Christmas Gift Ideas of Christmas Past

Are you feeling the pressure of Christmas gift shopping yet? I can't believe there's only 2 weeks left before Christmas already!

This year, I decided to hand make all my Christmas gifts. Anybody else in the same boat?! I really enjoyed making the few I did make last year, and I love how personal they are that way, not to mention cheaper! So I decided to up my game and go all out this year.

I did almost all of my Christmas supplies shopping this past weekend, and just received some fabric I ordered online, so the countdown is on! I have 10 people to make presents for; some are more complicated, some are smaller, some are in double and quadruple, and a few I have to mail out (so they are first on the list to make!). I think I must have 20 individual presents to make, and I'm starting to feel the pressure, a little, but I'm determined to make it!

I'm not sure I'll have the time to blog about it before the holidays, but I will be sharing my progress on Facebook if you are interested in following me. (But if you're family please stay away ;) )

I also want to apologize for my lack of posting the last month without warning, and not finishing the green series (though I will eventually finish it!). I had a really hard time adapting to my boyfriend's new schedule (at a hospital 1 hr bus ride away), and I was more concentrating on keeping house and lab work. To me, that comes first, and I do blog stuff as a side project when and if I have the time and energy, so thanks for being understanding!

So with that, if you're still wondering what to get or make for some loved ones this year, I thought I'd share the gifts I made last year for your inspiration purposes ;)


I made this Magnetic Pin Dish for my grand-ma that sews. I'm happy to say it's held up perfectly so far. I think not spray painting the inside of the top plate (where the pins "stick"), but rather the underside only, meant that no paint could be scratched and hence it looks just as before.




A practical gift I made last year both for my other grand-ma and my mom was this Remote Caddy. It was supper easy to make, is completely functional and looks pretty! That way people will actually want to use it and your remotes will not get lost in the couch cracks (though results are not guaranteed).



Lastly, I made these decorative magnets for my friends and my aunt. Simple, cute, practical, and handmade! Who doesn't need more fridge magnets?!



Are you hand making some, or all, Christmas gifts this year? What are you making?!

Finally, if you actually made it to the end, I'm also working on revamping the blog a little and making it more user friendly. I started making a footer section, and I will reorganize the Project Gallery into more subsections to correspond. I want to declutter the sidebars and possibly just have 1 instead of 2, but I'm not entirely sure yet. I'm not changing the blog design yet, just the layout and organization of it. If you've got any ideas or preferences, I'd love to hear them!!

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Decorating Gingerbread cookies

I know that Christmas has been over for almost a month now, but I'm prolonging the festivities! I'm not ready to let it go, I barely had any time before Christmas to enjoy all my decorations. And since I took some time coming back to blogging after the holidays, I have a few Christmas themed posts left. Hope you don't mind. If you do, then you can skip :)

Last time I told you that I had my girlfriends come over to my parents' place while I was back home, and I showed you the little gifts I made for them.

I had a big day planned for them! But since we hadn't all been in the same room in a LONG time, we ended up crashing in the kitchen and talking mostly, catching up. The one thing we did end up doing in my planned activites was gingerbread cookies. Yup, never too old to enjoy this Christmas activity! And decorating them, of course!



This was actually my first time EVER making these, even as a kid we never did. I followed this recipe. One of my friends took over the rolling of the dough since she had experience with that ;) It was so much fun rolling and cutting out the shapes. I'm not sure exactly how many cookies we had, but we had lots!





For the decorating part, I had looked for icing tubes, but at 3$ for every color, I thought it would be WAY better to do it myself!

All it is is icing sugar and milk added until you get a good consistency (so not too runny but not too hard either). And we got to make our own colors. We made some very fun colors if I do say so myself. Just put them in a baggy, snip the end, and have fun decorating. I also had jujubes (dots) and M&Ms as buttons or what not.



We each had a color to start with and passed it around when we wanted change. For some reason, I ended up making about double as everyone else. Here's my stash:



One of my friends' stash:



And some of the favorites:







And this one might not be child friendly so click to see, if you want, I thought it was funny:

Little Boy Gingerbread

To be honest, I didn't like the cookies all that much, just not what I thought gingerbread cookies would taste like. But everyone else did, so that's ok. And the boyfriend didn't mind having all those cookies made just for him in the end :)

Next week, I'll show you the gifts I made for my grand-ma's. What's better than something handmade by their grand-daughter for someone who seems to have everything?!

Thanks for stopping by, until next time!



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I party at these parties.If you would like to invite me to your linky party, please do so on my linkies page, thank you!

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Party favors and decorative magnets

Is it too late to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year? No? Ok, good! Because this is my first real post of the year, and I forgot to tell you all in my last post. I guess I was too busy trying to ask for help (which I still need btw, blog design is a tricky thing).

It really wasn't in my plans to absent myself so long from my blog. But school comes first! So I took almost 3 weeks off (even work in the lab) to study for my finals. Then Christmas came, I went back home for most of the holidays, and the rest I just vegged on my couch, spent a whole day reading Hunger Games (I am now done the trilogy now, absolutely loved it!). I also took a lot of time to reorganize just about every storage place I had in our little apartment(closets, drawers, shelves), it's a lot more functional now!

