The Creative Holiday Season

Now, to preface this post, I will acknowledge that I am not the only person on the planet who creates homemade gifts for friends and family at Christmas. I completely understand that possibly more people actually make gifts to give than buy gifts to give; however, I want to take the time today to share with you the memories I have of gift-giving and a few ideas I have for creative homemade gifts I'm giving out this year.

Although I'm sure there were lucrative Christmases for my family: I remember presents being stuffed under many a tree; there were also many years that money might have been an issue for my parents. (Though, like most children, I never recognized if we were poor or not). I have very early memories of my mother resorting to creativity and giving gifts from the heart. I remember her encouraging me to resort to ideas for gifts that we could make to give to our neighbors, friends and family. I'll never forget the famous cassette tapes she shipped off to each family member of my brother and I singing Christmas carols.

These gifts were long lasting as memories in many of my family's minds. I'm not sure that I necessarily remember all of the toys I received as a child, but I do remember and cherish the gifts that were homemade and/or passed down to me from past generations. I remember the feeling of elation and gratefulness when I received the gift and look upon the gift frequently in order to recapture those feelings over and over again.

Every holiday season, about the month of October, I begin preparing ideas for Christmas gifts. (To be perfectly honest, I list ideas all year long as they come to me, but really get serious about it in the month of October). In times past I've given crocheted hats, crocheted fingerless gloves, homemade vanilla extract, lavender salt scrub, scarfs, and so forth. There actually was one year that I spent two month crocheting 20-some scarfs...it was endless, and I learned my lesson.

This year, during the week of Thanksgiving, I finally got serious about brainstorming gift ideas. If I can just be honest for a second, I was not just brainstorming, but freaking out! I had nothing and no energy (as I just found out I was pregnant and was continuing to chase my two year old around). Somehow I came up with one great idea that I'm proud to share with you! This idea did not just come to me in the form of an hallucination, I found similar ideas at my local craft store, took them to Google and somehow my ideas manifested into something else.

This year many of my family members will be receiving Rapunzel Scarfs. In essence, this is a wonderful way to use up all of your left-over yarn that has been accumulating in the dark corners of your home. See the full description and explanation under 'Baking, Crocheting, Creating'. Basically, you measure out many strings of your previously used yarn to about 10 feet in length and then braid it. Once the scarf is on, it creates this very cool layered look! The inclusion of all sorts of colors and textures of yarn really adds to its uniqueness and allows you to wear this scarf with anything! I'm quite thrilled to give this colorful gift to my family members this year!