A Homemade Christmas

I love Christmastime.  Especially the lights; the warm glow makes everything seem so surreal and beautiful.  But the last few years, it has been difficult for me to find my Christmas spirit.  Mostly because I haven't been able to do a lot of the things that mean Christmas to me: making cookies, decorating the house, wrapping presents, visiting family, sending out cards.  Our family has struggled financially the last few years and part of it was our choosing (i.e. moving to Texas for me to pursue a PhD meant giving up a semi-steady income for an uncertain future).  It's a hard pill to swallow when the holidays are hard because of our decisions.

But this year was different.  I don't know when I got the idea to make homemade gifts this year, but it came to me at some point.  I thought it would save money and still allow my children and husband to have presents to open.  So I turned to Pinterest and started saving anything I thought I could turn into a present: egg cartons, aluminum cans, coffee creamer bottles, etc.  I asked my crafty family members and friends if they had fabric scraps I could have.  In the end, I did have to buy a few things, but I spent about $30 in total.

Here's what I ended up with (links included for ideas or inspiration that I got from Pinterest):

Coffee creamer bottle snowmen: I filled these with cotton balls.  I figured the boys could either empty them out and fill them back up, or we could glue the cotton balls to paper and make snowmen.  For my youngest, this was the toy that won the day, over EVERYTHING else.

Rocket packs: 4 soda bottles, wrapped in duct tape.  The felt scraps for the flames were given to me (thanks, Mom!).  I had the black ribbon for the straps and the red and yellow ribbon I added so the boys would know which was which.  For the rocket boosters (in black), I used a plastic cup that I cut down and hot glued black felt on.
Link: http://www.doodlecraftblog.com/2012/04/super-sci-fi-rocket-fueled-jet-pack.html

Egg carton bead sorters: OK, this was not well thought out.  Within a few minutes, the beads were everywhere.  BUT, this will give us beads to use on crafts in the future, so I think it can be a win-win.

Entire back heat pack: This was an old t-shirt of my husband's that I used to make a heat pack he can use that covers his entire back.  It's filled with rice (10 pounds to be exact, which in retrospect may have been a bit much....).
Link: http://www.purposefulwandering.com/2012/01/up-cycling-hubbys-old-t-shirt.html

Angry Bird bowling:  My boys got stuffed Angry Birds in their stockings last year.  When I saw this, I knew I had to do it.  It cost me a couple of dollars in paint and I used a black Sharpie that I already had instead of buying black paint.  6 cans for each of my boys.

Link: http://homemadebeautiesbyheidi.blogspot.com/2011/10/day-2-of-bird-day-week-angry-birds-can.html#!/2011/10/day-2-of-bird-day-week-angry-birds-can.html

Now, we did have some other gifts for the boys.  We tend to shop throughout the year when we find things on sale.  For example, we got remote control cars that were normally $50 each for $10 each WITHOUT going out on Black Friday.  We refuse to shop on Thanksgiving or Black Friday, but that's a post for another time.

Anyway, I did not get to make everything I wanted to due to time.  But I never felt stressed about not getting to it all.  I found that I thoroughly enjoyed the process of planning and making the gifts I did get to.  And you know what else? I FOUND MY MISSING CHRISTMAS SPIRIT.  I found myself getting lost in the process, not thinking about anything but the project I was working on.  And now I have so many ideas, I have a plan for gifts for Easter, birthdays. and next Christmas.  

And this, made it all worth it: