Brown paper packages tied up with strings

Due to the gift of the Christmas flu I'm blogging about our holiday a little later than I would have liked to. Santa took some time out of his very busy schedule to stop by Adam's sister Terri's annual Christmas Eve party. Autumn is the one in the red hat without the beard. Luckily last year's Christmas dress still fit her. The shoes didn't, though, so she wore pink high tops to the party.Unfortunately I didn't have the time to make fabric gift wrap for all of my gifts this year, so I went with the next best thing and used recycled brown kraft paper, baker's twine and these adorable handmade tags. These pretty packages contained the aprons and play food for Adam's nieces (packed in mini cake boxes, how Martha of me) and the scarves and a video game (not handmade, I know. Bad Xan) for the nephews.The kids seemed really happy with their gifts, especially the girls. All three of them immediately wanted to put their aprons on and start baking. I was very pleased, and their parents were impressed.

On Christmas I wore my new favorite hat, a handmade gift from Faye. It matched my spankin' new stripes perfectly.Faye also made me this freaking awesome Jack Skellington hat and matching scarf, for my love of all things Tim Burton. I can't help but smile every time I wear them. Crafty friends are the best.In exchange I made her a crochet hook clutch so she can crochet on the go. Well, she already crochets on the go, but now she can do it in style. It holds 8 hooks, including this one I bought her from Etsy. When I made it I didn't have the actual crochet hook on hand so I had to guess at the sizing for the pockets. Luckily it fit perfectly when it arrived in the mail, and Faye seemed very happy with it.Now, on to Christmas morning. Autumn woke us up at a fairly reasonable hour (though Adam was still exhausted because we had stayed up very late the night before) and we all (including my grandmother, who came down from PA to celebrate with us) gathered 'round the tree to watch Autumn open gift upon gift upon gift. There were only a handful of gifts from us. The other ten million or so were from my mom and grandmother and the queen of overgifting, Adam's mom. You know how kids just tear through everything in all the excitement that comes with opening gifts? Yeah, Autumn's not a normal child. She opens everything very carefully and very, very slowly. It took her nearly two hours to finish. But it was plenty of fun to watch and she loved every single thing she got. Her stocking was stuffed with a tube of bubbles, a new pirate t-shirt and a beautiful hand bound book. From Adam and me there were also the puppets and treasure hunt bag, Underdog and Barbie as the Island Princess on DVD, and that final gift I almost wasn't able to make, a sink for her playroom kitchen. It was one of the few things that she requested, and I'm so glad I was able to pull it off. She was thrilled.The grandmothers showered her with lots of wonderful books, new winter clothes, and toys that will surely nurture her creativity and desire to learn. My personal favorite (and hers too, I think) was the Super Fort from Adam's mother, which is currently being used as a pirate ship in the kitchen. I think I'll have almost as much fun playing with it as she will. In fact, I'm off on a high seas adventure right now. I hope your Christmas was filled with warmth and laughter and family.