I did manage, however, to snag a lot of pictures for future posts during the holidays! I made a few of gifts, mostly inspired by all of you in blogland! So today I am sharing the first of many. Even though Christmas has come and gone, there is always next year, and birthdays!

While I was back home, I invited my closest girlfriends for a little girl time. We hadn't been all in the same room since probably high school, 6 years ago. I had a lot planned out for that day, but in the end, we ended up mostly talking, which was totally fine! I wanted to make them a little something with my new crafty talents, and naturally I had pinned a few things, but in the end made these:



I'd seen these toilet paper roll favors all over in the last few months, and I couldn't help but make my own! They are really great for small gifts.

I ended up searching for a tutorial since it was my first time with Mod Podge and I wasn't exactly sure how to go about. I followed this tutorial from Crissy's Crafts.





The trickiest bit I found was folding the ends over, they just never seemed quite as nicely folded as everyone else's. Once I had the Christmas scrapbook paper Mod Podged on, it became somewhat easier, though.

The decorative magnets have also been ALL over blogland (I'm sorry if you're tired of seeing them) and it's not hard to understand why. These were so simple to make, cheap, and you could give to just about anyone. The original tutorial I followed was Potentially Beautiful's.



I bought a scrapbook paper page with a lot of different colors and designs on it to be able to make different sets. All but the blue one came from that one page, and I do find them quite different!



The magnets I used were from a small dollar store, and they seemed a lot more powerful than the brand they have at the big chain Dollarama. In fact, in these pictures I took, I had to separate the magnets a bit so they didn't repel each other or stick together, that's how strong they were! I really don't think they would've been very useful with just magnet tape (which I tried, but I really didn't feel much pull when I stuck it to the fridge).

Just a little tip if you're using hot glue like me, if I too little then the cold magnet cools it down too quickly and I couldn't squish it down properly and it bulged out more than I wanted it to. Took me a few stones to figure that one out. So I used a really good blob of glue and was able to get it right and push it down close to the stone ;)













I just used a bit of fake snow to cushion them inside so they wouldn't move all over, and voila! A little something for everyone!


Did you end up making something in bulk to give out during the holidays? I'd love to get ideas for next year!


Next time I'll show you what we did end up doing for the 6 hours we were together. Let's just say you're never too old to enjoy some simple Christmas traditions!

Until next time, thanks for stopping by!




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I party at these parties.If you would like to invite me to your linky party, please do so on my linkies page, thank you!

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Puzzle Advent Calendar

I love Christmas. Really, it's my favorite holiday. And not for the presents. One of the things I look forward to every year is the countdown to Christmas- the advent calendar.

As I kept growing up, I felt like I was growing out of the traditional chocolate advent calendar. Ok, I'm lying, I still get my chocolate advent calendar. But, I wanted some other way to countdown to Christmas. So I put my thinking cap on, and this is what I came up with. I call it, the Puzzle Advent Calendar. I made it 2 years ago, but since my blog is new, I'm only sharing it now.



The idea is that every day...



...you get to turn over a piece of the puzzle.





Then as you turn over more and more pieces every day...



... you get to see the big picture, and build the puzzle!



I wanted a way to move the pieces around to be able to do the puzzle. So each piece is in it's own little pocket. There are 24 pockets, with vinyl on the front to be able to see inside.



And each has some velcro on the back.



Naturally, there is velcro on the frame too.





Speaking of the frame, or the base of the calendar. It's like a picture frame, only instead of being made of wood, it's entirely made of fabric! There's 3 layers. The outer layer is wider and made of this suede-like fabric that is also quilted, which gives the frame this great texture. The 2nd layer is made with stripped fabric. I just fell in love with this fabric when I saw it, it was more expensive than I was hoping to spend (13$/meter), but it's my "piece de résistance" fabric. The other fabric I got were all 4 or 5$/m. And the inner layer, the thinnest one, is just light green to tie it all together. I love the look!



So once Christmas has come, all the pieces are revealed, and the puzzle is complete! And you get a pretty picture to look at until you decide to take it down. I'm gonna spoil the picture and show you how it looks like all done. These are the pieces I used the first time, 2 years ago.









As soon as I came up with this idea, I knew I would be making some for my friends. So I made 4 extra ones (up to date, they take a LONG time to make!). Every year, I print the new pieces and send them to my friends with a Christmas card. I don't get the surprise of unveiling the pieces every year since I make them, but at least they do! I use a wallpaper with a scene or an image I like. I made the calendar so it would fit the normal wallpaper size.

So that's my advent calendar! I hope you liked it. Can you believe that was my first sewing project? I had a LOT of help from my grand-ma, I really couldn't have done it without her. And lining up those stripped corners so they align perfectly was not an easy task, but I love the outcome.

Oh yeah, and even though I'm 24, I still get a chocolate advent calendar from my mom. (Thanks mom!) She got one for my bf too!





I`d love to know what you think! Would you like a tutorial to know how to make it yourself? Is it too complicated? Do you think your kids would have fun with this advent calendar?

Thanks for reading!



Also linked up with:

Advent Calendar Link Party @ Nap Time Creations

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