Christmas 2008 is now officially a thing of the past. All our gifts have been given and opened, and though the quantity we were able to give was noticeably less this year, I'd like to think the quality far surpasses many years gone by.
Hubby and I have felt the financial crunch this year much the same as everyone else so we concentrated the small amount we could spend solely on our kids and I handmade the remainder of the gifts for everyone else on our list with supplies I already had on hand. I ended up making 14 bracelets (12 were some type of chain maille), 1 key chain (also chain maille), and 1 pair of earrings! LOL I loosely used a "theme" for each family by using byzantine variations for one family, inverted round for another, and so on... My jewelry seemed to be generally well-received with a lot of "how did you DO that?!"s and "that's neat!"s, and seeing that this was the first real exposure my and hubby's family has had to my jewelry making, it made me feel pretty doggone good. :D
I'm not the only one to give handmade gifts this year. My brother gave the kids some cute little potted cacti with jiggly eyes and us some delicious smelling seasoning of herbs that I'm assuming he grew, dried, and combined himself. Can't wait to try some of that on baked chicken... My neice jumped on the handmade bandwagon as well and gave us a beautiful Christmas wreath that I hung immediately on our front door when we got home. While we received many other wonderful gifts as well, we all enjoyed each other's company and that, I consider, is what the holidays are all about.
But now that it's all over for 2008, I'm all freed up to stress about NEXT year.
