Flavored Butter of the Month Club

I just might be more proud of this gift than any other.  It's not that the gift itself is so wonderful, but the difficulty in determining a gift for its recipients (let alone a homemade one) renders it ingenious.


My dad and my husband's dad: two great, happy, impossible-to-shop-for guys.  They truly don't want anything.  So one day I was torturing myself, trying to think of something - anything - to make for my father-in-law.  In frustration, I said aloud, "I can't make him anything!  All he likes is biking and butter!"  Ah, butter.  The first love of both these fine, frequently carb-cutting men.  Inspiration struck and I started a club.  They will receive twelve fresh batches of different compound butters, one each month.


I started with rosemary butter and it turned out a bit salty, but tasty nonetheless.  Orange butter is next up, but I don't have firm plans after that, so please feel free to share ideas and/or recipes.


I didn't take a picture, but rest assured, the butter was pretty.


Cost: about $24 for butter (I hate paying more than $2/lb) and a negligible amount for rosemary.  I'm not sure how much I'll end up spending on other flavorings, so we'll guess maybe $35 total?

Felted Sweater Bag

When I spotted this wool sweater at Savers, I thought of my awesome mother-in-law.  So I bought it, washed and dried it on hot, cut off the sleeves, and sewed up the bottom.  Voila!

I wish the bag were a bit deeper, but with the size of the shrunken sweater, there was nothing to be done.  I don't think they would have had the same pattern in men's extra large.


Cost: $5 for sweater

Cozy Slipper Socks

My sister's house has some hard, cold flooring, so what better to make for her and her husband than these very chunky, very warm slipper socks?

I've been kicking against the idea of knitting socks for a long time now, thinking it would just be way too tedious and hard.  These were not that bad.  I realize the needle and yarn sizes are ten times those that I would use for normal socks, but this could certainly be considered my gateway project to real live socks.  Still, don't hold your breath.


Cost: $9 for yarn
I used Lion Brand Thick & Quick, which I was lucky to find on sale at Michael's for $4.50 a skein.  Normally it's around $7.


Hidden Cost: While making these, Devin and I fell in love with them so I had to make two more pairs for us.

Get Ready for the Motherload

I did it!  I pulled off a homemade Christmas!  Well, it was mostly homemade, which is what I was going for.  Forced planning ahead made for a much more relaxed December.  Somehow I still ended up with a bunch of last-minute things to do, but that had more to do with forgetfulness than anything else.  Everyone either liked their gifts or faked it well enough to suit me, so I'm a happy camper.

In addition to the more relaxed month, the benefits of homemade giving included:

• not setting foot inside a mall during the rush
• watching lots of movies with my husband while I knitted or painted (he explained to recipients that he made this sacrifice for the sake of their gifts)
• learning some new skills
• saving money
• avoiding that empty feeling I usually get when I rack my brains to think of a gift, finally buy something mediocre, and then realize how dumb the whole exercise was

I've been thinking a lot lately about the whole point of Christmas and wondering how much of what we do during the season is good or bad or distracting or just plain excessive.  We simplified our holiday this year in a lot of ways.  We did no Christmas cards, no neighbor gifts and fewer presents.  And you guessed it - I really didn't miss any of it.  It freed up more time for better things: walking my son around the city's Christmas Village and looking into every single window; watching "Elf" with friends while the kids guzzled barely-hot cocoa out of sippy cups; making sugar cookies and not caring about the distorted stars or the gingerbread man's stretched-out arms; letting normal life coexist with the Christmas season instead of putting everything on hold until "things settle down."

To summarize, this Christmas was awesome.  And it was just the cherry (or I guess you could say a whole bottle of maraschinos) on top of a great year of homemade gift-giving.  I think I'll do it again this year.  Anyone joining me?

Watch for lots of gift posts coming soon!  Happy New Year!

