Handmade Christmas gifts

As I mentioned previously, I opted to make my sisters' Christmas presents this year. Ashley and Mikael were fairly easy to sew for; with Baby Olson on the way, it was time for some freezer paper stenciled onesies, homemade sleepsacks and burp cloths.

Since they didn't know if the baby is going to be girl or boy, I opted to make a bunch of Cardinals and Mizzou stuff. I found a few onesies in different sizes and whipped up these three:

The last one was on a whim, knowing Mikael would get a chuckle out of it. Apparently, he and Ashley saw a similar onesie the day before in a store in Florida and joked about getting it, so I'm glad they didn't!

Of course, I forgot to take pictures of the burp cloths and sleep sacks. I made 6 burp cloths - 2 Mizzou, 2 baseball related and 2 gender neutral baby animals. You can kind of see the embellishment on the picture below:

Jennifer's gift was the most time consuming project. I had seen a project on a blog I follow (Made) that the blogger was making for her daughter's kindergarden class, and I knew it would be a great and unique gift for Jen. The idea was to make literacy bags for the kids to take home and work on with their families. I found the book the blogger was using as a guide "Home and Back with Books," bought it and it has tons of great ideas for teaching kindergardeners and 1st graders. I had a hard time deciding how many bags to create, but the core idea was that the book offered suggestions on a theme, 3-4 easy reader books on the topic, and a craft/project for the kids to complete.

Luckily, we have a few Half Price Books stores nearby, so in early December I made a few trips to each, looking for the books to fill the bags. I quickly realized that I could end up going way overboard, and pared the books (and topics) down to the point of making sure I had 3 books for each topic, and ended up with 7 different topics.

At that point, it was just a matter of designing the covers of the bags, and creating the related project. Some were much easier than others, but I had fun making all of them, even though it was incredibly time consuming!

Bag 1: Time. This bag has a removable clock on the front, held on by velcro, and arms that move around the face of the clock. The books therefore all related to learning to tell time.

Bag 2: This is where the initial idea came from, as I basically copied Dana's cookie jar. I made a dozen cookies out of felt, and sewed the cookie jar, complete with the zipper enclosure, to the front of the bag. The topic for this bag is subtraction.

Bag 3: This bag teaches both about penguins as animals and the environment they live in. I included a small stuffed penguin that matches the ones sewn on the front for the kids to read their stories to.

Bag 4: Another science related bag: Frogs. This one had the easiest project, as the book had photocopies of frog pieces for the kids to color and glue onto paper bags, to make hand puppets.

Bag 5: Weekday tote. The books all related to learning the days of the week. Another super easy project that involves placing the days of the week in order and then making a funny story about each day. I loved the  ones that didn't require too much extra design work!

Bag 6: Noises. This project turned out more fun than I initially thought it would be. The book offered 6 items to gather and place in small matching containers, and the kids would have to shake the container and guess what was inside. I ended up spray painting yogurt cups so that they were identical, and then filled them with rice, beans, gravel, bells, pennies, and I'm blanking on the last one!

I didn't get a shot of Bag 7, which was based on identifying colors through a felt bear. The project was the most time consuming of all, so I was finishing it as we headed to Florida to meet my family. I hand sewed a variety of shirts, pants, shoes and hats in different colors for the bear; the kids are supposed to "dress" the bear and then color a picture of the bear all dressed up.

I became so invested in the project, I realized Jen probably wouldn't understand it all upon opening it. I'm pretty sure she liked them though, and I hope they get plenty of use in her classroom this spring!

Joseph was anxious to help open gifts, so he helped unwrap each of the boxes for Aunt Jen, even though they were as big as he is!

And that's what kept me sewing and crafting like a maniac through November and December. I'm easing back into it all this month, with Joseph's 2nd birthday just weeks away! More pictures of our Christmas week to come, I promise!