Creative and Craftastic: Holiday 2008 Gifts

As the holidays approached, I became overly-ambitious. I decided (after reading Martha Stewart Living) that I wanted to create spa goodies for my ladies. She published recipes for sugar and salt scrubs, bath fizzies and salt drops (balls). The scrubs were easy and were jarred immediately. Unfortunately, they didn't travel well, so plans to send them to our New York friends was halted. The bath fizzies were a fun project that involved chemistry. I got to purchase citric acid and be ultra precise because one false move ended with fizzy bubbles everywhere and having to start from scratch. The salt drops sucked! What a hard project. All but a mere few broke, crumbled and fell apart. Only Marie received salt drops and hers didn't travel well, basically negating their original purpose.

Marie's Salts from Lush by Levine

The scrubs were made in two flavors - peppermint grapefruit and lemon eucalyptus (pink and green respectively). Unfortunately, as per Shelly, the peppermint grapefruit turned her feet pink temporarily.

The fizzes came in a number of scents as a result of special requests - peppermint, eucalyptus, green tea/cucumber, cucumber/melon, lavender, and citrus. No one has used the fizzies yet so I don't know how those turned out - but they look pretty.

As for the boys, I crocheted all of them hats. I combined a few patterns that I found online and in books and created a fantastic pattern that I am really happy about. Everyone loved them and it's awesome that I can customize them to people's head size (even some of my friends' really large heads).

My silent mannequins

The Kallstrom (and Fuqua) family

Stewart

Yarmulke for Eran

Lucky the Jew

Brad's camo hat

Shelly & Joe show off their hats

Then there were the gifts for the kids. I was especially proud of these. I made "friends" for my best friends' daughter, the pig and the frog. I also made pigs for my mom and an inverted pig for Shelly. Speaking of pigs, I decorated piggy banks for the niece and nephew.