

Without further ado, here are the gifts we made this year!

Well.... actually, to start with - some gifts I made for Angie. Robert's aunt got married on January 11th, and for one of her showers, I made her something unique to take on her way: tea towels that are hand-stamped with carrot sticks and celery.

I used a Julienne-cut carrot stick for the gray-printed towels
(it was a little messy to stamp).  For the green, I used a celery stalk end. Both were
stamped with Ceramcoat paint. (FYI - I learned that this is the medium used to make
acrylic paint fabric paint!)

Here are both towels together

Another shot of both towels

And finally....Christmas gifts!

I'll start with Ashley and Leah's. I was most excited to give these gifts of any this year! I spent a lot of time making them, and I'm super proud of how they turned out!

Custom horsey coffee sleeves! (I kind of made
my own pattern from a Starbucks sleeve).

I used plain brown fabric for
backing, and this gorgeous horsey
fabric for the front. I had the buttons
already. I wish I'd had tension bands
to secure them instead, though! I wanted
them to look like little lassos originally.

My OCD did kick in, and I did a different cut on the
fabric pattern for each, so different parts of it showed. I also put the button openings on separate
sides (on left, one right), because Ashley is right-handed, and Leah is left-handed. :)

They were super fun to make - but more fun to give!

The green scarfette! This one is Ashley's.

The cream scarfette! This one is Leah's.

Both scarfettes together. I really wanted Paul to
make me those gorgeous wooden buttons, but
alas, I learned that he needs a special tool (a lathe),
to be able to do it. Sigh. I don't have the money for
that kind of tool! So I bought them new. I think they
still look awesome!

A blanket I made for my brother, Tristan. He
is always cold! This is a big (queen-size) fleece
blanket that I blanket-stitched around completely.

I thought the colors would go with anything he has,
and he could probably use it for a top blanket, or even
a quilt.

Happy Juice. We gave this to cousins, since they
all love it so much! Shane calls it, "Happy Juice,"
or, "Kimi Juice." So sweet! :)

Lemon-Rosemary Marmalade

As you can see, I went all out with the decorations,
using a sprig of rosemary, baker's twine, a custom
label, and festive fabric. :)

We gave this to various family members, and we
had a little leftover, and saved it for ourselves. It is
SO GOOD! But it took the better part of 4-6 hours
to create. We may never make it again, lol.

Pomegranate Syrup! This was
for Dad C & Perry.

Robert found the super cute glass containers at
Fred Meyer on clearance. Score!

Here's one of the last gifts - we didn't make it. But,
we did buy local! This came from Karen's Flower Shop, and it was for my mom!

Another gift for my mom!

These actually weren't displayed together in the
store, but I really wanted them both. I thought they
were a perfect addition for my mom's kitchen!

The other gift we bought was a nice new jacket for my dad from Columbia Sportwear. It is light enough to wear comfortably, but has that special omni-heat technology and all these other little gadgets on it. He loved it!

If you're wondering where I got the ideas for our gifts this year, it was Food Gifts again. I really think that the $10 or so we spent on the magazine was well-worth it. There are a lot of other ideas that I still want to make!

The towels for Angie even came from that! (Although they don't look nearly as neat as the towels in the magazine).

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my post on gifts in 2013! 

In case anyone is wondering how I am able to post this at 1:00 in the afternoon when I should be at work (which I am), Blogger has this amazing "Schedule posts" feature that I now use occasionally when I'm behind on blogging. Okay, I use it a lot right now, because I need to get caught up! I compose two blogs in one evening, post the first, and delay the second until the next day.