Christmas Crafts

It has seriously been a while - things have been busy. I totally realize that it is now March, and I am just now getting to my post about Christmas crafting . . . but I'm lazy, so what do you expect? This post has so many pictures that it is kinda ridiculous, but I'm going to roll with it, because I am too lazy to make it into 2 separate posts - I am not even kidding when I say I am being lazy.

Almost all of our gifts this year were homemade - I didn't capture pictures of everything, because let's be honest, sometimes we were up extremely late trying to get things finished, and the whole photography thing was very far from my mind.

First things first - Lucas was having a tough time before the break, and I wanted to do something fun for him, so one night while he was at class, I went out in search of some little treasures . . . and here is what I did with them:

I painted clothes pins - I'm not real sure the best way to do this because when these dried, I couldn't get them open, and basically cracked 10 of these while trying to pinch them open. Oh well.

I decided to make a hanging advent calendar, so I bought 21 little gifts (21 is not 25, I know, but we were leaving on the 22, so 21 was what he got.) I cut out numbers with my Cricut, and wrapped everything in brown craft paper (my favorite stuff in life)

We were out of garlic salt, and I was seriously stretching - 21 gifts with matching puns was tough.

I hung them along some twine in our family room with the unbroken clothes pins.

So fun!

Lucas was so surprised when he got home, and it gave him something to look forward to each day!

I have been on a massive yarn wreath kick - and this little mini was made with a Styrofoam circle from the Dollar Tree (holla!), and was super fast to make. Please disregard the sponge in the background - pure laziness I tell ya.

We also made jars of cookies for our TAs, and here are the supplies. Despite what many websites will tell you about filling these jars - let me break it down for you . . . it is IMPOSSIBLE to fit the correct amount of ingredients in these things, you have to modify. It was ridiculous and luckily we could laugh at ourselves, and with the mess ups we had a large batch of cookies for ourselves too.

Here's what they look like in all their cuteness - my TAs were super grateful.

I made play dough for my nephew - I used a recipe from Pinterest (my all time favorite website ever). He loved them - and it is so easy to make.

I sewed an apron for my sis!

I had to model it too.

All gifts were wrapped in brown paper, and each recipient's name was modge podged on with letters from the Cricut.

I heart brown craft paper so much.

I also made a few ornaments with left over scrapbook paper - they make very fun gifts.

"Monsters" for both of the boys - this one is Kelvin's.

I didn't take any photos (this is really blasphemous) of our main gifts to everyone which were homemade drinking glasses out of recycled beer and wine bottles. They were VERY time consuming, but turned out pretty awesome. We also etched initials in them at the last minute to make them personalized. I also made a few batches of Leslie's Luscious Lip Balm - I love making homemade lip balm and will definitely be making it a lot more often from now on. I think that about sums it up - there were a few other items here and there . . . which I may or may not get to in the near future.