Homemade Christmas

Last year I had great plans to make all of our Christmas gifts but I put off the preparation and ran out of time. One of the great things about homemade gifts is that besides being wrapped in handmade love it’s cheaper which is something I love. The downside to homemade is that it requires my time, which is at a premium right now.

Here is a list of crafts I want to make for gifts or for my home.
1. Tree Skirt
2. Tie Blankets
3. Finish a knitting gift for one of my siblings
4. Tree decorations
5. Vinyl lettering on stained wooden blocks
6. Star for the top of my tree

We’ve started some of our projects but the most time involved projects are still sitting as ideas in my head. Right now we’re working on knitting scarves and making tie blankets.

What are some of your favorite Christmas crafts?

Here are some pictures of what we’re doing right now.

Jocelyn is needle knitting for the first time. She’s made tons of hand knitted scarves but this is her first attempt at needle knitting. She’s doing an amazing job! I am SO proud of her!

I’m making a tie blanket for one of our nephews and Jocelyn helped me make it. I think it turned out great. I got the idea from my sister who made these blankets for my kids for Christmas. They’re so warm, soft and easy that I couldn’t resist. I want to make tons of them and have them laying all over the house so we stay snuggled warm all day.

Here’s the finished product.

Here are some quick instructions, because this is the easiest thing in the world to do.

Purchase two coordinating pieces of fleece. For a twin size blanket I bought 2 yards and for a crib size blanket I bought 1 1/2 yards. Lay the two pieces of fleece on top of eachother with the right sides facing out. Trim around the pieces to be the same size.

You need to make cuts four inches deep spaced an inch apart all the way around the blanket. When you get to the corners you will end up cutting four strips off which is what you need to make the corners.

Once all the strips have been cut all the way around just start tying them together, real good and tight. Throw the blankets into the washer and dryer. When it comes out of the dryer tighten the knots and you’re done!

Here are the blankets that my sister made or Jason and Jocelyn.

The only other craft that we’ve done was our family tradition of making candy trains. We buy oodles of wrapped candies and chocolate bars and then hot glue them together to make trains. Although we pretend that they look like trains when they mainly look like a pile of candy.

Oh yeah, one more thing. I saw this idea of a nature table which I loved. I don’t use a table in my entry so we’re using the top shelf from a short bookcase in my living room. We’re still needing to make some crafts to add to it but for right now the kids had fun picking out what was going to go on the shelf.

There are lots of pictures of other nature tables here.