Gifts #13-15: Mother's Day

Devin's grandma whipped out this cool roll/muffin/biscuit-serving device while we were visiting and I thought it would be the perfect thing to recreate for Mother's Day.  So we traced hers onto some paper, marked where all the seams go, and I made three roll holders: for my mom, my mother-in-law, and my grandma.


Once again, I forgot to take pictures along the way.  But now I want one for myself, so when I make mine, I can do a whole tutorial.


Basically, the roll holder (anyone have a better name?) is made of three double-sided fabric circles.  I cut out all the circles from two different fabrics, then matched one blue with one pink and serged them together.  Serging in a circle, by the way, was very scary but not actually that hard.


Then I pinned the bottom two circles together and sewed three seams all the way across:

You can see the seams if you really really try, or just picture cutting a pie into six pieces.

Next I pinned the last circle on top and sewed six seams, each half-way in between the bottom seams.  Does that make sense?  These were only about 1/4 across the circle, and only through the top two layers.  If you think it's hard to understand, try actually doing it.  I had to undo a few stitches that accidentally went through all the layers.

These are easier to see.

Last, I sewed on two snaps, as shown above.  And the finished product:

See how that works?  When you snap it together, 12 little roll-hugging pockets pop up.  Pretty slick.

I didn't get to give my grandma hers in person, but I enjoyed both my mom's and my mother-in-law's puzzled faces when they opened their gifts.  "Oh, how cute... what is it?"

Cost:

2 yards each of two fabrics (with leftover): $14

6 snaps (part of a set at the dollar store): $1

Serger thread (given to me by my grandma just in time and in a perfect corresponding color): $0

Total: $15 or $5 each

Gift #12: Scavenger Hunt Cards

Ben was recently invited to his friend Erik's birthday party.  We go walking with Erik and his mom, so I thought something like these cards would be perfect for our walks.


These are pretty self-explanatory, but if you must know, I got all the pictures by searching Google Images, printed on regular cardstock, and laminated the cards at the local school supply store (I think 69 cents/square foot - way cheaper than anywhere else).


Total Cost: I'm going to say $2.50, guessing on the square footage of the 16 laminated cards.

I'm Back!

Wow.  We've had quite the little dry spell, haven't we?  Sorry about that.  Besides not giving many gifts lately, I've just plain been busy with other stuff.

First of all, I received a gift that was amazing, but made life hectic for a while.  I babysit for my friend who's a painter so this is how I get paid:

Before

After

I love my new kitchen!  I bet I spend twice as much time in there now, and I keep it much cleaner than ever before.  It is incredible what a difference some paint (and someone who knows how to do it right) can make.

Then, I made a little gift for myself.  I come from a family of musicians.  We used to perform together all the time, but now it's been a really long time - like 10 years.  We were invited to do a sort of reunion concert and so I had to wear something formal.  Only problem is, I'm pregnant.  Very pregnant.  So where do you get a formal maternity dress that isn't either a wedding dress or $400 (or both)?  NOWHERE!  Ok, on to Plan B: find a pattern.  Oh wait, those don't exist either.  So my very patient and generous mother, who has sewn many a dress in her day, went to work with me creating our own pattern (a combination of 3 or 4 existing patterns, plus some good ol' guessing).  We made the whole thing out of a sheet first, made easily over 50 changes, and then finally did the real thing.  It turned out great!  I can't believe how hard it was, and I kept saying that I would never sew again, but now that it's done, I feel pretty empowered and even kind of want to sew more stuff.  Anyway, here's what it looks like:

(The best picture of the dress happened to be a really bad one of my face, so I just cut it off.)

Please note that the pleat in the front allowed for me to make the dress ahead of time, not knowing exactly how fat I would be when I actually had to wear it.  I thought that was pretty smart of us.  In theory, this dress could look good at various stages of pregnancy.  Maybe even post-baby?  We'll see.

Anyway, these things, plus some others, have kept me far away from blogging and reading blogs.  My RSS Feed collection totals 508 new posts right now.  Scary.  But I do have a couple gifts to post, so stay tuned...