Christmas Crafting & Baking

I anticipate the Christmas season almost as much as I did when I was a kid. The only difference though is Christmas now comes way too fast every year! When I was a kid, it seems like it took forever for it to come and now I just want time to slow down. Needless to say, we had a very Merry Christmas and I hope you did too! We spent Christmas with family the two days before, spent Christmas together just by ourselves (and loved it!), and saw more family again the day after.

This year, I patterned many of family presents around the "basket theme." I bought a ton of Bath & BW lotions, hand sanitizers, hand washes, and body spray when they had their semi-annual sale in October. I coupled those with candles, scarves for the ladies, earmuffs for the men, lots of homemade cookies, and homemade marshmallow dips for hot chocolate (Pinterest inspired). Some baskets had jewelry or movies in them too. Here is a picture of one of the baskets:

I had all intentions of creating fabric flowers to put in the baskets for the women to wear as a broach or on a headband for the young girls. Guess what day I had time to make them...Christmas day! As you can surmise, they didn't go in the baskets but I did have fun making them. I bought the fabric, glue gun, metal pin backing, and scrapbook brads (for the middle of the flower) at Hobby Lobby and got the fabric flower tutorial from the House of Smiths blog. I used traditional cotton fabric and satin. The fabric pieces were the easiest to cut, but the satin fabric made for very "perky" flowers. My only caution...you will get burned by the hot glue gun at least 20 times. I have made a few more with green satin since these pictures, but here is my first attempt at making my own accessories!

Another project I undertook was a cute dessert for the kiddos and the adults at family get-togethers this Christmas...Red Velvet Rudolph Cupcakes. I found this recipe on Skinny Taste and thought it was just too cute!

The last Christmas "gift" I am going to showcase is Homemade Marshmallow Dips for Hot Chocolate. I adapted this from the Adventures in Savings blog. Instead of peppermint, I used Christmas sprinkles because well...it was easier.

Prep

Merry Christmas from my house to yours!