Crafting is simply the best way to enjoy the holiday season – well, besides cooking, baking, singing carols, visiting friends and family, decorating the tree, and gift-giving, of course. I enjoy a wide variety of arts and crafts, and they tend to follow the seasons – Spring is watercolors, Summer is oils, Fall is collage and crochet, but Christmas is all about crafting. Out comes the felt, buttons, paper, scissors, bells, beads, glues, glitter, pipe cleaners, fat quarters, googly eyes, and more. I could just sit and start at all the fun goodies waiting to be turned into something wonderful, and sometimes I do. A sort of tradition my friends Beth, Holly, and I started is having a tea and crafting afternoon together – we drink tea, eat goodies, and talk, all while working on some sort of Christmas crafting project. One year I made cards, another year I knitted a scarf for my mom. I have some ideas about what I might do this year, but then again I’ve never been lacking ideas. My problem has always been which one to choose!
I love to make gifts. I love to receive handmade gifts. On Sunday, I received my Christmas gift from Holly rather early. I haven’t taken a photo yet, though, happily, Holly has, so I stole it from her blog to show you here. Not only has she blessed me with a handmade gift of my very first Advent calendar ever, she did indeed fill each one of those handsewn little white felt envelopes with a small gift, one for each day. The first gift was this book.
It is just the kind of thing I had been looking for to read together with my family during December – it is full of stories, devotional readings, scripture passages and prayers. The second gift was an adorable little pair of socks for Ben. We haven’t opened today’s gift yet. Words simply cannot express how much I love this gift. Leave it to Holly to know exactly the kind of thing I want, without even asking me, and then make it herself. I’m just blown away.
By the way, Holly wrote a lovely blog entry about Advent the other day – she has this wonderful talent of taking the big pile of words swimming around in my own head like a school of a billon tiny fish in the ocean, and expressing it perfectly and eloquently and sensibly. Without all the wild hand gestures and the "you know what I mean?" Thus I am also so excited to see that she has started a second blog devoted entirely to spending a year in the church calendar. Having grown up in a baptist church, I hadn’t heard much about the church calendar (that I can recall), such as Lent, until I went to college. I find I really love the focused, scheduled times of celebration and introspection, so I plan to follow this blog quite closely throughout the year. If you’d like to join in, visit the blog here.
But anyway, I digress…
C is for Crafting. Crafting is one of the most coziest things ever, and I’m all about the coziness in winter, especially for Christmas. What are your favorite Christmas crafts? Do you have ones you like to do with your kids? There is a myriad of ideas out there – some related to Christmas themes, and others more general for an anytime gift. Here are a few tutorials from some of the blogs I love to read:
Felt Elf Clogs
Travel Tissue Holder
Super Easy Keychain
Festive Felt Penguins
Embroidered Felt Ornaments
I’ll be listing a craft tutorial myself, but I’ll do it on a separate post, because I can’t seem to stop typing and this post is getting really loooooong.