The kids got lots of cool stuff for Christmas. There are lots of new favourites: the handmade wooden big rig and trailer; the plethora of puzzles and craft supplies; a fiction/photo book from a day trip they took with their aunt and uncle. The two in the picture below are super cool and are being used together about 18 times a day at least.
1. A miniature wooden sewing machine, made by hand, purchased on Etsy. (The needle goes up and down when you turn the wheel!)
2. Two crocheted flower shaped sacks, filled with felted shapes. All made by hand by my sister in law (I can get you in touch with her if you like).
They play with them as individual gifts: sewing sweaters, fixing socks; stuffing the felt shapes in and out of the sacks, playing zoo and other games with the pieces. But their favourite thing to do is to sew the little felted doodads on their fancy new machine.
Other great things about the items above? All handmade. All affordable. All natural. All made in North America. Yeah. They rock the monkey.
The best present we gave this year was a book we made on BLURB. A giant family photo album, from our pregnancy with Bob to this summer. It’s massive, the maximum number of pages (over 400), some pages have half a dozen pictures on one page, and it’s 12″x12″. I wish I had never printed a single 4×6. What a waste of money. The print quality is tremendous (I had NOTHING but frustration printing 4x6s locally) and man. What a reaction from the grandparents! Super platform too: you download the program and it can be as stock or as custom as you want. You only need to be connected to the internet to upload it (a dream for us low speed internet folks). I highly recommend this program, for photo albums, cook books, whatever!
Here’s a little peek at our book (click the preview):
Did you get or give any super awesome stuff?
that book looks amazing! I’m going to have to do one of those soon, I can’t wait to tell my wife about it. I glanced through the first few pages of yours and saw that my friend Sam was at your wedding!
Jay – Sam stood up at the altar with me.
Yeah, they are awesome, really special. You can also easily make smaller versions for grandparents or friends who don’t need the full monty.
Awesome! I love blurb, they’re fabulous. I seen Scott’s portfolio at the convention and I was sold right then and there. What a lovely gift
My best gift this year aside from seeing my family and friends: getting a tattoo
The most incredible gift a Grandparent could receive. Thank you sweetheart! You are brilliant.
Love, Dad
What a fabulous book.
I still hope to help you learn how to knit one of these days.
Stay warm and safe
Lovely book. Great alternative to printing off the 4X6s. (which was on my to do list for 2010)
* I recieved a hand sewn Christmas tree that Rolie sewed at school. Love it.
* All throughout the month of December Sasha was busy making Christmas art, that now takes up a whole wall in our living room. I especially like the one she drew of Santa going down the chimmney, except the chimmney doesn’t look like a chimmney *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*
The best gift I gave this year was Traditionally crafted sillouette pictures of my sisters kiddies Lucy and Molly, matted on funky paper in oversized frames. I made them. She loves them.
Have a lovely day
Mar
Happy to see you enjoyed your xmas! Love the book idea. I made one at Walfart on line and will tell you it was a hit with my dad but the quality as with most prints I have done from everywhere were poor. Gonna try blur~! hope our card got to you … I sent them on the 21st!
Love that book! I only printed out the first 3 months of Ash’s life so far and was thinking about going through the past two years and doing it again but the cost and the hassle keeps scaring me away. I may just have to do that Blurb thing! Thanks!
Wow, that book is awesome – I’m definitely filling that site away for future use!
I knitted my mom a mobius scarf – soft *and* stylish. My husband’s stepmom knitted me a pretty sweet kimono/cardigan deal.
But our best gift was hand-made linocut piece of art (composed of 9 voodoo veves) from my husbands aunt. I can’t wait to get it framed and on the wall)
The store-bought stuff is great, but the hand-made gifts are the ones I’ll remember…
oops – “filing” that site away for future use…
That is a wonderful book! I’m definitely going to keep that site in mind.
How does the sewing machine work to make those crafts?
I totally love our Blurb book. I am waiting till Olive turns 1 to do another… Oh well, I guess I have to do Luna’s #2 book soon anyway. Geez, we are gonna have a lot of books!
LOVE the sewing machine.
Miss you. I cant wait till the girls get older so that I can take them on a trip to come meet your family!
love annie
The best gift I gave was a hand-made hamper to my 87-year-old gran. The shop-bought ones are less than inspiring and she wouldn’t have eaten half the stuff in them (white chocolate and ginger-covered strawberries, anyone? Ugh!) so I included things she particularly enjoys, such as Galaxy milk chocolate, emmental cheese, a bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Cream, onion bagels, chickpeas, pigs’ trotters and a jar of goosefat to smother all over her roast potatoes. She was delighted and started on the chocolate straight away.
Happy New Year to you and yours!
Wow, fantastic idea! I’m now added to the list of people who have filed that idea away for later use.
that book is pretty awesome! i’ll have to keep that in mind for my future travels and babies!
happy new year!
xo
i love, love love that pic of meeps in purple with you (pg 33). AMAZING.
i got vintage and homemade aprons from my grandma, and my mom is embroidering my name and nickname on them. <3
We also gave a BLURB book for Christmas. The Hanna Panda Chronicles. From birth up until our engagement party last month and I’m so glad I figured this blurb thing out before I printed 4X6s because I totally know what you mean. We’ll be keeping up this trend of making a book at least once a year. But they turned out SO amazing.
