The ups and downs of gift giving

Today I read a post about handmade gift giving by Manda at Treefall and it got me thinking about what a minefield gift giving can be, and in particular giving presents you've made by hand.

Manda pointed out that some people don't see the value in handmade because it didn't 'cost' anything, and that some people feel cheated out of a store bought present. She's right that everyone has their own stories of disappointment or success. For me one that hurt was a friend giving me a flat, unexcited 'thanks' for a baby journal I'd given her for her newborn, and never mentioned the journal again. I'd spent weeks collecting nursery rhymes to put in it, hand illustrating the nursery rhymes and binding it by hand. Maybe she didn't like it, maybe she thought it was store bought or maybe it just wasn't very good ;-) This friend had always bought me expensive presents in the past, so much so that I felt I couldn't compete. But this hurt because I thought she missed the fact that I spent the time and effort on it because of what she, and her new baby, meant to me. I don't think people hand make presents expecting extra thanks, but we do hope people 'get it' - that we do it because they mean something to us.

On the other hand, a couple of years ago I gave a friend a little handmade decoration for her tree and she said she almost cried when she opened it because she was so touched by it. See, she got it. Over the years I'm sure I have accidently upset people with my reactions to gifts at times, and I've also given some gifts that I felt weren't quite right. Situations where I'd thought and thought about what to get but just couldn't seem to think of something they'd really like and settled for second best. It's a hard thing to get right, don't you think?

Happily this year I felt my gifts were good enough to give away this year (as Manda did), and people did seem to get it. Over the next week or so I want to show you some of the things that were exchanged over the holiday period.

Have a lovely new year's eve everyone, and best of luck for 2011. Thanks for coming here and reading my ramblings in my first year of blogging. Without you I'd just be talking to myself :-)

Ho ho ho

Hi there, just popping in to say Merry Christmas to everyone.

Finally my Christmas craft frenzy is over (phew!). I must admit that this is only because we've left home to go spend Christmas with family - I'm sure if I was still there I'd be on that sewing machine til midnight again tonight! But I'm knackered from last week's efforts, so thank goodness for enforced crafting breaks!

I hope you enjoy the holiday season, get to recharge your batteries and join me back here after Christmas for more crafting frenzies and (hopefully) creative inspiration :-)

Big girl dress

Here's the dress I made my big girl for my brother's wedding recently. It's the Peekaboo Dress pattern by Bettsy Kingston. When my girl first saw a picture of the dress she loved it, I think mainly because of the way the petticoat underskirt makes it flare out. At first I bought a beautiful (and expensive) cotton print fabric featuring little owls and branches. But I think she (I!) was after something a little more dressy and special. It's not everyday a girl gets to dress up! So the cotton has been put in the stash for another day...



So we next bought a fabric with a little more of a party feel. The dress is a simple high waisted style, fully lined, with a full skirt. With or without the petticoat it has a lovely drape and makes a girl want to twirl and twirl, apparently (rather than stand still for your mum to photograph you in it)!





I thought the dress needed some decoration so I made this huge flower to sit on the side of her waist. Through making a couple of other flowers I worked out a simple method of gathering strips of fabric and sewing them onto a circle. I used a few different fabrics to give it texture and link the dress and petticoat visually. In my typical fashion I finished this about an hour before she needed to wear it - pretty stressful and silly of me, but as I'd squeezed other projects into every other available time slot that's all that was left!



I made a separate petticoat to go underneath (the pattern has instructions for an attached or detached petticoat). It was fun to make but the instructions lost me a bit (must have needed an extra coffee that day!) so I just did what I thought would work. It's not as poufy as the pic on the pattern but still did the job, thought maybe I should have attached it to the dress because my girl kept talking it off and putting it back on during the reception.



And as the evening wore on the petticoat became a lion's mane. Roarrr!!!

Alternative xmas tree - AKA a stick

Thank you for your lovely comments in my last post about my dress, I really appreciate them. I wish Blogger had a decent comment reply system. Surely it's not that hard to let bloggers reply to an individual comment?!! Or maybe I'm missing something.



