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Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Just thought I’d pop in to write another quick post about our holidays. In addition to giving a few handmade things, we received a few as well. My mother-in-law gave us a nice fair-trade nativity set made of magazines, including this figure below. My nine-year-old saw these and immediately starting rolling magazine pages, so we need to work on a project soon.

My mother gave the girls these vintage monogrammed handkerchiefs, thinking they could be the “something blue” for their weddings. As they are only seven and nine right now, she’s really planning ahead!

And I’ve been ordering fabric from some of my favorite fabric shops (Fabricworm, Lola Pink Fabrics and Sew, Mama, Sew!). I’m working on a big new project — details soon!

The holiday stuff is all packed away now as I’m a bit superstitious about leaving it up after New Year’s Day. My favorites are these vintage ornaments that belonged to my great uncle. Still in their original box!

Wishing you and your family a happy and healthy new year!

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Semi-Handmade Holiday

Just thought I’d give a brief update since I haven’t posted much lately. With my self-induced stress over both kids’ birthdays and Christmas in the same month, I didn’t even try to make gifts this year. But I managed to clean my house, have family over and even got a few holiday cards mailed, so it was all fine. This time of year I’m frequently reminded of our excesses in both food and goods consumption, but I just roll with the traditions while griping about how disgusting it all is. As you can tell, I’m loads of fun during the holidays!

Anyway, I did buy a few handmade gifts, so thought I’d share.

Santa brought this adorable tic-tac-toe stamp set made by Yellow Owl Workshop for my older daughter and the little tiger purse from Giddy Giddy. I featured both of these in an earlier post.

Plus I ordered my nine-year-old the Harry Potter birthday card below from Sophie Wilson Design, since Harry Potter is the kids’ latest obsession. For my younger daughter’s birthday, we gave her a sweet locket necklace like the one below from Nest Pretty Things Kids.

Of course Legos and Barbie were the main events for the kids this year. I’m dealing with it. I even made one of those strange Barbie cakes with the Barbie torso sticking out of the “skirt” cake, and man, my kid loved it. But I totally agree with this kid about pink stuff. Of course toys were gender specific when I was a kid, but it wasn’t this bad (the Barbie camper was yellow, after all). And although I have been wanting more female characters in Legos, I’m not thrilled about these little skinny-legged dolls. I expected more creativity from Lego.

Moving on…I also bought pretty bowls from Whitney Smith for both my mother and mother-in-law and sent some of these salt samplers from Salt Farm to relatives.

Tomorrow I’ll share some of the handmade gifts that I received. How about you? Did you make or buy your gifts this year?