For Christmas each year at least one of my kids will be getting a gift that I made by hand. This year, it happened to be Zack's turn! And while thinking about it, there were a few other gifts I made this year that I wanted to share. So to start, here's what I made for Zack.
1. Canvas Baby Swing
With not a lot of gift options to give an 8 month old, one thing that popped into my mind was a swing for the backyard. Instead of buying one for $60, I decided to make one! Once I got started, it wasn't actually too difficult. The hardest part was probably making the monkey fist knots in the rope so the back and front would be a little higher than the sides. I looked everywhere for some sort of wooden ball or something to stick in between the poles, but in the end, making these large knots ended up working great!
2. Swedish Treat Plate
For us, the hardest people to shop for each year are grandparents. So, a couple of DIY's ended up being just right. For my Grandma Cail (who is really involved in doing family history for our sewdish ancestors) I made a treat plate. All I did to do this was use a light blue sharpee to draw a swedish design on a white plate. In the middle I also wrote "Merry Christmas" in Swedish! After drawing on the design, I put it on a pan and baked it in the oven at 350℉ for about 30 minutes. This set the design but also turned the color a little more turquoise than blue. On the plus side, that's actually my Grandma's favorite color! So, it worked out!
3. Body Scrub
For my Grandma Jenson this year, I made a citrus orange body scrub. This is something I've never done before and bought a kit for. Who knew getting an orange scent didn't actually require any actual "orange" scent... Weird, but it worked!
4. Guitar Sheet Music
So this one wasn't a typical DIY, but I did do it myself so I'm counting it. Haha! I found a few songs that John wanted guitar music for and matched the chords to the lyrics I found online before printing them off. Doesn't sound that impressive, but for someone that told me they didn't want me to spend any money on them for Christmas, it felt like a good loophole. Lol.
5. Julia's wreath
This project was actually done before Christmas and also wasn't actually a gift. While helping my sister Julia find a new decoration for her classroom, we decided to try to make a wreath only out of things we found at the dollar store! Overall, I thought it turned out great and it was flat enough that she could store it and not worry about people bumping into it too much in the hallway.
6. White Elephant
This last DIY wasn't a real gift either. At least, I don't consider white elephant gifts "real" since they're supposed to be gag gifts when we do them. The idea came when I saw an ad online for those paintings you can get of yourself in a different setting (like as the mona lisa or painted as a medieval prince). I decided to try this out at home and it turned out pretty funny! We found a $5 portrait of Thomas Jefferson online and taped the face of John's boss over it on top of the glass. He's a good sport and said it was the best white elephant he has ever seen!
Although some DIY's don't turn out as expected, I was really happy with this month's creations! And to the guy that won the portrait of John's boss, good luck finding a place to hang it up at home. Lol.
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