What a Christmas!

What a fun week! I LOVE giving gifts; it was so fun for me to watch people open their gifts that I worked for months on. You can ask the hubby, I had taken over the kitchen table for weeks with all my project materials.
I can now post some pics of some things I made for gifts since everyone has opened them!

           I'll start with my most frugal, which was for a contest of 'most bang for the buck' present: This basket is worth $77.76 if you wanted to pay full price for it.  I paid $5.32! Here's the breakdown:

What:                                      Where:                                                  Paid:          Value:
Basket:                                  Dollar store                                             $1.08          $1.08
Walmart gift card                   won via McDonalds Monopoly                $0               $5.00
Au Gratin Potatoes                coupon from All You Magazine                $0               $1.75
Hashbrowns                          coupon from All You Magazine                $0               $1.75
Pens, 10 count                      online coupon & price matching                $0               $2.19
Hand Warmer                        Dicks sporting goods                               $1.08          $1.08
St. Johns Bay Shirt                JCPenneys coupon $10 off $10               $2.16          $37.80
Candle                                  Bath&Body Works coupon                      $0               $10.26
Old Spice Body Wash, large  Walmart, 2 coupons used                         $0               $4.35
Label book (post it notes)      Free sample for my business                    $0               $2.00
2 5oz @ Cherry Berry           partly regifted (we got 4, kept 2 for us)    $0               $5.50
Fake USB cord                     online: ThinkGeek, used reward points     $1.00          $5.00

(you can't see all of these items, some are behind the shirt.) I had more free stuff since I'd had my eyes peeled for months, but decided to keep them for our family. But don't worry, we did buy him some 'real' gifts too! I just had so much fun putting this basket together! I'm motivated to do even better next year! :)

I made several big fleece blankets this year that are so easy and fun to make, and even more fun to snuggle in! Some other fabric projects were pillows and capes:

These were for my little nephews out in California. I loved how they turned out! I might just need one. :)
For my Oklahoma nephews I made personalized pillows for their room. I'm so glad their momma loved them!

Pillows are the hardest thing to give away...I always want to keep them for myself after I make them! :) I really loved how the ones I made for my mother-in-law turned out...sadly, I can't find those pictures anywhere! :( I made one deep red, one brown pillow, both with huge leafs that covered the whole front in the opposite color. (The leaves were place mats from Walmart's fall collection,. They were perfect for these pillow!)


I also made scripture cards for Ry, and two of her other cousins around her age:

Easy peasy! :) Another simple to make item was this keyring:

 

 It's a cute, large charm from Hobby Lobby with beads strung on bendable wire and two initial beads on the ends, one for each of her kiddos.
In addition to making and buying gifts, I had done my first craft fair earlier in the month selling my famous cake balls and custom candles. I had orders totaling over 400 cake balls!And most of them ordered them wrap in a festive holiday box because they were being given as gifts:

Here are some I made for my family to display as examples:


My favorite gifts to BUY were the ones I bought on Friday after finding out that we were going to host a foster kid from the Laura Dester Shelter. I found out his age and immediately went out shopping with all the other last minute crazy people to find him something that he would like. Len picked him up Christmas morning and he got to open a stocking and 3 presents, along with us, at our house. We were about to pray before opening presents and he asked if he could pray...that was very special. :) We had a fun day taking him to go eat a fabulous Christmas brunch and playing Wii and some football catch with my family. Then we all went bowling and played video games. With the tickets he won, he got US 'Christmas' presents!! Things like a hacky sack for my bro, rings for my sis and I, playing cards for dad, a crown for Rylan, and candy for everyone. That was very special! He's a good kid! My heart aches for those kids that need forever families...makes me wish our adoption process was further along than it is...but that's another post for another day. Goodnight!

Thankfulness Is In The Air

Man, the past few weeks have been so full and gone by so fast. I usually look forward to and count down Thanksgiving for weeks...now it's all of a sudden next week! I did get our Thanksgiving tradition made so it would be available for the month. If you've ever been to my house in November, you've met our annual Thanksgiving Turkey!

He gets reborn every year, and sad to say, this is not his best looking year. :)

Here's what we do:
All month we write on the paper scraps things we are thankful for and stick them in the turkey. Then on Thanksgiving, after the meal, we 'cut open the turkey' and take turns pulling out one piece of paper and reading it. It might be your own or someone else's. I love when our friends and family visit and leave a note in the turkey and then we get to read it on Thanksgiving.

Last year Ry couldn't write so she scribbled what she was thankful for on the paper and then when we read them, so would translate for us. It was so sweet! Here's a video from last year:

I've been working on transferring all our videos online. We are clearing out all our personal stuff out of our desktop computer so we can sell it. We actually have 5 computers in our house...geez. 3 we use regularly. 1 hasn't been turned on in years and 1 we don't use due to all the other computers available. So hit me up if you need a desktop computer. Or a really old laptop...no really...it has a floppy disk drive. :)