homemade gifts part 2 and my injured Leo

Yesterday and this morning, I've had so much fun with my new kitchen gadgets and spending quality time with Mr. J that I should have known the other shoe was going to drop. When I finally got around to clearing the over 12" of snow off my car, I found two holes in my back windshield and lots of glass and some snow in my back seat. Lovely, right? Happy friggen New Year. Mr. J tried to help me figure out what damaged the shield, but we didn't find any rocks, etc. in the car. Our best guess is that the person who plowed our driveway in our absence may have kicked up some ice. This is what the holes looked like at first:

Then, it just kept getting better. The area between the two holes caved in, too.

After I had spent 20 minutes picking up tiny shards of glass, more glass replaced it.

That's when I gave up. Thankfully, the insurance agent called me back and we arranged a time for a mobile service provider to come to the house and replace the glass on Friday. So, I am vehicleless until then. I am very thankful for my grandmother, who walked me through what to do, and Mr. J, who was cool as a cucumber and willing to drive me to work and back until poor Leopold is fixed.

To make myself feel better, and hopefully to give you all some ideas, here is the second set of homemade gifts I create this year for Christmas. The first set is here.

Knitted Scarf

Over the summer, I was in a store with my youngest cousin. She is a very stylish, opinionated, cheeky 11-year-old-going-on-25. She's been taller than me for years and she's given me fashion advice on more than one occasion. Sometimes it's easy to forget her real age! I love this girl to pieces, and I knew I wanted to make her something special for Christmas. However, inspiration hadn't struck just yet. That is, not until she and I were wandering around this store and I dragged her into a yarn aisle. She rolled her eyes and humored me for a few minutes until she spotted a pink, blue, and purple yarn ball that made her eyes light up. I took note, asked a few questions, and not-so-stealthily put the yarn in my basket. I spend months knitting her a long scarf of medium width ( I am not that slow of a knitter; I just set it down after a couple weeks and later picked it back up). I am definitely not a knitting expert, but I can count stitches, knit in a straight line, and keep a consistent tension. There were 17 stitches and it ended up being over 3 feet long.

Felt Heart Gloves

To go with her new scarf, I customized a set of blue gloves for my cousin. I had the new gloves on hand (ha) already, as well pre-cut felt hearts in a variety of colors. I used my trusty Heat N Bond to iron small pink hearts onto larger white ones, then the white hearts to the gloves. It took a grand total of five minutes! I placed a piece of cardboard inside the glove to prevent the glove from fusing to itself.

                                              

Framed Initial Sign

My best friend has a beautiful baby girl named Bianca who I ADORE. I wanted to make Bia something cute to decorate her room. This was very easy to make and fun to design. The first thing I did was to use Word to find a font I liked. Then, I test printed the B onto white paper. When I get the letter positioned properly, I cut a pretty piece of scrapbooking paper to fit the frame and printed the B onto it.

Once the ink dried, I used hot glue to attach coordinating buttons over the letter.

At first, I wasn't so sure I liked that some of the ink was visible, but when I came back to the frame a week later, I liked the effect.

Enjoy! xo