Homemade gifts

Well I spent a bunch of time this year making gifts. Matt jokes that my poor little sewing machine has been sitting there for 6 years barely seeing the light of day and then WHAM! out of no where it gets the beating of a lifetime! True. I've gone through spools of thread. What am I doing sewing? It's crazy--and I want to do more. I haven't scrap booked in ages. I will again. Just have to what is pushing my creative button at the moment, right? People ask me if I have some fancy machine, but it's just the basic Sears Kenmore one. The nice thing is, is that my sister has the same exact one so if we have problems we can call each other up and try to figure stuff out. Now one of us just has to tackle the zipper. It's a handed down fear. I even have a site bookmarked on how to do them easily so at least I know we're not the only ones with the fear. Now that I think of our zipper fear and Mikas button fears, maybe this family has some obscure fear of notions. Ha! Just joking, my sister and I only fear sewing zippers whereas my dear daughter fears buttons on clothing. Ok, tangent. Pictured here are some of the gifts I made. I did a reverse applique on the t-shirt (but didn't make the shirt) and I made 2 skirts, just one smaller for a friend, 3 total fish games, and 3 crayon/colored pencil rolls. I also made a stocking with embroidery but didn't photograph it since I finished it as we drove to Minneapolis. Oh, I also made 4 tote-able towels but I guess I forgot to photograph those. Now I just need to finish the quilt. (Special thanks to http://littlemunchkins.blogspot.com/ for the crayon roll tutorial!)