Christmas Gifts

Since we put our tree up early, Hazel is so excited about Christmas. It is a good thing the month of December is so full of fun activities or it might be a very long month for her. She has been wanting to wrap Christmas gifts for months, so yesterday I gave in and let her do some wrapping.

Over the summer we made some of the poured paint flower pots for all of our family. (We followed the tutorial at Dily-Dali Art.)Hazel has been wanting to make paper flowers, so we decided to make some for the flower pots and then wrap them. We kept it simple with cupcake liners and pipe cleaners.

I got a bit fancy with some of the flowers and different size liners, but for the most part we kept them simple. Oh, a word of advice in poured pots--don't store them stacked. They stick!! We only broke one getting them all apart, but it was not fun.

After making the paper flowers we wrapped them in sparkly tissue paper and tied them with a pipe cleaner. (Our cats eat the ribbons and get sick so we don't use ribbons when the gifts will sit in the house for any amount of time.) Then Hazel wanted to wrap more gifts, so I pulled out all the gifts for Daddy, Mimi, Pop and Nonni that we have already bought or made. We wrapped those including Pop's birthday gift. Pop's birthday is Christmas day, so it is always a double celebration. Actually now four of my family's birthdays occur from Christmas until January 10th and then we get Steve's and his mother's in February. We basically have three months of celebrating.

Hazel still wanted to wrap, but all I had left are gifts for her (and stocking stuffers) and most of them are from Santa so she definitely cannot see them. I did leave the wrapping paper in Steve's office and when he got home they wrapped the gifts I have bought for myself so far.

Now I need to get sewing her big Christmas gift from us and her birthday gift. I'm off to sew. How is your holiday shopping going?