Today I'd like to share a couple homemade Christmas projects/gifts we made this year.
I love Christmas and all it's festivities, but some times folks can take it too far, especially in the gift giving department. Yes, we exchange store-bought gifts within our family, but as great as those are, I think the homemade gifts are just as special, if not more.
To be perfectly honest, I'd like to get back to the simple days when it was maybe one store-bought gift, a couple homemade gifts, plus a stocking. I suppose those days are long gone, and that's ok, because I believe we can still keep Christmas sweet and simple even in our current modern culture.
Some years we give more homemade gifts than others, but we always create some form of homemade gifts to give. Every year my husband requests a picture gift that he can put at his desk at work. And each year I try to make something creative and different. This year I thought I'd try making him a calendar.
First, I had the children paint watercolors onto card stock to create a 'tie-dyed' look.
Then I found a free 2020 calendar template online.
Next I printed the calendar onto the card stock that the children had painted.
Before I assembled the calendar I printed off pictures of each one of our children, one of my husband and me, a family picture, and one of all the children.
The next step was to find twelve bible verses to print on the reverse side of the calendar. I tried to choose verses that were relative to that month or season.
I glued the pictures onto the backside of the calendar papers next to the Bible verses.
I tried matching the children's pictures close to their birthday months.
Before Abigail was born, we only had two children with the same birthday month. So it was fairly easy to match the children's pictures to their birthday month.
Due to time constraints I wasn't able to get a picture of Abigail printed for this calendar.
I decided to put mine and my husband's picture in February ~ for Valentine's Day. And I put our family picture for the month of October since that's when our anniversary is, and when we celebrate the beginning of our family.
I decided to laminate the pages once I had all the pages finished.
Finally, I hole punched the pages and connected them with three 1-inch rings.
Our last project we did for Christmas was actually completed on Christmas Eve. {{Yikes}} Nothing like a last minute project.
My parents were kind enough to send some money along with the children's gifts to buy "stocking stuffer" items. When I bought the children's Christmas goodies from grandma and grandpa, I didn't think to buy something to put the stuff into, hence the last minute goodie bags we made.
My twelve year old was kind enough to help me cut out the pieces for these reindeer goodie bags. I had a variety of circle punches which I used to cut out most of the pieces. For the antlers, I just free handed a template onto card stock and we traced it 20 times, lol.
Here's all the reindeer goodie bags filled and placed in front of the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. I thought they were so cute and looked like a heard of reindeer.
Now, homemade gifts can end up costing more than store-bought gifts if you aren't careful; but, thankfully, both of these projects were pretty cheap to make. The bags were completely made with leftover craft supplies, and the only 'extra' cost of the calendar was the price of having the pictures printed. Everything else we used to make the calendar, I already had readily available in our home. While it does take space to store crafting supplies, sometimes it can pay off, especially when you can inexpensively make heart-felt homemade gift for family and friends.
With Love & Hope,
Jennifer
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