What's your specialty?

What are some of the gifts you have made for Christmas? Either for your own home or for others?

I like making centerpieces, or just filling glass vases with greens and berries. I love bringing the outdoors in. During spring and summer, I bring in flowers. Now I bring in greens. Love it.

Besides the obvious, I always enjoyed the packaging part of the gifts. We cannot afford to send gifts to family anymore, but I did used to love it. Now I do it in my packaging for our items for sale.

I recently did some soap for a 25th wedding anniversary ("25th" on the bar) and I made up a couple of little "ditties' on the label. What fun! Themes and personalizations are "tops" for me!!

I decided to make our Christmas Stockings this year. It was great fun. They are a deep wine color with lining. This is the first time we've put them on holders from the snack bar. They look really nice.

I also did a feather wreath this year in purple. Didn't add anything else to it so it's pretty plain, but I really like it.

this year i handpainted keds. it was really fun and they are super cute.

next, i am going to make homemade bath salts. secret recipe.

Okay, here goes. My Christmas this year was practically ALL homemade with the exception of a couple of games I got the grandchildren.

I made coupon books for the grandkids, my daughter-in-law, and my best friend.

I also made a wreath out of cinnamon rolls and used green icing, and put three cherries on top for the berry-look. They turned out great and took NO SKILL whatsoever. Therefore, I made two of them.

Then I made four loafs of cranberry-orange bread for my brother-in-laws and they will love me for it. YEAH!

But the most important thing to me was a calendar I made. I spent hours and hours on it, getting it just right. The top of each month had a sister on it (I have four, so five girls total) with their baby pictures, then adolescent ones, teen, then NOW pic's...then a saying or something that pertains to them. Like one sister was a librarian and always said, "Books are our Friends" so that's on her page..another one talks on the phone ALL the time so on her page it says, "Are there phones in heaven?"

The the first page is our sweet daddy with pic's of the same for him, plus his battle ship he served on USS New Orleans, and his beloved school symbol, Auburn University.

The last page is mom...same set up. The other pic's are the children of each sister, plus grandchildren.

Each birthday is on the appropriate day so we don't have to guess anymore. Also, on the grandkids pages, I put a quote pertaining to families, or raising a family.

I can tell you know...it was labor intense! HA!

I wish I had time to do more gifts of some sort, but time caught up to me. But I see a family cookbook in the making for next year!

Seek, I want that recipe!

i just finished the bath salts and i am so excited. it is actually my first time doing it and i just made up the recipe as i went along. but i did write it down so i can reproduce it. it is so much fun and the salts smell great! i hope my daughters like them. i will be trying them out later on and will report back, re: any magical effects.

Jawjaw, what a labor of love! Those calendars are the perfect gift for everyone.

This cookbook may become valued over time. There are specific recipes from my mother that's not documented anywhere but some of us do use them. We're such lazy birds. But we did videotape my mother making sticky rice packets wrapped in bamboo or lotus leaves. One puts in a 1/2 hard boiled egg, some meat or mung yellow beans in the mixture. It is something must be visually demonstrated to "get it".