As usual, the weeks leading up to Christmas were craft-packed.  

I boiled two dozen cans of sweetened condensed milk to make dulce de leche for my colleagues as a twist on the “apple for teacher” cliche:

I made two trips to Snappy Quilts, a fun fabric store, to get supplies for some more gifts.  

In an effort to get more into the Christmas spirit, I signed up for the Reddit Secret Santa gift exchange.  I volunteered for an international match, and was paired up with a girl (woman?) in the Netherlands who, according to her profile, loves elephants, the colors purple and yellow, and had links to several fabric bags on her wish lists.  So I made her this:

And shipped it off to the Netherlands about a week before Christmas:

I received word that my Secret Santa (who is not the girl in the Netherlands – they don’t do direct pairings) shipped my gift right before Christmas.  No sign of it yet, but if it’s coming from somewhere abroad, I assume it may take a while.

The bag-making went well enough that I decided to whip some up for Rachel, Mom, and myself.  I didn’t photograph theirs, but here’s a shot of mine:

I liked the fabric on the bottom so much that I bought some extra to make myself a skirt:

I made up my own pattern for it, this time going for more of a pencil skirt shape.  I worked from a pattern, though, to make myself a dress over the break with some fabric from Fancy Tiger:

The fit didn’t turn out as well as I’d like.  In that photo I’m actually holding back a couple of inches at the waist.  When I don’t, it looks like this:

I’ve put it away for now since the fabric is more summer-weight, but I may try layering it with leggings and a sweater this season, or pulling it out again in a few months to tackle taking it in.

I did scale back a bit and buy Jack’s gift this year instead of making things for both boys.  Sam, as the newer nephew, got a handmade item: a family pop-up book:

He seems to like it, and I certainly enjoyed figuring out the puzzle of how to make a pop-up book from scratch.  I taught myself a bit of Japanese bookbinding as a part of it, which made me want to play around more with bookmaking techniques.

I’m not sure the book is the most durable gift for a one-year-old, but hopefully it holds up long enough for him to “read” it a few times through.

Happily, I was also the recipient of a few handmade gifts.  Jenn put her new makeup-making skills to use and gave me a lipgloss and eyeshadow set that has been a lot of fun to play with, and Rachel made me a terrific blue scarf:

Random bonus unabomber-ish photo of me and Mom at a rest stop somewhere on I-70 mid-snowstorm on Christmas Day: