Christmas Gifts

I love to make a gift for each of my child care kiddos and to help them make a gift for their parents.  I think it’s important to instill a joy of gift giving in my girls and to let them know that the whole reason for Christmas is that God gave us the greatest gift of all and that is why we give gifts at Christmastime. Usually the gift the children make is an ornament or some type of decoration.  This year we did a simple popsicle stick ornament that we blinged up a bit.  Painting the sticks is always fun, or it’s nice that you can buy the pre colored sticks in red and green if you want to go that route.  All the bling we put on were stickers.  The gems came in a sheet and we cut them into strips, boxes, and individuals. We also used gold paint pens. Even my 2 year olds were able to paint and put the stickers on themselves.This was a super simple project for them to make for their gifts at various levels of independence depending on their ages.  The oldest ones could even loop the wire themselves and use a glue gun on the back to be sure the wire hanger didn’t fall off.  It was a great, enjoyable little project.

I decided to crochet puppy hats as my gift for everyone even though the only thing I had ever crocheted was a Single Stitch blanket way back in college that ended up having one side nearly a foot longer than the other! Lol! But I have always wanted to try my hand at crochet, so I dove in. I used the puppy hat pattern here from RepeatcrafterMe . I did a practice hat for a dolly. Thank goodness I practiced first and thank goodness for YouTube tutorials! I discovered that the eye patches, nose, etc are separate pieces that are attached later, not surface crocheted on! Lol! This was my first child hat. I got better as I went along and all the little “puppies” really seemed to enjoy their gifts. :).