Neens Week PART 1 Handmade Gifts

Part 1

Hello everyone, I hope you had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2011! Before I get into telling and showing you all about My past week, let me say that this will be a long post so I will put it up in two parts! This part will be aimed at the homemade gifts I made which I couldn't show you sooner as the recipients would have seen
It was very important to me to make as many gifts as I could- not to save money- because lets face it, all crafters know that half the time you spend more money on the material then on a usual shop bought gift, and then add the time and work you spend putting into it.....

I will start with my husbands sister, Genny's gift - after making a homemade Christmas wreath from a tutorial from MichelleMadeThis, I decided to also make them with the residents from the nursing home where I work (BELOW)

made by 20 residents 

When Genny saw them, she commented how great they would look as a ear ring holder to hang in her bedroom,that weekend I got to work on buying all the materials I would need, including ALOT of ear rings! I worked really hard on this 

Genny's 2010 Christmas Gift

 It also came with some bracelets

and  Broaches 

My next project was for my husbands grandmother Terri or Nanna as we call her, I cant describe how fond I am of her and what a lovely, honest person she is, from day one she has made me feel so welcome and so apart of the family - this Christmas we were kindly invited to spend the day and have dinner with Nanna and my husbands aunt Mary- it was my first time ever not being with my family on Christmas Day but I consider both Nanna and Marys house as a home away from home so I was very comfortable and happy.

 feeling at home at Nanna's

and below, enjoying a lovely dinner made by Mary!

This year I wanted to make Nanna something warm and cosy and when I saw the material up at the stitching show a few months back, I knew it would be perfect!

Nanna's 2010 Christmas Gift

 A hand sewn lap blanket

 on the back I lined with fleece for extra heat

she really seemed to like it, so I am delighted.

Before Christmas I asked my best-friend Melanie to do a Christmas Hat a-long with me - so we both got to crocheting, when my husbands Godmother asked if she could commission four seasonal hats also, I thought "two birds, one stone" and got to making these four adorable hats for four adorable girls, and instead of Dolores paying for them I gave them to her as an early gift what do you think?

Dolores's 2010 Christmas Gift

and below are the girls wearing them!

So that was the handmade gifts for this year - I hope to make many more for next year - remember to check back here for the next part of this post -

 unfortunately I have been on bed rest as it turned out I got a bad infection in my cells and unless I wanted to be in hospital for the new year I had to get alot of rest while on 6 antibiotics a day! I am still not doing the best but I'm so happy to know why I was feeling so poorly- also when your lay up in bed you really do see who your friends are- I was surprised that people I have been there for and helped out in so many ways couldn't be bothered to even send a text and see how I was, and as awful as this sounds and so not in with the spirit of Christmas I will be taking a step back from them, Well its good to get that off my chest!Rant Finished.

Before I go make sure to have a look over on my husbands blog HERE as he has shared lots of photos of our Christmas too!!