More and more I try to make the gifts I am giving at Christmas.
This year I did some woodburning projects, some food gifts and some knitting.
The first project I did was to make a Farkle board for Chris’s brother and his wife. When we first moved to Grande Prairie we played Farkle for hours on end. There was always the question of how many points you got for each dice roll combination. I burned the points onto the board then coated it in Matte Polycrylic. The board is just some leftover plywood and the edges were some kind of trim we had in the garage that I cut to fit.
Another gift I did was for our bell choir director. She has this habit of saying, “a choir that breathes together, plays together” at least once during each practice. I decided to make her a good luck gnome for her house.
I also made some fruit leather to give to a few different people. All that applesauce I made with the apples from my sister’s tree was perfect for making fruit leather. I first tried fruit drops using a plastic icing gun. They went onto the parchment paper well but came out quite flat after being in the dehydrator for seven hours. They tasted good but didn’t look that appealing. For the rest, I just spread a thin layer of applesauce onto the parchment lined trays. Once dried, I cut strips, paper and all, and rolled them up. The most tedious part was cutting the parchment paper for each of the five trays.
The other thing I did was make everyone that was coming for Christmas Day a pair of knitted slippers. I had gotten a bunch of yarn for 50% off at our local Mission thrift store so everyone got a different colour of slippers. Somehow I forgot to take any photos of the slippers but this is the pattern I used minus the finishing edge or Pom Pom.
The other thing we have gotten in the habit of doing is buying some games that are shorter more family type games when we know we will have company. So, not a homemade gift but we used our knowledge of games to pick games everyone could enjoy.
Here is the selection of games we got that are easy to learn and fun to play.
I prefer to make things to give. Somehow, spending the time making a gift, makes it feel like it is really coming from the heart.
Now I get to start thinking of things to make and give for next Christmas.