Handmade Gifts from the Heart

Well, I was thinking about giving up my blog this year, mostly because I thought it was a waste of time and energy, but then I realized that I use my blog as a picture journal, and I refer back to the things I've written in my blog when I am scrapbooking those events, because honestly I can't remember what our favorite parts of the trip were, or what we thought was so funny, or why we loved a certain activity, unless I've written it down.
So, even if it is only for my benefit, I am going to continue this blog, although I will probably have even fewer entries.

Back in November, as I laid out our plan for making Christmas more about giving our presence than about getting presents, I shared that as a family, we were going to make gifts for each other instead of buying them. This turned out to be a wonderful project! The girls had a great time working hard on the presents they made, and it was so wonderful to see the spirits of creativity and generosity developing in each of them. The real joy, of course, came when they delighted in the response of person receiving the gift. I loved making gifts for each of my girls and for my husband, and we will definitely continue creating handmade gifts for each other in the years to come.

Here are a few of the gifts that we made for each other:

Drummer Boy made these for Princess's and Pumpkin's rooms

I made this jewelry box for Pumpkin using decopodge

Princess came up with the idea for this mirror all on her own. It turned out so cute for her sister.

I made this bag for Princess to carry her bible, journal, highlighter, and offering to church

Pumpkin made Princess a necklace. And both girls made a mosaic garden stone for Daddy with their hand prints in the middle. I will try to add a picture of those gifts later.

Keystone Weekend

Last December, Drummer Boy and I jumped on a SWA $59 each way sale and booked a weekend trip for our family to Keystone, CO. We spent the next 2 months trying to secretly buy and mostly borrow snow clothes for ourselves and the girls without them finding out. We wanted the trip to be a surprise.

We finally told the girls about the trip 6 days before we were scheduled to leave. They were ecstatic!

Of course, nothing ever goes as smoothly as we plan. There was a crazy snowstorm in Denver the day we were supposed to fly in, which caused the Denver airport to be closed for half a day, which caused us to be stuck in the Albuquerque airport for 7 hours (oh what joy!), and we lost about half a day and one night at Keystone.

Needless to say, that was NOT a fun day, but we persevered and were so thankful when the plane finally landed in Denver. Our two days at Keystone were a blast! We decided not to ski this time. Instead, we went tubing and ice skating, played in the snow fort, took advantage of the Kidtopia activities (a special kids' festival that Keystone puts on), made snow angels, and enjoyed the beautiful scenery. One night, we took a horse-drawn sleigh ride out to a small cabin and enjoyed a great cowboy dinner. The kids really loved that, but I think tubing was everyone's favorite activity. Princess really wanted to try skiing, so we are thinking that we will try to go back in a couple of years and do ski school. I'm already looking forward to it!