Homemade Christmas

I'm so excited about Christmas that I can hardly sleep at night - and we still have 26 days to go!!

On my side of the family, all my siblings and I still exchange presents. It's a tradition we've been doing for over 35 years! Since there are 9 kids in my family, we always drew names so that each of us had to buy/make gifts for only 1 person. Growing up in such a large family,

money was the only resource that was scarce - you get pretty creative with all sorts of random items to "repurpose" into a Christmas gift! I remember one year when my little sister actually took some items from her "person's" room, wrapped them and put them under the tree! The person whose name she drew was stumped for weeks over where one of her shoes had disappeared to and whatever happened to her favorite hairbrush. haha :) Well, we all found out on Christmas morning. That was so great! Priceless memories that year. :)

My mom was and still is extremely creative when it comes to homemade Christmas gifts. I think she actually turns into a real Elf the few weeks before Christmas because she can work all night for weeks with little to no sleep in her little sewing room that's been transformed into Santa's Workshop. I now know how Santa is able to make all those toys for all the children in the world - his wife makes them! HAHA! I remember one year when we were all fairly little that she made an entire furniture set for my sister's dolls out of PVC pipe! She bought the pipes, cut them to size, figured out how to assemble them into shapes of sofas, tables, chairs and beds, then sewed fabric slipcovers for each piece. It looked better and lasted longer than anything bought in a store. Amazing! She is the reason we never knew growing up that we were technically "poor." All our friends thought we were so lucky that we had a Mom that stayed home with us all day and made us cool stuff! :) Hooray for Stay-At-Home Moms!!

We still exchange presents every year as siblings. We actually draw names out of a hat the day after Christmas now for the next several years so we have LOTS of time to ponder over what to do for gifts. The gift "rules" are supposed to be inexpensive items, probably no more than 3 or so and no gifts for any kids, just the parents. The kids get PLENTY-o-gifts from Santa and from their parents that it got to be a little ridiculous so this keeps it simple (and inexpensive if you happen to draw names for a married couple with 5 kids!) Also, last year we decided that providing Christmas Lists was optional. We figure that we've known each other long enough to pretty much know what our person/persons will like, right? Except that each of us always ends up finding someone to be sneaky and find out what our "person" really wants. haha :)

These days, we purchase more gifts than we did growing up, but the most memorable are always the ones homemade. This year will definitely be a "homemade Christmas" for the person/persons that JP and I drew out of the hat and I'm REALLY, REALLY excited about it!! I've been thinking about what to make them for weeks and I can't wait to show you - but patience is a virtue so get ready to practice! :) No peaking for 26 more days!!

But I will give you some hints: it's going to be a "natural" Christmas and we've been spending a lot of time at the hardware store...