A Handmade Christmas ~Week 4

Welcome back to A Handmade Christmas, after skipping Thanksgiving Week (So we had time to devote to one of my very favorite holidays) we are back for week 4. I hope you have had time to come up with some fun ideas to share and that you join right in!

This week I thought it would be fun to tell about a few odds and ends of gifts. To start with we decided to participate in Operation Christmas Child this year. It is something I had heard about in the past but never really checked into. This year we looked into it and after we watched all the videos on their site the kids and I thought it would be really neat to contribute to.

Please excuse the funny faces of my children~ they had the sun in their eyes!

We didn't think about it to far in advance so we had to work fast after that. We decided that each child could send a box to another child of the same gender and age group so we had 4 boxes to fill. We raided our gift cupboard and extra school supplies and then made a trip to dollar tree but beyond that we thought it would be fun to make some things for them. So here is a few of the things we did:

~ We had some hat blanks around and so we decided to decorate them. Here Aaron is modeling the one he made (with a little help from me) with a train on it.
Megan loved stitching a flower on to hers. I kind of had to guide each stitch but she thought it was a blast to pull it through.

Megan was so fun through out this whole process, she kept asking "Can I give this to my little girl?". I was afraid a few times that she thought we were making or buying something for her, but she didn't have any problems with giving it all away.

~ For the older girl (10-14) we decided to make an elastic waist skirt and a raglan sleeve shirt. I am really hoping that it is versatile enough in size to fit whoever receives it. Mara and I had fun working on this together. We are starting to be able to work as a team when sewing. I will do the cutting out and pinning and then I can hand it off to her to sew. I remember doing that a lot with my mom so it is fun to have that experience again, except with my daughter. Working together we were able to make the outfit in around an hour.

In the picture above she is also modeling the hat which she had stitched beads on in the shape of flowers.

~For the boys' boxes we also made small notebooks from colored paper we had on hand and then we used foam for the covers. Mara's box was a little bigger so we were able to fit in a regular notebook which we had decorated the front of.

~ The kids made Beaded Geckos and other little animals to fit in the box.

~ Instead of sending just plain washcloths I thought it would be fun to fold them into a fun shape. At Zakka Life I was able to find instructions for this cute little bird. They were super simple to do. Now I am just wondering if the kids who receive them will actually use the washcloth or will just have this funny little bird.

And off the subject of shoe boxes....
Another gift we had fun creating lately was this little baby quilt for a little niece of mine that is coming soon. I wanted to deliver it to my pregnant sister-in-law when we saw her over Thanksgiving. This is another project that Mara and I had fun doing together. With her help it went pretty fast. (And sorry Luann about the picture- she had just jumped out of bed at 4:30 in the morning to tell us goodbye when I took it- not very nice of me!)

I was inspired by this quilt over at Brown Paper Packages. Mine doesn't quite match up to hers though. She has a good tutorial for making one too.

Here are some other fun ideas that I would love to try:

• A Bean Bag chair (and use packing peanuts for the filler).
• This cute scrunchy scarf (which I think I could recycle t-shirts into)
• A simple photo collage.
  

Now it is your turn! Please join me and share your handmade ideas!

To link up~
~Write a post about anything you are doing that is handmade for Christmas. (Gifts, decorations, food, etc.).
~In that post please link back to here.
~Then using MckLinky, add your link to the list. Please make sure it is linking to your specific post (not just your blog).
~Then have fun following the links to see others' great ideas!

Also be sure and come back next week. I am hoping to work a lot on decorating this week and have some ideas I want to try and then share.