Receta Christmas Gifts...
Max LOVES his Santa suit! And his elf shoes...can't wait to get him here for Christmas!! He knows all about opening presents so we're going to have the best Christmas ever watching him!
Speaking of presents...here's a few I've made for special friends this year:
While everyone in the quilting world has been busy sewing up mug-rugs, I've been making candle-mats...out of felted wool. A few beads are added and voila! A little bit of Christmas cheer! I've also been busy making paper flowers, thanks to the very clever Lori at Bee In My Bonnet! Lori posted a very simple tutorial on how to make the flowers (and she's got SO many GREAT tutorials on her blog - once you go there you'll never leave!) and I just couldn't resist! At first I was only going to make flowers for me to use on gifts I would give...but then I thought I'd make PRACTICAL gifts this year (so not like me!) so I made flowers FOREVER...creating little "Gift Wrap Kits" for friends:
Each gift wrap kit contains 8 cellophane bags, 8 pieces of tissue paper, red and white twine, 8 gift tags, 8 glue dots and 8 paper flowers...I thought this was a rather clever gift...but I'm easy to please. When they're all tied up in a larger cellophane bag. secured with twine and another paper flower, they are very cute...so THANK YOU LORI HOLT! Warning: If you decide to make paper flowers you should know it's very addictive!!
Let's see, what else...oh yes, Italian gift baskets! The mister even helped me pick out the contents!! He was so helpful..."How about streudel?" Nope, it's GERMAN, we're doing ITALIAN! "How about Swedish Fish, everyone loves them?" They're SWEDISH, we're doing Italian! "How about fortune cookies, they'll have fun reading them!" DOH...We're doing ITALIAN!! Finally he clued in...and then he was mister happy...filling the basket like Santa fills his sleigh...it was all very merry until we got to the check-out!! Ho-ho-NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...
And then we had to wrap everything and SHIP it! There's something to be said for gift cards!
While the rest of the country was being blasted with snow, we had torrential rains...the park behind our house filled with water and overnight we had lake-front property again! Since it was a "Pineapple Express" that dumped all the rain, it wasn't really freezing outside so there were a couple of fools who took advantage of the lake and the temps and had themselves a float! The lake has gone down the drain, and so has our house value and the ducks have flown away...until it rains again!