Holiday Gift Wrap-Up #4 -- Bags For Boys

For my last post on holiday gifts I couldn't show until after surprise was taken out of the equation, I present a pair of boy gifts and a plea: One of these boys has a birthday coming up, and I need help with ideas!

You may recall that, as a maker, I find boy gifts more of a challenge than girl gifts. Never having been a boy, never having had a brother, never having lived with a teenage boy -- that all seems to makes it tougher. My gift vision is clouded with memories of what these male creatures liked when they were 5, what I see on TV, and how much I want them to love us our gifts. In other words, reality doesn't play much of a role here.


Luckily, economics does. And we don't have the money to buy safe things like gift cards. So it's simple: We have to find something to make, and it has to fit into our no-budget.

So I picked up a few extra T-shirts from the R&R bin at Bethesda (25 cents apiece). From that stash I made the two boys four drawstring stuff sacks each. I had a spool of cording on hand, but for the smaller ones I just cut strips of fabric from the T-shirts and stretched it out to make cording.

I also made each of them a 4-layer velcro-closed 2-pocket pouch. How they'll use them remains to be seen, but they were fun to make.

In just a few weeks, I'll need another boy gift for the 15-year-old's birthday. No ideas whatsoever. Suggestions, please!?! Pretty please? Hit the Comments link and tell me what you think. It won't be just me who appreciates it :)