Christmas!

The problem with not posting in several weeks is that there's a lot to catch up on, and then I get overwhelmed about the thought of catching up, and continually avoid the idea of blogging. But Christmas was so nice I can't just skip blogging about it, so here goes...

First, some pictures of our apartment decorated for the season:





I made that little paper star garland above the snowflakes - I think it turned out cute.

As I mentioned before, I decided to give mostly handmade gifts this Christmas. I ended up with some degree of success in this, only because I started things several months before Christmas - in November and December I got really busy with gigs and concerts, and I was glad I had started things early!

Of course, there were the refrigerator magnets, sets for everyone, packaged up on strips of metal in small bags:





And there was the lip balm all around... now in peppermint rosemary, pink grapefruit, lime, vanilla, and tangerine!

I sewed and stuffed a bird ornament for my parents - I had hoped to have a set of two, but ran out of time!



Earrings for my sister Emily:


And more earrings for my sister-in-law Jenn:



(Sorry my pictures are terrible!)

I freezer-paper-stenciled these onesies for my newest nephew, Josiah:





And I made the cutest magnet board with handmade alphabet magnets for my nephew Jonathan, but I forgot to take a picture of it! (Maybe Emily will help me out and post one on her blog...)

My nephew Thomas has a chair, handmade by a man Nathan works with, with his name carved in the back - and there's one for Jonathan too - but we haven't shipped them yet. Oops!

For my brother Christopher I made a double-sided fleece blanket in his school colors, blue and yellow. Sewing on the quilt binding was quite a bit more tricky than I had anticipated!



And for Grandma I made this Christmas ornament:



Well, my family members far surpassed me in skill with the handmade gifts they created!

Jenn, my sister-in-law, made quilted pot-holders for everyone:


She and Jonathan also made and canned jelly and applesauce for everyone - delicious. And they turned some of Jenn's photographs into beautiful notecards for us; I can't take pictures of her pictures and do them justice, but you can see Jenn's beautiful photography at her site Jenn's Lens.

And my parents made beautiful framed quilt blocks for each of us - here's ours:


Christopher, my youngest brother, made us this beautiful hand-carved wood ornament:


And my sister Emily made us handmade soap - it smells as good as it looks!


Emily also made a really neat hammock for Nathan; she has a home business making slings for babies but for Christmas gifts she expanded to creating adult-sized "slings"! No picture because we haven't put it up yet, but it's fabulous.

All in all it was a wonderful Christmas, and I can't help thinking my family is pretty cool. (I know, I'm biased.)

Nathan and I also got plenty of time for relaxation over the holiday. Nathan turned a beautiful wood vase on my Dad's lathe, the two of us went to the Sacramento Railroad Museum, we got to see the house my aunt and uncle recently finished and the house my cousin and his family are building, we celebrated our second anniversary, and we played some fun games and enjoyed time with family.