Homemade Christmas Gifts

Ok, this post is really late. Posting about Christmas in January?? But I couldn’t share gifts I was giving before I gifted them, I didn’t want to ruin the surprise!  But since it’s January, I’d say its safe now, right? 

Usually I have one gift a year that I’m really excited about giving.  This year it was a gift for my Dad.  If you’ve been hanging around these parts, you may have picked on my love of barn quilts? No? Well, you can read about it HERE and HERE.  Since Mom and Dad moved, I decided they needed a barn quilt on the garage at their new place.  So I started looking for a design I wanted to use and I chatted with Mom about the colours that she thought might work into their current colour scheme and I strongly recommended a yellow front door and some nice navy shutters….and if that rings a bell, it’s because that’s what we have at our house!  But since their house is green/blue/teal { what colour is that siding anyway??? } it would look very different.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the barn quilt…  I had a rough idea that the pattern couldn’t be overly complicated because I was only doing a 2′ x 2′ barn quilt.  And I found the perfect one.  Guess what it is called??  Farmer’s Daughter!!  Could it be more perfect?? No, I didn’t think so!

Mom had mentioned she was looking for a sign with a certain prayer on it but couldn’t find one that she liked.  So I offered to make her one.  I stenciled the prayer onto my stained sign { with some help from Angela who has a Circut } and then free-handed the wreath around it.  It isn’t perfect and part of me cringes when I see it, but Mom loves it and that’s all that matters, right?  Hannah has adopted this prayer and will sometimes say it at the beginning of meals instead of our regular grace.

This next gift was one I had given to several friends this Christmas.  It’s made from an old barrel stave from the property where we built our first house after we got married.  I’ve been lugging these staves around for years and finally found a good use for them!  With the handsome Mr. Byrne’s spade bit, I drilled holes that I measured out and then I gave it all a sanding.  I decided to finish them with a coat of Miss Mustard Seed’s Hemp Oil and it made the character of the wood really pop.  I did up a little paper bag with the tea light candles, too, so they could be lit right away!  I made one for myself, too.

I wish I had more time to make more gifts each year, but with these gifts featured in this post and some cuffs that I made, too, I think I did alright.  Do you make homemade gifts to give for Christmas or birthdays? I’d love to hear about it!

Colourfully yours,

Lori