A Homemade Christmas

This year for Christmas we decided to do homemade gifts. I had so much fun thinking of things to do and getting some inspiration from places like Pinterest.  It all sounded like such a great idea.  It wasn't until I was well into the projects when I realized how much time and work were actually involved! I love being creative, but it was really hard when there was a deadline.  Thankfully I started right after Thanksgiving so I had plenty of time to finish.  The end result and being able to give each gift made it worth it!!!

For these frames, I started with printing out the background with words to describe the person beginning with the letter of their name.  Then I took 1/4 inch paper strips and began to make the shape of each letter and glued it on its end using Mod Podge.

I got these paper mache letters from JoAnn's.  I covered it with family pictures using Mod Podge and added a ribbon to hang it.

I made both of these from canvas. I painted the canvas and stretched ribbon across the front.  Painted the names of each person on the clothespins and added a button for decoration.  I really like this one because it's a fun way to display pictures and makes it easy to change out the pictures for updated ones.
The other canvas I painted black and used a stencil to sponge on the design.  I glued on the buttons and added a ribbon to hang it.

For the coasters, I bought some tile from Lowes.  I printed out the pictures and cut them to fit the tile.  I glued them on using Mod Podge.  After they were dry, I covered them with polyurethane so they would be waterproof.  I added felt to the bottom of each coaster and tied a ribbon around them.

The last thing we made was yummy! We made candy cane cocoa. We wrapped them individually in a small bakers bag and closed it with a mini clothespin. We melted chocolate chips and dipped marshmallows in it and the dipped it in crushed candy canes to be used as a stir for the cocoa. We used coffee stirs for the marshmallow sticks.  We wrapped them up and tied them to the hot cocoa packs using twine. Then we made homemade thin mints. Yes, you heard me, THIN MINTS!!!! They were so yummy!!!! We got the recipe here. We covered some of them with white chocolate (which ended up being my favorite) to give it more of a holiday look.

It was so much fun working together on these projects and to be able to give people things we made!