Christmas Gifting: Giving

This year I thought I would try to be a more conscientious consumer. So instead of buying a bunch of products made in China, I decided to make them (with products that are probably made in China anyway...I tried).

So I decided to bake goodies for my aunts, uncles, and their families. I made magic cookie bars (minus the coconut--gross), oatmeal chocolate cookies, and I did a few of the jars with ingredients to make your own cookies (because the jars looked really cool, and minus the pecans, because they didn't fit!).

The cupcakes were my contribution for Christmas Eve dinner. I put all the baked goods in mason jars, then Sarah helped me decorate the mason jars with holiday fabric, twine, ribbon, shiny paper, and anything else we could get our hands on.

For the male cousins, I made them each a friendship bracelet with their favorite cousin (it was more of a token gift than a "real" gift...), and went to Powell's candy store and bought all sorts of goodies to put in their gift bags with their bracelets (I'm talking pop rocks, air heads, now & laters, etc.). For my cousin in Colorado I crocheted some fingerless gloves (I do see the irony in fingerless gloves for someone living in Colorado...but they still have to come in handy, right?), and for the rest of the girl cousins I made them some yarn bracelets using a broomstick stitch .

Although I love the idea of having spent time on each gift, I will admit it was crazy stressful (Jeff can tell you all about this), although this is mainly because I love to procrastinate. All in all, I'd say it was a great Christmas for hand made gifting :)

P.S.: How cool is this photo feature?? Completely unrelated, but check out this 4 in 1 picture of the ingredients we used to make our tamales for Christmas:

Hope everyone had a great Christmas!