Oh the (crafting) madness!

Ok... I FINALLY got around to getting all my homemade gifting items done for the most part and able to take photos so that I can share. This was my first real attempt at trying to make as many things as I could for gifting this year. So this is what I came up with...

For my friends and family who enjoy cooking, Bear and I made our own blend of herbes de Provence with organic herbs. I love this blend of herbs and use it on everything (of course, it's nice that it contains lavender too, does that surprise you?). I bought the empty spice jars and Bear helped create a label for the jars and I tied a cute ribbon with some holiday colours on top.



Next on the list is some beeswax lip balm with a touch of peppermint essential oil. This was my first time making lip balm and they certainly won't be my last! Laura was kind enough to direct me to a few places to find some recipes and I tweaked it just a tad and they turned out great! Bear printed out label for these tins too and I think he did an excellent job! He's like my personal graphic designer - I just tell him what kind of image I'm looking for and he did the rest (the name of the lip balm is his too - I love it!)



I knitted up a few more sets of the sherbet coloured dishcloths and just finished weaving in the ends of those last night. I love how bright the colours are and it was via looking at these that I realized that my stitches are getting to be much more consistent and even. By golly, I think I'm getting this knitting thing!

And last but not least, I made some lavender bath fizzies with lavender essential oil and little buds of lavender in them too. I was a little worried about making these because I hear of all the trouble you can experience. But they weren't bad at all! I think I only lost one and the only other bad thing was that I made these the weekend before the torrential downpour, only to have the humidity spike up around here that they started to fizz a little bit. I put them near a table by the heater and that seemed to help dry them up, so I managed to save them.

I will definitely be experimenting with different scents for fun bath stuff in the future!!!

To finish off my homemade holiday '07, I will be doing some more baking this weekend to give out as gifts, so I'll take some photos of that when I get around to 'em. So not bad in my first attempt at going with the whole "homemade" thing, eh? I'm so proud of the fact that I did NOT step foot into a mall this year for the holiday season - amazing! This just might be a new tradition, this whole making things for gifting thing... I think it's gonna rub off on me :)

Now these aren't gifting related as far as my homemade items, but they are handmade and I just had to share with others a new find of mine on Etsy. Jelby's felted stitch markers are the coolest things I fell upon as of late! The ones above are a gift for myself - they're little felted balls of wool with little embroidered sheep. Aren't they the cutest things???

And these ones above are a custom order she did for me for a swap I'm participating in. My swap partner says she likes snowmen, so I thought a set of snowmen stitch markers would make her day. I sure wish I ordered a set of these for myself too, because these guys are seriously darn cute!!!

Well that's about it for now. Now that I'm looking at all the stuff I made for the holidays this year, no wonder I was all friggin stressed out!!! Poor Bear, he's had to suffer the brunt of my crabbiness - he certainly deserves a huuuuuuuuuuge present from Santa! :)