Monday 19 January 2015

Handmade gifts 2014

Since Christmas is over, and I finally gave out all my gifts, I wanted to post the handmade gifts that I gave out this year.

Every year, I give my friends and family at least one handmade gift.  Last year I knitted cabled head bands and hats for everyone.  The year before I gave personalized gingerbread people.  This year, I left things a little late, and made two quick, but useful gifts for the peeps in my life.


The first gift I made was some beard oil for my D.  I made the labels to and put them onto a recycled bottle.  This is the easiest stuff to make:  3 Tbsp of Sweet Almond Oil; 2 Tbsp of Jojoba oil; 1 tsp of Seabuckthorn Oil;  and 2-3 drops of Tea Tree essential oil and 1 drops of Sandalwood essential oil.  (Note:  This is not a great recipe for people with nut allergies.  Use Olive Oil, and light Castor Oil instead of Almond and Jojoba!)  D loves it.  He uses it once a week.  And he laughs each time he sees the label. 


The gift I made for my lady friends was a stamped clay ring dish which I packaged with some hand salve.  I found the DIY tutorial at this great blog

There was some trial and error on this one though.  I found that the best ink for this project was "archival" inks, and the brand that worked best for me was Colorbox.  The other ink pads I used faded and weren't as vivid once the clay dried.  For others i didn't used any ink at all!  I just stamped them nice and hard so that the impression came through.  I liked these ones the best.  I added some gold leaf paint to the edges to make them a little more fancy.   They were a hit with my pals.

Did you make any gifts this holiday? 



Friday 2 January 2015

The best thing this year so far...


Hi friends. I know, it's been a while. There was a lot going on, and I never found the energy to do much, let alone blog about it.  And I just couldn't bring myself to start a blog series called, "From my couch" so, a took a break.  The truth is, I started a new job, and threw myself into that (as you do) and  and, and.  The break was just what I needed. I feel refreshed, and I came back to look at me blog, and thought to myself , "I like this blog." Which is good. Because it's mine. I'm still not going to have a very active posting schedule, I think mostly on the weekends since that's when I do the fun stuff, so if you stuck with me this long, I hope you won't mind the lighter postings. Yous are good people though, so I think we will be fine.

On with the post!

That's quite a title for the second day of the year. But this twitter hashtag was the best New Years thing I have seen.  It started with this lady:


And soon, I had to get in on the action. Here are some of my most retweeted ones:



Which I think are just hilarious.  Yes, I laugh at my own jokes. Doesn't everybody?