Use it up - I don't want to store it

If there was any sort of theme to the home made gifts I put together this year it would have to be, "At least I'm not storing it anymore."

My first idea for a gift was to make a patchwork quilt out of the 12 receiving blankets we were given for the girls. Since we are having a boy next I didn't want to hang onto all these pink blankets.  I didn't want to pass them on to anyone because in my opinion receiving blankets are too small to be on any real use for normal size babies.  They worked great for swaddling our preemies, but once the girls were actually newborn size the blankets were too small to be of any use.  

The fact that I really have no idea how to quilt didn't bother me too much.  I figured I learn best by doing so this would just be practise anyway.  The quilts would be for the girls who know less about quilting than I do so they would be happy with whatever the end result would be.  So I dived right in and cut the blankets into 6 inch squares.  

 Surprisingly I was able to cut the squares while Charlotte was awake.  I kept her happy with Kix while I cut away. (If this had been Lydia she would have been on the counter in two seconds.)

Then I laid out the squares in random patterns.  Way back when I was a Mia Maid we had an activity where our advisor showed us how to quilt.  Based on what I remembered from that activity (and what Pinterest and google confirmed) I knew that I needed to sew the quilt blocks together into long strips and then sew those together.  

After two evenings of sewing I ended up with two (sort of) twin size quilt tops.  This is where I stopped for this Christmas.  I wrapped each quilt top up and gave them to the girls for Christmas.  Sometime in the coming year I will make borders, add backs, add batting, tie each quilt with yellow yarn, and bind them.  Then the finished quilts will be the girls presents for next Christmas - just in time for them to move into twin size beds.   

My next Christmas present project was one that I really should have finished YEARS ago.  During my second year of college I embroidered all the lyrics to Lead Kindly Light.  But for some reason I never put the title of the song up at the top.  So for the past 7 years I've had this unfinished project travelling around with me. 

Then I got this picture at the branch's give and take table.  It wasn't anything I wanted to put up in my house, but it was about the same size as my unfinished project.    

So I sat down and FINISHED the dang thing by putting the title on it.  After waiting 7 years took me less than 2 hours to put it on there.  I really don't know why I waited so long.  Then I painted some cardboard to act as a makeshift matting and framed it.  Now it's hanging up in our living room where it really should have been all along.  

 Another Christmas project of the year was something that had been hanging around for only seven months not years.  Back in April I bought some picture frames at DI and planned to make them all cute and give them to my parents with pictures of their grandkids.  That didn't pan out so instead they went to various family members for Christmas.  I painted them and then glued random craft stuff that I had on to them. Some of the stuff has been around forever.  These beads were from a beaded lizard I made my second year of girls camp.

 Here are all the frames.

 I loved this one with mirrors from my wedding.

 And this one had beads from the decorate a hat contest at my dads work this year.  (Contrary to what you may be thinking at this moment I am not THAT bad of a pack rat.  I hang on to useful looking stuff and toss the rest.)

I forgot to get a picture of my final use it up project.  I'd been wracking my brain trying to figure out a gift to make for Brandon.  I couldn't come up with anything until Christmas Eve Eve when I remembered I'd already made his gift.  During the summer I would stay up and scrap book while watching LOST.  I'd put together about 50 pages of things we'd done together during the last 5 years.  They were mostly of memorabilia from planning our wedding and going on our anniversary trips.  I found the box with all the pages and was pleasantly surprised that all the pages were already in sheet protectors and in order.  All I had to do was put them in a binder.  (And he loved the gift and we loved looking at it together.  I'd been so into LOST that I forgot what most of the pages had on them.)