Also I wanted to give you a virtual hug for the comment about the baking the best pot cookies. I struggle sometimes updating fetuspanda.com because I feel I censor myself for my family a bit sometimes and it’s nice to see another mom be honest and come out and say ‘hey! i’m not just a mom! i like pot cookies and strippers too!’ (ME TOO!!!)
xo
We got a poop box! That’s right…a poop box. My father made us a small box to set out near the back door to chuck our bags of litter and cat poo in…just a box made of recycled barn wood and old door hinges. It looks great…keeps the cat poo safe and free from sight and…well, out of sight I guess…AND we can tell everyone we got a beautiful “shitbox” for Christmas!
Love the Duncan family blog…even pointed it out on our own for others to enjoy. Stumbled into it when Mike Austin recommended Scott to me to get some work done…been the blog every week…haven’t called Scott yet.
Happy new year you guys! Keep on keepin on’…sorry, that was fun to say.
I sewed a laptop case for my brother. I inherited the thread from my great aunt and found the fabric dumped outside a house along with the sewing machine and a heap of needles/pins/bobbins! He loves it! WIN!
I love that book. Awesome! I made photo calendars from shutterfly for the grandparents and they were a big hit. My grandma gave me handmade doilies and kitchen towels. My husband gave me his credit card to buy 2 new computers and that was pretty great.
Oh those pressies are adorable! My hubbie got me lots of sweets and treats from home, which I loved. Addie was spoilt rotten, as all kids are on Christmas. Oh! She finally popped a canine this week and I have so far had 2 nights of unbroken sleep…. but I am not counting my chickens as she is starting to drool up again which I know to mean her starting up again on the cycle. I hope Meeps is doing okay?
Okay I just looked a bit more at that book and what a great idea! Fab!
Wow! That little sewing machine is wonderful! Took a look on the Etsy and their prices are great too!
The book is amazing. What a great idea!
Thanks for sharving the book! We did something similar for our wedding and they are just BRILLIANT. SO much easier than printing 4×6′s and putting them in an album, and SO much more attractive.
I got a pair of Hunter boots I’d been yearning for, and I gave my hubs a countertop electric griddle from Williams Sonoma. He cooks all the time and this thing is fantastic, it’s made cooking and cleanup a ton easier.
I’ve been painting to pass the time and used that for some of my gifts: an Elvis monkey for John’s sister, cartoon-y portraits of his lil bro with lil’ bro’s girlfriend. Seeing their facial reactions was far greater than any retail indulgence could offer me as thanks. Also, since I’ve not been using a shoddy pocketsized digital camera and hung onto every image that I’ve taken since, John’s gram received an 8×10 in a gorgeous (fake) bronze frame of her and her only daughter in Hawaii. For John’s mother and my own, I used trusty Adorama to print over 600 photos and made “vacation albums” for each since neither are very computer-savvy. I wish I had known about BLURB to have made them books instead!
John is leaving to return to Oahu on the 8th; I’m staying behind. It’s difficult for me to grasp this concept still. With no job lined up or place to stay, however, it seems best that one of us take on the challenge than the both of us in the event that (dare I say) it wouldn’t work or there would be a struggle. The time apart might do us good; we’ve both been feeling rather idle since we returned home and need individual challenges to overcome in order to boost our individual happiness. I love him for more than words can say and I will miss him, but hoping to fly myself for our reunion at the close of March. That being said, I had a friend in Honolulu purchase gift cards for local surf shops, mail them to me, and I sent him money in return. Also, I wrapped up Conversations with God and scribbled testimonials inside.
For me this was a year of giving rather than receiving. Probably a first, to be honest. But I’ve been given so much that the holiday proved to only be an excuse to round up my appreciation and gratitude for everyone and to give it back in one big heave.
We did some good presents this year-i got the husband a nerf assault rifle, with rapid fire, and my cousin got him a remote control indoor helicopter-so its been a lot of shooting down the helicopter around here! I got my oldest a music stand for her violin music, and a book written by an old highschool boyfriend of mine-its aimed at middleschoolers and its about superheroes-very cool. the middle loved the barbies and blanket she got, and itty bitty got a toddler power tool set just like dads, and an organic cotton teddy bear that she has named cristobear and takes everywhere. they got other stuff-but these were the winners-oh and a set of wood playtoys from etsy-a family of nesting foxes, and some birds and eggs. we love our etsy toys!
Did you have to make an image with all of your smaller images on it, and then import that into the book? Or is there somehow you can put more than one picture on a page via Blurb?
Nono, you can put as many pictures as you want into a page, it’s all drag and drop. There are templates with 1, 2 or 10 (numerous combos) of pictures, pictures with text, text, and you can also create as many custom text or image boxes as you want, from scratch or by altering the templates (which are 100% customizable).
Seriously, Blurb rocks the monkey.
I’m totally doing it. I haven’t printed out anything since Ash was three months old, and I always want to do it, but it just seems so daunting. I worked it out, and even if you only used one image per page, the cost to print each page is $.225, and printing at WalMart or Shoppers is at least $.15. Crazy awesome!
Our book cost about $170, that’s for a couple THOUSAND images! That is a DEAL.
It took me 40 hours to prep and make that 400 page book, but I had a lot of images that needed correction of some kind. (I am so picky). Worth every minute, it is a spectacular end product. You will be nothing but impressed and in love, I promise.
Thanks for the link to the sewing machine! That is awesome, and there is a circular saw too! Fab.