Handmade Christmas 2014

Our kids are 11 and 13 so every year Christmas gets just a little more...expensive. (iPads and laptops and Kindles, oh my!) This year was a long, hard road in a lot of ways and I didn't want Christmas to be another burden - on my pocketbook or my psyche. So, we decided 2014 would be a Handmade Christmas - each child making a gift for their parents and their sibling and the same rules applying to us. (Dr. Rossman eventually got a pass because he picked a super industrious project of carving a chess set. He gets point for starting.) After initial rumblings (and I'll admit, some tears) from the kids they got in the mood and made some truly great (and thoughtful!) stuff.

I made her a Little Free Library.

She made her dad some office art.

Her brother made her a cat pillow.

She made me a cute little vintage trailer.

He made me coupons for car washes, scalp massages and cups of coffee.

I painted a portrait of his favorite pitcher and had a decal applied to a blank skate deck. (In my defense, I started this before the broken elbow.)

He made his dad a baseball terrarium.

I made Dr. Rossman a chess table.

Even the cats got some homemade treats.

And while we didn't go full-on handmade for the stocking stuffers (Santa's elves, you know) I did make a few little trinkets like these "survival kits" in Altoids tins.