On the Christmas decoration front, we added an 'alternative tree' to our few decorations on the weekend. It came about as we decided not to get a real tree this year because we're away for quite a bit of December, and particularly the Christmas week. We were going to borrow a plastic one from my mum and then didn't have space in the car to bring it back to Sydney. So... an opportunity for some craft arose (squeezing that opportunity in anywhere :-)



Inspired by several things I'd seen lately, the kids and I drove around parks until we found a good fallen branch from a gum tree, took it home and spray painted it silver. The girls found out how addictive spray painting can be "I want to paint everything silver mama!!"

We then each chose a few favourite decorations from the box and and threaded them on. The Mr helped me hang the stick on some string and hooks from the picture rails, I added some little fairy lights and we were done.



Each year I love opening the decorations box and remembering all the lovely things we've been collecting over the years. Opening each tissue papered package is like a little surprise :-)



It's nice to have a bit of Christmas bling around. I've been loving seeing what sort of decorating people do to their houses, both in person and on blogs. I hope you're enjoying some festive decorating too.

Dress

For anyone wondering how the dress I made for my brother's wedding turned out, here are a few pics. I didn't get any pics of myself in it at the wedding (the afternoon itself was pretty crazy with all 3 kids running around), so these are taken back at home by my 5 year old :-)



It's a simple sort of asian style that I thought needed a strong print, and the Alexander Henry print worked for it. Though it would be good if the fabric had a little stretch to it so it was more comfortable to wear. I did look for a woven with a slight stretch but couldn't find anything nice.

A couple of details like the vents in the sleeves and the side splits helped take away a bit of the simpleness (if you know what I mean) and made it more comfortable.



And I got to wear some of my favourite earrings as shown in the top pic, little origami cranes (bought at a shop in Newtown), which was a nice link back to the table decorations I made. Or maybe origami is just one of my latest obsessions :-)



I'm also planning to do a post on the dress I made for my big girl. I just need to take a few more pics, at least she will be a much less shy model than me :-)

Have a lovely weekend everyone! 8 days til Christmas.

Double-up baking

My thoughts have turned to baking today as I start to get into the festive baking mood, finally. Top of my list is going to be some crispy thin biscotti to have with coffee on Christmas morning, but for today, this first day of holidays for the kids, we have made:

Two loaves of cinnamon bread, one for my lovely friend who recently gave me a huge bag of flour. Recipe the same as this one but instead of the individual rolls, lately I've been making it into one big snail shape and baking til very brown. That's the butter and sugar caramelising on the outside - it's worth a little scorching slightly to make sure the inside is cooked all the way through to avoid the dreaded doughy-stodge syndrome! The base is all crispy with sugar and butter and the inside squidgy and soft.



Also two loaves of banana bread with the addition of a handful of raspberries. One loaf for us and one the freezer, as it freezes really well.

Hope you're feeling cooking inspired too as we hurtle towards the holiday season.

Oven mitts - off the gift list

Recently I finally got around to making an oven mitt to match the aprons I made a while ago. The state of the only oven mitt in the house was pretty dreadful but I think I found the thought of making a new pair a bit daunting. However I wanted to make them as presents so thought I'd make one as a test run.



Taking pointers from tutorials like this one, first I traced a pattern from my existing dying oven mitt, then cut out 2 in the blue and green fabric for the outside, 2 in a white linen/cotton blend for the inside, and 2 in heat-proof batting. I sandwiched a piece of that between outer and inner pieces of fabric then machine stitched through the layers.



Even though I do a lot of sewing, I have never tried to make a quilt - it's sitting as an idea in the back of my mind but I haven't been brave enough to attempt it. But this kind of mini-quilting-like sewing was really fun, and I thought even the inside looked kinda cool...



Anyway... I then did the same to the other pieces, overlocked (serged) the 2 finished panels together, turned them inside out and bound the bottom edge in a scrap of green linen I had lying around. Binding is not my favourite sewing technique because I find it hard (impossible) to get just right, though I love the way it looks when it's done well.

It turned out OK and has a mate sitting half finished (ready for 'Half finished Projects January' :-) And it performs its duty well, but was a bit of a pain to make really, so it's off the xmas gift list, at least until next year when I've maybe had more practice.