My mostly handmade Christmas

Note: If you happen to be reading this Mom, stop until we have exchanged gifts, you'll spoil the surprise!

My Christmas was mostly homemade, on my part at least. My brother, M-I-L and her twin sister came over Christmas morning for pancakes. I decided I wanted to display my holiday cards, didn't get many, mostly because I stopped sending them out to everyone because I just couldn't justify the paper use. I had some rope which I believe is jute, I cut a piece to a good size tied a knot on each end put a thumbtack inside the knot and hung or clipped cards onto the rope. Instant holiday card display.

I made some gift tags to go along with the pretty boxes I made from tea boxes. There was a box that had an add/coupon on the inside and one that I ripped too much for it to be considered pretty. I took parts of those boxes and glued the pieces to another piece of cardboard and made pretty matching tags.

I used the boxes for cookie, mmmmmmm cookies. I made Sandtarts for everyone, my favorite holiday cookie. A bit of foil and a stack of Sandtarts who wouldn't want those.

I made boxes for my Mom to take on her flight to Seattle tied with some hemp twine and my gift tags.

I put the boxes in a paper bag and found some Christmas stamps in my desk drawer and had some fun.
I used this same principle to wrap a calender and cd for Rich's Aunt. Cut up a paper bag for wrapping paper and used my Christmas stamps to decorate.

For my M-I-L and my husbands Grandma we got them a framed picture of the two of us and I added a card I decorated with stamps all tied together with hemp twine and a gift tag.
My mom got a framed picture too, an eye pillow I made, and a bookmark I made (more about those in a bit), wrapped in a t-shirt we bought her.
I bought my husband a new pair of headphones he desperately needed and quickly sewed a bag to put them in and added some tissue paper we had lying around.
Here are my cloth bookmarks I made. I used an old pair of jeans, cut off one of the legs, cut that into strips, sewed along the edges so they wouldn't completely fray and added a cute charm on the top. Quite easy and very useful and everyone seemed to really like them.

I also made a few lavender eye pillows from scraps I had lying around, I took my Mom's sewing machine earlier this year and never did anything with it and recently started teaching myself to sew, the bookmarks were one of my first attempts at doing something. I then found a box of scraps, a lot I recognized from Halloween costumes or pillows we had on the couch as kids. With some of the scraps I made lavender eye pillows. They are filled with flax seeds and dried lavender flowers, they smell delicious and are oh so relaxing.

For the people that I gave a bookmark and a eye pillow to I wrapped them together with hemp twine. They go together so well, don't you think.

One of Rich's other Aunt's got a framed photo (that I think has probably had mustaches and other things added to it already by Rich's uncle, hehe) and an eye pillow and I wrapped those two things together.

Everything is so simple yet still festive and pretty.