Handmade Christmas Gifts 2012

In the spirit of Christmas and St. Nicholas I decided to get started on my favorite thing. Making Presents!!! I love making gifts and giving them away.

These gift baskets are stuffed with my home made bath soak, body spray, salt scrub and soap. My deluxe basket! I finished it off with a basket and filler from the Dollar Tree and wrapped in in a clear basket bag and tied it up with simple blue ribbon.

This is another basket I filled with some home made bath soak and salt scrub. I finished it off the same way as the deluxe basket. I also do the little baskets with a scrub/body spray combo and a large scrub/small scrub combo. These are always well received around the holidays. After all the holiday shopping and traveling who isn't in the mood for some relaxing down time? These baskets provide just that!

These cute snowmen are chocolate candy bars we hand out to the kids in the neighborhood, the mail carrier or a delivery person dropping off Christmas packages. They are easy to make and affordable. Just take an 8 1/2x11 sheet of white paper and cut in half. Take a half of the paper and wrap it around the chocolate bar. Tape the back, add a cute little face to the front, tie on some ribbon and you have snowman candy bars! 

This I haven't started yet, but can you guess what I am going to make? You guessed it! Chocolate bars and truffles. These are for a cookie exchange party we are going to in mid December. Can't wait to taste test!

 Here are the soaps that I made this year. Rose scented for the ladies and Drakkar cologne for the men. They turned out quite fragrant. All I have to do is wrap them up and stuff them in a basket with other goodies.

These are the cards and matching box I made for my Mom's birthday. I chose a snowflake theme since she will most likely use them all before Winter ends and by Spring I will have a new boxed set for her!

Last I have these great gift bags for our neighbors. I bought a charger from the Dollar Tree and added a box of cookies and some hot chocolate. I finished it with a basket bag and festive bow. I think project cost me around $6. It's cute, festive and you really can't go wrong with cookies and hot chocolate on a cold winter night.

Do you make gifts for the holidays? What are they? Leave me a link to your blog in the comments and I will add you in an up coming blog post about more homemade gifts!

Paper Bunting and Subway Art

. 

Here is my cute paper bunting I made for the holiday season. I bought a scrap pack from Oriental Trading Company and decided that this would make a great project for the scrap pieces. I have this obsession with making these since I saw a few on Pintrest and they are so easy to make.

I might even add a tutorial son making this stuff, no sewing required. Just glue, scissors and paper.

Here is a close up. I recently purchased a Sizzix off Craigslist. It really did a great job at cutting the pieces out. I usually use my Cricut but it pissed me off while making some cards and I have put it in the closet for a while. Or until I forgive it for making me so darned mad.
Below is my Autumn bunting. It is my favorite so far. I love the colors and the font I used is really whimsical and adds some fun to it.

OK, as far as subway art goes I really wasn't a fan until Thanksgiving. We were at our families home when Aunt Helen pulled out a framed picture her daughter had given her. It was subway art of Christmas words.I fell in love.
That night I went on to (can you guess??) Pintrest and found some free printable subway art from eighteen25. I sent it over to Costco and had them blow it up to 16x20 which cost around $7, it turned out beautiful. They have many more I will be printing and framing.

As far as the framing goes I haven't made it out to the craft store. So I painted a cork board I had in my office and used brass tacks to secure it. I didn't go through the paper though, since I will frame it at some point. I just secured the edges with the side of the tack and pushed the pin into the board. I might go all the way around - just haven't decided.

So what are your holiday decorations? Do ya'll like subway art and paper bunting? Did you make any Christmas decorations this year?

Let me know, I would love to share them!
Heather

Decorating For Christmas

I have started and finished decorating for Christmas. I keep it very simple, basic. We live in a small house by today's standards so our tree is only 3 feet tall.
It makes for easy decorating. I stick to two colors, red and white and add a few pops of green, silver (because you have to have some sparkle) and maybe gold.
Side note: See that white wall. I painted that myself a few weeks ago. If you think that is no big deal, you are wrong. I have lived with a wood paneled wall behind our fireplace for 12 years and finally won an ongoing disagreement we have had about painting it. Not to mention we are remodeling the house in 6 months and taking this wall completely out. But that doesn't have anything to do with my WINNING! Does it?

You must excuse the photos. I love taking pictures and when I got sand in my camera at the beach this summer I ran out and bought a small point & shoot Canon camera that was in my budget. Well, I should have waited until I had more money because I cannot take a decent picture with this thing!

Anyway, my Christmas decor is simple. I love it and the kids think it looks lovely. This year I did add some subway art from Pintrest. It cost me all of $7 and I will post that tomorrow.

I also changed up the Advent calendar this year and made my own with small gifts and activities for the family to do.

It started out, I was going to decorate 24 mason jars and fill them with goodies. I got out 12, realized that It was taking up WAY too much space, and was going to be a lot more work than I anticipated so I bought a pack of brown paper bags at the Dollar Tree and there they sit in a bucket I wrapped in scrap Christmas paper left over from last year.

I will leave you all with one more little picture of our tree. A very bad picture but it will give you an idea of how I have decorated it and kept it simple.

Tomorrow I will spill the beans about my obsession with making paper bunting, subway art and some recent decorating I have done - not Christmas related.

Night All!

Heather

How do you decorate for Christmas??
Simple?
Elaborate?
Not at all???

Let me know.