A Mostly Handmade Christmas

This Christmas I am tackling something kind of big. I'm trying to mostly make by hand all the gifts for family and friends on our list. This is very daunting! I've been dabbling a little in some handmade projects over the last year or so, and I thought I'd share links and photos of those projects in case anyone else is looking for some handmade gift ideas this Christmas. My big goal is to have everything complete before Advent, so I can really focus on doing activities with our family in preparation for Our Lord's birth. But we shall see!

For Mary's first birthday favors Jeff and I made crayon rollups and printed off coloring pages from crayola.com. Here are the pictures of the ones I made:



And here are the two tutorials online that I drew from:

http://chocolateonmycranium.blogspot.com/2008/04/crayon-roll-tutorial.html

http://www.skiptomylou.org/2007/04/25/on-a-roll/

Last Christmas for Jeff's brother's children we bought a doorway puppet theater and made hand puppets using felt:


I couldn't find a good tutorial or pattern online so I made my own pattern and based them off of the Land of Nod puppets found here: http://www.landofnod.com/family.aspx?c=3148&f=4031

For Mary's first birthday invitation I wanted to take a picture of her in a tutu. Tutus sell on Etsy for $30 to $40 and I wanted to try to make one myself. When I stopped into Joann Fabric I realized they literally cost about $4-$8 for the materials! Here's the tutorial I followed: http://because-estee-says-so.blogspot.com/2008/10/directions-for-handmade-tutu.html

I'd love to share the ideas I'm working on right now but I don't want to give it away to anyone receiving the gifts! If you can't find me this month try looking under the piles of sewing or scrapping supplies!