A few of the gifts I made

Here is a sampling of the gifts I made last week for Christmas.

 Several of the girls in cold-weather climates received ear warmers made from this tutorial. Here is Katie modeling hers. In addition to decorating them with bows, I also used ideas on this site for some darling flowers.

 Several of the kids (and "big kids") got customized fleece hats this year. I used Simplicity Pattern 9224 as the basis for this dragon hat for Joshua. (Eyes from here.)  (Unfortunately, this was one of the last photos we took before our camera died...again...on Christmas day. Ugh.) Apparently this Simplicity pattern is no longer sold in the stores, but it's one of my favorite fleece hat patterns. You can find used copies of the pattern online.

 A got a Kansas University Jayhawks hat (see the side view, below). This one was really fun to design and pull together. Again I used my old favorite, Simplicity 9224 as the basic hat to embellish.

 Go, Jayhawks!!

 Bryan is in optometry school, so he got a googly-eye-glasses hat. Also from Simplicity 9224.

 Audrey and Sam got monster hats. Again, these were really fun to design. I googled "monster hat" and "monster eyes" and got lots of ideas online. For these hats I used McCall's M5254 pattern as the basic hat. Gee, I guess I hang onto my patterns - this one is out of print, too! Again, you can find it online if you want it badly enough.

 Girly monster eyes, lips, teeth, hair bow.

 Macho monster with two rows of scary teeth.

 I made darling neck buddies for Sarah and Kat. Sorry, it's another crummy photo, just before the camera died. Here's what they look like on the pattern envelope.

Sarah got a blue fuzzy dog and Kat got a purple fuzzy cat. Man, was that fuzzy fabric fuzzy!  I was wearing black jeans and a black tee-shirt while I was sewing, and I was covered in purple and blue fuzz when I was finished. I used Simplicity pattern 5310 - just bought it last year and this one is still in print.

 I made temple softies for a couple of the grandkids. Katie reported that Olivia loved hers.

 You may remember that Arora and I made a temple softie back in September. The original idea came from here. It was fun to use leftover fabric from my first wedding dress (in 1974) for the bride's dress, and leftover fabric from Michelle's wedding dress for the temple.

 I also made several fleece beds for little stuffed animals. Here's Mimi (Sarah's daughter) enjoying her little bear-in-a-bed Christmas morning.

 Ender got a little stuffed carrot...

 ...with a green carrot bed.

 I made a rainbow skirt for Arora. Her favorite "color" is rainbow. She adores all things rainbow. (If you clicked on the temple softie link above, you probably noticed that she was wearing the same shirt back in September. She wears it several times a week...her favorite one...until Holly insists that it must go in the wash.)

I also made some country soup-in-a-jar and cowboy cookie-in-a-jar from recipes I found online. It was fun to think of preparing meals and goodies for my sweet family far away. And I made a ton of other fun gifts, too...but that's all the photos I have for now!