Giving

Christmas is over and was amazing. We are terribly over tired, but managed to do what we needed to do on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and now today is for recuperating……for some of us – quite literally.

Geli woke up this morning barfing. I’m not sure what the deal is, but there is no fever and so we are just hoping that whatever it is passes quickly. She is feeling a bit better than this morning as so……we carry on.

I had these great ideas that I’d post regularly over the past week or two and yet, when it all came down to it – there was JUST. NO. TIME.

I chose to be as wise as possible and to work within my limits and I’ve managed to not only make it through the Christmas chaos, but I’m not completely stressed out (well, not any more than what seems to be “normalish” for right now) and I have a whole ‘nuther week to relax before the kids all head back into the school madness.

So, if I can, I’d like to share what some of our handmade Christmas gifts were this year. I have a few other things to say and I’ll probably throw them in around some of the fun things that we did or are doing and it should be quite a party over here.

Last year we had our first “handmade Christmas”. The kids (my kids) were responsible to make gifts to give to each other. I wasn’t opposed to helping them to buy or get material to make their gifts for each other as long as it was inexpensive and was something that they could mostly do on their own. It was SO MUCH FUN that we’ve decided to carry on with this tradition. This year I made an effort to try to use materials for the projects that we already had on hand. We did end up spending some, but very little for the 30+ gifts (in total) that the kids ended up making for their siblings and their cousins. This year, we started making the gifts earlier than last year, but even then we ended up leaving things to the last minute. I think that I’m gonna try to get the show rolling a little earlier this next year and try to have things finished by the 1st of December. It’s always good to have goals, isn’t it? Anyway………

Xani’s Quilt

Angelica was given a quilt back when she was diagnosed with Leukemia and its the kind of thing that she can have here at home and then take to the hospital and then it’s the same and has the reassuring qualities of “home” and “comfort” regardless of where she is. Xani has ooh’ed and aaaah’ed all over Geli’s quilt and I mentioned that in the new year, we could think about making one for her.

Well, Angelica really wanted to make a quilt for Xandra for Christmas and so she did.

She had a bit of help from her Nana Karen and from her Momma, but she made this quilt for her sister.

We used bits and pieces of material that we had on hand (oh, except I did buy one piece of fabric on sale for $1.99 per meter), an older blanket for the inside filler and an old sheet for the bottom piece. We had everything to make this gift on hand except for the $1.99 purchase.

Xani had mentioned that she really wanted a purple and yellow quilt and Angelica made it happen. The biggest frustration with this project was that Geli left it a little too late and we were rushing to get it done before the kids finished school as it would have been difficult to work on it while they were home.

Geli spent ages working on the pattern she wanted to do and trying to make the fabric that we did have to fit within what she envisioned and she did it. It’s really pretty. It’s not a HUGE quilt, but perfect to snuggle up with, on the couch or on your bed and the best thing……Xani LOVES IT!!!

She was so happy on Christmas Day when she opened it.

Truth be told, she did download a bunch of photo’s from my camera and these pictures happened to be on there and she did see it in advance. Regardless, she hadn’t got a really good look and compared to what she thought she’d seen…..the real gift was a lot better.

Geli had so much fun making and giving this gift and Xani got so much pleasure from receiving it and so this handmade gift was a GREAT success.

In fact, Angelica had so much fun making this quilt that she whipped up two more smaller quilted blankets for her two baby cousins. We were in such a hurry to get them finished and wrapped that I never even got any pictures of them, but they were really, REALLY cute. You’ll just have to take my word on it. She used a bunch of the fabrics from the stuff that I used to make Judah’s quilt back in the spring…..

They turned out really well, and again….she just used material that we already had on hand.

It was a great distraction for Geli in the middle of some down days. We did have some obstacles to overcome and the whole process would have probably gone a bit quicker, if my machine hadn’t broken in the middle of our sewing frenzy, but a HUGE thanks to Aunty Linda for letting us borrow hers. We are so thankful.

I love that we were able to thin out my fabric stash, to not spend money (well, not very much) and to make AWESOME presents to give away.

I especially loved just how excited Angelica was to be making these gifts and how excited she was to give them away. I want to teach my kids to be thoughtful to others….to give gifts that they’ve given of themselves into and that they believe the other person will appreciate or will have meaning to them. I think that we are on that track.