Pre-Christmas Crafting

I didn’t pledge handmade this (past) Christmas, but as it turned out, many of our gifts were handmade anyway. First there were these, next up were a couple of bags for some more small friends of ours. This one:

using that ubiquitous mushroom fabric, was for a five year old boy, and was given as a Library bag, complete with new book inside. The other:

I made for his sister, who is three months younger than Niamh. The bunny pattern came from here; the bags I made up as I went along. I was quite pleased with these, and I think the recipients were happy too 🙂

Next came a wild burst of kitchen activity (mostly by Dermot, I do admit), and some playing with my new toy for labelling and packaging, to create the fabulous boxes of goodies for our families:

(Inside: Orange cordial, Spiced nuts, Mexican drinking chocolate, Dried Mango, Cranberry & Pistachio biscotti, Orange spiced tea blend – all handmade; and a teatowel – which we did not make ourselves!)

Finally, at the eleventh hour (the night before Christmas Eve), I managed to squeeze in some homemade goodness for my own kiddos. I finished up the stitching of ElfGirl and ElfBoy, and made them up into a couple of simple drawstring bags. In hopes of starting off a new Christmas tradition (which I kept hearing about on various blogs), these held brand new PJs for Christmas Eve. Here they are under the tree:

Oh, and lest I forget, somewhere in there, I also managed to whip up Finn’s party cake:

I made up a packet teacake for this, as everyone knows kids only eat the (hideously sugary buttercream) icing and leave the rest. For his actual birthday, I made a more grown up cake – a rich, moist, dark chocolate cake covered in ganache and silver cachous… but forgot to take a photo, d’oh!

Next up, post-Christmas crafting 🙂