Holiday Hurry & Hurrah

Surely mine is not the only family that tucks away gifts then forgets to untuck them? I found something we intended to give as a birthday present months ago but forgot, so that's going under the tree. And weeks ago I intended to show you a couple of ghost-of-Christmas-past gifts, but they just surfaced.

The first is the advent calendar I made for my parents. Since they have limited storage space now, I got their ornament collection. So I took pictures of the ornaments and made an advent calendar using those images and a photo of my sister and me on a visit to Santa Claus, Indiana.

 

On the flip side of the numbers I fused images of the holly candy cart, the olive wood wise men and camels, the ceramic Santa boot, and other family Christmas treasures that I printed to inkjet fabric. This way my parents can revisit those memories, but the memories roll up and store flat in very little space.

I also meant to show what I made my folks for Christmas last year. In an homage to all the pencil containers I crafted in grade school, I took a plastic office organizer and created a crazy quilt sheath of pictures printed on inkjet fabric. Both of my parents were farm kids who dreamed of visiting faraway places, so I chose snapshots from some of their travels.

That's my dad with a koala cub on their trip to Australia.

That's my mom petting a sled dog in Alaska.

Moving on to the spirit of Christmas Present, I have two gifts still to make and a few things to wrap. Most of our wrapping is recycled fabric held together with a few stitches and craft ribbon from the huge tub of ribbons I inherited from my mother-in-law.

Here's one of the perks of living in a sparsely populated area: When you go to the post office with two bags of packages to mail on the Monday before Christmas, you can walk right up to the window. That leaves time to get a pasty (meat pie -- yum!) and go cut a tree.

Our gifts are on their way hither and yon and should arrive before Christmas Eve. If you're still puzzling over what to make for a last-minute gift, here's an ornament tutorial from last year that might give you some ideas.

And if you're all done with making, shopping, wrapping, decorating, baking and all the other holiday hurry, just enjoy the hurrah!