Handmade Christmas continued

I wanted to share a bit more about our Christmas and how things went before moving on to the new year and all the wonderful things that come with it. This Christmas was a really special one for us, one that will be treasured forever. We tried our best to make most of our gifts and the rest we bought via Etsy, craft faires or small local businesses. At first this seemed like such a challenge, could we really make Christmas great on such a small budget with out going to a place like Walmart? Well the answer for us was YES! We usually spend about $50 on each of our girls and this year I think we hit the mark at right around $61, so really not to bad! Now in this I have to take into account that I already had a lot of crafty supplies on hand, like the yarn for the slippers, which leftover's from the stash. Most of the stuff used from stash was yarn, buttons, thread, and a bit of fabric, the rest was purchased for these special projects and included in the budget.

What I am really excited about sharing is the earrings that Micah and the girls made for me, so impressive! They are made from hammered out bottle caps and botany prints from the Internet. I think the most amazing part about this is that he let a 2 and a 5 year old wield a hammer! Ah, the things we do for the sake of crafting ;)

This holiday did of course include some thing that were not made by hand and with those we tried to purchase them from small local businesses. Micah totally scored good by getting me this strawberry tea kettle from our favorite hardware/kitchen store. Be still my whimsical heart!

I have to say though that as sweet as my husband was I don't think I did as well. Which I feel is OK since the husband should get a chance to out do the wife once in a while, right? While I did get him a stocking full of sweets and a box filled to the brim with local mandarins his main gift was a nice pair on UNfinished wool slippers.

This photo was actually taken after I seamed them and wove in the ends, now all we have to do is felt them. These were mostly finished way back in October, but like most crafter's I set them down and started working on something else. Oh well, I know he loves me for more then just my knitting.