Homemade Christmas Gifts

I had a blast making gifts to give away this Christmas.  It’s not often we have the time or the money to get gifts for all of our family and friends, but since I’ve been unemployed ”temporarily retired” for the past two months, I’ve had time on my hands to make homemade gifts!

Last year I took the Buy Handmade Pledge.  Call me Ebenezer Scrooge, but I just don’t feel good, for many reasons, about the amount of “stuff” Christmas has come to generate commercially:  mass-produced presents, plastic, all those cards and wrapping paper, etc.  I much prefer to give and receive things handmade or homemade, and to support individual artists as often as I can.  This year was my chance not only to buy a few handmade gifts, but to make several things myself.  With only a few exceptions (suet + cages for feeding the birds, mason jars, and a calendar I had printed up using my own photos of my friend Bev’s garden), nearly all of the gifts we gave out this year were handmade!

 

 

Just about everyone got some sort of food – things I have canned, pickled, or otherwise preserved.  Some of the gals got all natural (homemade!) body care products.  My mom and sister got handmade (and fabulous) Hair Towels from an Etsy vendor. 

Here’s some of what we gave:

Cayenne Pickled Green Beans

 

 

PA Dutch Pickled Eggs & Beets

 

 Mustard

(GREAT recipe for mustard HERE.)

Pickled Jalapenos

 

Bergamot Bath Fizz, Rosemary Mint Sugar Scrub, Lemongrass Ginger Sugar Scrub, Lavender Hibiscus Bath Salts, and Lavender Rose Petal Bath Salts – ALL  of which I learned how to make thanks to Stevie at Garden Therapy.

 

 

 

 

I had way too much fun making my own labels with some crafting paper  I had on hand, scissors, and a glue stick!

Lavender-Hibiscus Bath Salts

 

No photos of the Sourdough Starter or the VERY hot Tomatillo Salsa, but we gave away plenty of those too.

It was so much fun making everything and being able to give so many things that I had made myself.  This year it truly was better to give than to receive!

Resurfacing Before The Year’s End…

Well, it appears I have fallen off the earth and disappeared completely these last few months.  First my job got so busy that it kept me from having time to keep up with the blog.  Then I lost the job and kept myself VERY busy, knitting, canning, pickling, rescuing some cats, reading about raising goats, and – of course – gardening!

Although I must find a new job soon, I have been enjoying every single second of my “temporary retirement,” as I’m calling it, and I’m grateful to have a wonderful husband who has been willing to work some extra shifts so that I could take these last couple of months to reconnect with so many of the things I love and to do things that make me happy.  It’s been a wonderful, magical vacation.  :)

Speaking of wonderful, here it is, days before Christmas, and I still have two plants that are blooming in my garden!!!  (the fact that it’s this warm in December is scary, but nevertheless – I appreciate the flowers.)

Here is a stubborn coneflower that went through a little revival in fall and has refused to quit.  It’s holding onto that last flower and its color as long as it can, I guess!

Here’s another one that just won’t quit – Pineapple Sage.  It has long since lost its full, lush foliage and now looks really straggly and spindly, but those lovely red flowers make up for it.

I’ve been keeping my eye out for seeds, as I definitely want to grow this one again next year – such a lovely aroma and a beautiful, easy plant. Not a single seed has appeared thus far. My friend Bev suggested it might be a sterile cross and that I should attempt a branch cutting.  I had tried that a couple of months ago with no success, but Bev gave me some instructions and tips that I’m going to follow in hopes I can get it to take this time!  It’s a keeper for sure.

 

By the way, those straw-covered pots in the background are full of garlic, which I planted in late October and which is already starting to come up!  No!!!  I thought it wasn’t supposed to come up until next spring…I guess it’s just been too oddly warm here?  We’ll see what happens!  In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy the remaining blooms of the coneflower and pineapple sage while I get ready for THIS beauty to open:

 

It’s a Hellebore that I bought and planted a little over a year ago…looks like it’s getting ready to open up!

Just in time for Christmas!  I suppose that’s why they are sometimes called Lenten or Christmas Roses, huh?