Catching Up: My Handmade Holiday

I am a very lucky and very happy woman.  My children are all at a very fun stage where they love to pretend, and love to be with me.  The "baby" is running full speed ahead and doing her best to keep up with her brothers.  They require both of my hands all of the time, and most of the time it's extremely rewarding.  Needless to say, posting here has taken a very back seat (like a seat all the way in the back of a very long bus) to everything else that has been needing my attention.

I made super awesome Halloween costumes for all the kiddos, I took a lot of pictures of that process, too, and someday when things really settle down, I will write up that tutorial.  After Halloween finished, my Christmas crafting planning happened, and I am very pleased with all that I was able to accomplish this year without really being stressed out.  I hope you and your families celebrated a wonderful Christmas and New Year.

My kids made out like handmade gift bandits receiving new crocheted hats and mittens, monogrammed floor poufs, Creature Power Suits that resemble Wild Kratts ones, "laptop" bags for their LeapFrog LeapTops. Embroidered fleece shirts and t-shirts, a crocheted sweater, pirate hats and gnome hats, and so many other gifts I did not make to inspire their creativity, imaginations, and minds.  I currently have the messenger bags, pirate hats and gnome hats available for purchase in my Etsy shop.  To make the floor poufs I followed the amazing tutorial from Living with Punks.

I have four beautiful nieces that are very good to me, and they all let me make them awesome homemade gifts too. The younger two of my girls received slipper socks in exactly the colors they wanted.

My oldest niece belongs in the woods and should have been a cowgirl.  She asked for a pair of Cowgirl Slippers (ha!) and I ended up using the Lion Brand Cowboy Booties pattern for inspiration and creating a pair to fit her gigantic size 8 feet.  Don't worry, I wrote this up too, but I didn't take any pictures so you may or may not see a post on these.  She also asked me for an infinity scarf - and since she's on Pinterest, she was able to send me loads of ideas on exactly what she wanted (and didn't want) and I was able to zip one up to be exactly what she wanted.  Lastly, she let me get creative with my new embroidery machine and I monogrammed a pair of boot socks for her.

My second oldest niece had been hinting since August that she wanted a pair of fingerless Cinderella length gloves in royal blue.  For her, I made up a pair of the beautiful Ripple Lace Fingerless Gloves provided by Bethsco Blog in Red Heart Shimmer Royal and she went bananas.  She's full on into the Mortal Instruments this year, so I also had used black felt, and iron on fusible webbing to cut out the shapes of some of the major runes so she can iron these onto whatever she wants.  The last bit of her gift was that I had digitized one of the runes from the books into a file for my embroidery machine, and offered to put it on any article of clothing for her.  She has me put it on a sweatshirt I had picked up for her, and a pair of jeans.  It came out super cute, and totally made my day that she appreciated it.  In fact, I was psyched that all my nieces truly appreciated their gifts this year.

Hooray for handmade holidays!