Homemade Christmas

Dh and I both have large families.  And these families have blended beautifully.  Into one really huge family lol.  Seriously, dh and my brother have been best friends since childhood, and dh’s siblings and my siblings all went to school together.  Let’s just say we are all close.  ;)  For example, this past Thanksgiving the whole tribe gathered at my parents’ home…this would be 2 out of 4 of my brothers with spouses and children (and their children) 2 of dh’s 5 siblings with spouses and children, and dh’s parents.  This repeats itself on Christmas Eve, except dh’s family hosts it and ALL the siblings show up with families in tow.

With this many people to buy presents for we would all be in the poor house lol.  So we draw names for the children and play dirty Santa for the adults.  Still, with 6 people in my immediate family we are buying 12 gifts (plus 4 more for our parents…they are their own entity.)  Yikes. 

Here are some of the homemade items I put together for some of the names we drew.  My niece and two sil will get baskets of goodies.

One sil has a dog she loves.  In her basket is a paw print canister filled with the ingredients for homemade dog biscuits, a bone shaped cookie cutter, a mug with homemade Russian Tea Mix and a bookmark.

My first attempt at making bookmarks.  It was fun!

Another sil, her basket has the mug and tea, a bookmark, some cute and comfy socks and a bottle of bubble bath called Twilight Woods (we both love the Twilight book series.)

My niece gets the socks, a book, bookmark, tea and mug.

One of the finished baskets.  These were fun to put together and I hope they will like them.  I can’t say these gifts saved me much money (although I got the mug, basket and wrapping from the dollar store and used coupons for the socks and bubble bath from Body Works) but they are much better imo than a gift basket off the shelves of a store.  Let’s just hope the recipients think so as well.  ;)  I’ll be making homemade stepping stones this weekend with the kiddos, more on that in a few days!