Beating the Christmas Shopping Mania

I hope everyone had a wonderful Turkey Day.  Now that it’s officially the ‘holiday season’ I got started on my holiday projects over the weekend.  We have 5 wonderful nieces who need toys like  Bill Gates needs a handout.  Between their parents and very doting grandparents, they have overflowing play rooms, and really don’t remember half the toys they already have.  Five years ago, I came up with the idea of making Christmas ornaments for them each year.  (Back then there were three of them, now there’re five… good thing everyone’s done having kids, or the ornaments might have to be paper snowflakes in the name of saving time).  Anyway, this year I bought sheets of foam (one large brown sheet, and a packet of about 50 smaller, multi-colored sheets).  Hobby Lobby has a 40% off any one item coupon that you can print out whenever you want, so I used that and got the package of foam for $2.40.  I also bought double-sided adhesive sheets for $2 for a package of 3.  I spent about 3 hours cutting gingerbread girls out of the brown foam, and cutting clothes for them from the colored foam.  I stuck everything together with the adhesive sheets, added faces with fabric paint I already had, and stitched on embroidery floss hair.  I wrote the girls’ names on the backs, and viola!  Five unique ornaments, for a total of about $2, since I still have tons of foam and adhesive left over (great for scrapbooking and cardmaking!). 

We’ve been sending the nieces ornaments for five years now, and I plan to continue the tradition.  When they leave home, they’ll each have a box of personalized, handmade ornaments to take along, rather than a bunch of outgrown, forgotten toys.  And since I love crafty stuff and saving money, it works great for us too. 

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