Handmade Christmas!

Tomorrow is 'Christmas' with my family as we'll be leaving for St. Louis on Tuesday and I can't wait to present our gifts to my little niece and nephew as well as our boys!

It's a 'mostly' handmade year for gifts. 

Because our boys are such car fanatics, I made each of them a "car cozy".  I found a fabulous tutorial here.  She graciously provided a tutorial even though she also sells them all made up in her etsy shop.   Jona over at Fabritopia is selling some great car fabric. 

I am so incredibly excited to give this to them on Monday so they can load it up with a few cars for our plane trip.  I have visions of peaceful and happy boys tooling around with their car cozy on the airplane trays...  Yup, I'm an optimist!   Heck, I had so much fun playing with cars while I snapped a few pictures, I'm sure my car-crazed littles will fall in love with them!

The boys actually spotted the fabric while I had it out to iron, so I let the older boys pick out their favorite fabric, but aside from that was able to construct them during naptime and away from curious eyes!

All rolled up and ready to be wrapped!

No child should miss out on the experience of bean bags.   They are a staple in our house - especially in the hot homebound summer months...  My little niece and nephew will receive these tomorrow:

And finally, after a year of trying to construct a pattern and putting it away in disgust, I was able to figure out how to recreate a gripper ball from one a friend lent me that her kids had played with 25 some odd years ago...  My little nephew, at 6.5 months, is definitely in the grabby stage, so I'm excited about seeing him play with this little thing!

I love that both of these projects required only small fabric scraps!  It's a great way to use up remnants!
And I have the crafting bug again...  I'm already mapping out my next project.  Of course, I've told myself that I can't try that until I complete the half-finished apron that I started last year.  I'm so pattern-impaired.  But I resolve to finish it!