a handmade christmas retrospective

So the Christmas tree has been packed away, all tinsel and fairy lights taken down and the biscuits almost entirely consumed by various visitors and family members. Its been a lovely relaxing after-Christmas-week and a not quite as relaxing first-week-of-the-new-year week! 

I had slated January as my month to relax - to read aloud some long awaited books to the younger children and to lounge on the sofa reading copious piles of interesting books to myself! But alas, I also wrote out a list of goals for 2015 and they seem to have taken precedence over my relaxing….oh well, at least the shed is tidy and I've made inroads into the backlog of to-do lists left over from the Old Year! 

Actually that wasn't what this post was going to be about at all…..what I really wanted to show you was the various handmade gifts we made and received. Way back in July 2011 (I wonder why I wrote a Christmas post in July??)  I explained a bit about our secret person gifting and shared one of our more extravagant handmade gifts. I don't think we've had one quite as marvellous as that one but this year everyone put lots of thought into their make and there were some very pleased recipients. Sometimes its a struggle to find just the right item to create - it has to be within the makers expertise and ability and still be something the recipient will find funny, useful or beautiful. I write about our gifts to remind myself of whats been gifted and also for anyone of you lovely readers that may need some inspiration for your own handmade gifts next year. 

If you are anything like me though, you will have long forgotten reading this by December 2015, so I will endeavour to put a link in my sidebar sometime this year, with all my Christmas posts. Thats the plan anyway!! Now on with the show and tell…...

My Golden Girl was delighted with the metal candleholder that her dad bent and welded for her. He's made a few now and we keep telling I'm he ought to make a whole lot more and sell them.

This one is a person-with-no-spare-time handmade gift! Our boy in Melbourne is busy building up his business but still managed to find a space to do something for his dad on this very fancy flask - the leather has been inscribed with a few words of wisdom using a wood burner. It came complete with an expensive bottle of Laphroaig Whiskey (which tastes like old leather and wood smoke - yuk!)

Son #3, in the party hat down there, is named Djwal, or Dj for short (unusual, I know - he was named after a Tibetan mystic) Now what do you think he wants to be when he grows up? Yep, a DJ!! So one of my almost daughter-in-laws appliquéd this dancing skeleton wall hanging for him. She did such a neat job of the machine appliquéing too! 

Nina had pulled her partner out of the hat, so she had inside information and made a sweet little fishing journal to record all the fish he wished he caught!! She used watercolour paper scraps left over from my journal binding as well as other paper off cuts.

Its fortunate that we have such a range of skills in our family - having a welder father makes it easy to conjure up gifts for men! This camping BBQ plate was welded up by The Dj for Layla's partner Dan. He's an outdoor man and loved it!!

A sweet strawberry dress for the Small Elf, sewn by her mum.

These cushions covers were made entirely from repurposed clothes - I love this! The black was a skirt with those pretty snowflakes along the bottom edge and the red was a large size linen dress. A few passes with the rotary cutter and cutting board, a bit of measuring and sewing and two eye popping cushions appeared. This one would have to be my fave end result - you know how I love to reuse old things and these covers looked standout special!

Theres a large blackwood (acacia genus) log that one of the boys brought home a few years ago and is now nicely seasoned ….. and oh boy, its had pieces sawn off for gifts for the last three Christmases! There was a chopping board one year, a heavy duty coat rack last year, a smaller hanger this year and now a picture frame/candle holder! This photo doesn't do it justice but it does look pretty flash!

And I couldn't let Christmas go by without a little bit of arty goodness, so my secret person (who was our lovely tall, dark and handsome son #2) received my very first painting on canvas. Wow, it took me ages, working on a tiny bit here and there, day after day and although I'm happy with the result, I'm looking forward to gaining more expertise in the large scale painting department. He was happy and will hang it in the bedroom in his new house….. and he's already commissioned another one for the lounge room!

So, theres another Christmas worth of hand made goodness. We all decided that even though most of us leave the making until the very last week, it is the best part of the whole celebration…… well, except the food of course!! The secrecy of trying to gain information without giving away who your secret person is, the anticipation of seeing how your gift is received and even the stress of finding just the right item to create and gift, is all quite exhilarating! I would encourage anyone to do the same!!
I think I've said all I need to say about Christmas now and I'll get back to other more useful and maybe more mundane topics in my next posts. 

Did you get any handmade delights this year?