The Christmas Roundup

I know, I know... I'm about 3 weeks late for the Christmas roundup thing. I'll probably also be late for Valentines and all the other holidays, too, so... you might want to get used to it. Low expectations, that's the name of the game around here ;)

For as much as I love creating, I didn't actually make a ton of our Christmas this year. Thanks to Swagbucks and their Amazon gift cards, we were able to buy a lot of the things that we needed/wanted/saw-and-had-to-have for very cheap or FREE!

I always love free and cheap runs a close second, but the great deals were even better this year since my fantastic husband spoiled me with not one but TWO new toys for Christmas. I'd like to introduce you to Norman:

and Silvia (fresh from her box):

Yup, I am SO spoiled. :)

I got my new toys before Christmas and put them to good use for the few handmade Christmas items under our tree this year:

Silvia earned her keep by customizing the Smashburger gift certificate I bought on Groupon for my burger-loving husband:

And then she learned me the cut/weld ways with this gift tag (of which I made only one because "weeding" a design is my newest nemesis):

And then we got to the real nitty gritty with freezer paper stencils (which are now my newest love):

Thundercats tshirts

and Bob Ross :)

Norman also helped make the Bob Ross apron happen for my budding-artist sister-in-law (pictured above), following this tutorial from Keeping It Simple. It's so easy and requires only some bias tape (make your own or buy it) and an old pair of jeans.

Norman chipped in with two travel silverware rolls with hand-stamped silverware so that my husband will stop bringing home the utensils from his school's cafeteria (so far, successful!):

I followed this tutorial from Omiyage. For the first roll (the one on the left), I followed the tutorial exactly, but the silverware didn't fit quite as snugly as I had hoped, so for the second roll (bottom right corner) I folded the corners differently to make the fit a little more snug.

As you can probably see, the stamping on the silverware wasn't a smashing success (pun completely intended). It probably would have been better with more time, more patience, and in an environment with a temperature above 12*F (more specifically, NOT my front porch on Christmas Eve).

Norman then finished out in style with the piece de resistance:

a custom camera bag for my BFF Debra.

I drafted the pattern for the hobo-style bag myself (and will share soon) and adapted (in a major way) Little Blue Boo's tutorial for the camera insert to make it completely washable. That's kind of a must for messy persons like Debra and me. :)

In other news, my commitment is panning out quite nicely! The high chair cover is actually only going to be four cut pieces. The putting it together will be the difficult part, since the original was hemmed with bias tape and I will most definitely NOT be making my own oilcloth bias tape. I've got the construction figured out in my head already, though, so we'll see how that translates to real life!

How are your commitments coming?