A Handmade Christmas.

I hope all my readers had a wonderful and relaxing Christmas. :)

As I mentioned before, we tried to make most of our children's Christmas gifts this year. Really, we started out doing this because our budget was extremely limited. But as we began making the projects, we realized how much we truly enjoyed doing things this way.

Kira caught onto our enthusiasm, and she also made homemade gifts - artwork for her dad and Owen, a sock puppet for Jasper, and some wonderful coupons for me.

For Kira, Chris fashioned a doll bed out of an old dismantled change table. I painted the rough edges with some white paint we still had from painting the diningroom last year. I made a doll quilt, mattress and pillow out of scraps I already had or that I collected from my mom and grandmother. Total cost: $0.

For Owen, Chris built a garage for his toy monster trucks, since he likes to "put them to bed" each night. He plans to add on some ramps soon for added fun. This was made from the same materials as the bed. Total cost: $0.
I also made him a wall hanging out of a hand-me-down crib blanket we were not using. I sewed fabric strips and buttons along the top to hang it, and added some pockets so he can store things in there. I plan to add more pockets when I get the chance. I used fabric and buttons I got from my generous grandmother's stash. Total cost: $0.

For Jasper, Chris made two sets of the wheeled animals we sell in our Etsy shop: the farm animals and the woodland animals. This gift did cost something, for the wood, but still far less than anything similar we could buy.

A while back, I also sewed a purse for Kira's best friend, which was made entirely of scraps that were kindly given to me and therefore cost nothing. And we gifted a few people with baked goods as well this year.

After seeing firsthand how much more fun it is to do handmade gifts at Christmas, we will certainly do this again next year. I'm starting to think of ideas already! However, we now know that we need to begin in August, literally. We were frantically trying to finish our projects Christmas Eve, and I would prefer not to do that again.

If you made some handmade gifts this year, please share in the comments!