Homemade Christmas 2012

I always end up doing at least a few homemade Christmas gifts each year and 2012 was no exception. I didn't make as much as I have some other years, but enjoyed the few that I did make! Here are a few pictures from this year...

I had so much fun making all this miniature food for my niece's dollhouse out of Sculpey clay! The tiny metal picture frame I found at a thrift store and added a photo of her new American Girl Doll, Molly.

I made homemade vanilla extract and mint extract this year.  I'll do a separate post on how I did it soon! Super easy and a really fun gift to give and great to use yourself!

I found some cute smaller baskets at thrift stores to give the little bottles of extract.  The tags are made out of recycled greeting cards.

Of course, I did give a lot of my canned items this year, including salsa, relish, tomato soup, pasta sauce and applesauce.  I picked up baskets at the thrift stores, and even found unopened bags of the paper grass to put in each one at thrift stores too.  I printed my own round labels for everything.

My son's preschool teachers got a little basket of goodies....homemade chai tea mix, mint extract, vanilla extract, some of Sammy's artwork turned into a magnet from Shutterfly, my Junk Mail Gems magnets in the letters of their last names, and a junk mail necklace. The large rectangular thing is a magnet I had made out of a note Sammy wrote thanking his teacher for helping him with writing his "Y's."  :-)

This was an idea found on Pinterest.  I had the boys make hand prints by dipping their hands in white acrylic paint and then grabbing ahold of a blue glass ornament.  Then I used paint pens to add the faces, hats, buttons, etc to turn their fingers into snowmen.  We gave these to grandparents.  A really fun twist on the old hand print ornament! I bought the ornaments for 75% off after Christmas last year and hung on to them until this winter.