Home Made Christmas Gifts

We did some home made Christmas gifts this year. Not many, but a couple for the people we knew would appreciate it.

This way it was economical and includes lots of love! For the grandparents and an aunt and uncle, I made apple butter. It turned out delicious, so I decided to make more for gifts. The recipe I used is here (as are the printable circles).

I added a bit of fabric I had and some ribbon (which is actually harder to tie than it looks) and wola! A cute and yummy gift! The only thing I ended up buying for these gifts were cloves, and I had been meaning to get some anyhow :}

Christmas Cards

I decided to make my Christmas cards this year without purchasing paper. Tammy, if you are reading this, you are not getting a sneak peak at your card~I made one special for you. It was a challenge, but I did it! I did get the stamp I used on the inside, but it was at a used stamp sale and was super cheap. So I used the paper I had on hand and went to work on a design. I came up with the cards below (well, this is a sampling, as I didn't include them all). The poinsetta is from Penny Duncan of Penny Duncan's Creations (yes, it's free). I did use less petals than she has in the file, because I liked the simplistic look (and I was making lots of them). There is a close up below. All of the flowers were cut in white and I inked and glimmer misted them myself (something newish for me, so I was kinda surprised at how much I liked them). It took forever for the bows to look half way decent, I hope they don't untie in the mail!

Simple and sweet, but I like them!