Tag: handmade gifts

My Holiday Week in Pictures

~ Crystal Sands ~ 3 Comments

I hope you are having a restful holiday season. It has been quite the year for all of us, but here we are, figuring it out somehow, aren’t we?

It has been terribly, terribly cold here. We lost one of our young chickens, one of our two roosters, so that was a blow. I think it was mostly just unlucky genetics, but truly, it has been unusually cold unusually early here. I don’t think we have seen a December this cold since we started homesteading, so when we got baby chickens in August, we thought they would be plenty big before the bad cold hit. Of course, we thought wrong, and the cold has been hard on our little ones. They are fully feathered, but still.

The cold is hard on the young ones and the old ones. We mostly have the young ones and the old ones now, so Ron has been running the ceramic heater in the coop on the worst nights. I know you are not supposed to heat your coop, but we try to make careful exceptions to the rule.

On the bright side, it has been amazing for making ice lanterns, and I have made several. I have been using candle light both inside and outside to keep me in good spirits, and it has worked. I decided to take a lesson from the Nordic folk and just lean into the candlelight this year. It has been so helpful that I want to see if there is any science behind it.

I hope you are staying warm and cozy. It’s -1 here right now in our part of Maine, so I am doing my best. I hope you are doing your best wherever you are. I hope these photos make you smile. They are presented in random order with some random thoughts. I would love to see some of your holiday photos or at least hear some of your stories. Please share as well if you can!

I’ll start with Boudica. Here, she is asking me to come out to play in the snow, and I am telling her there is no way I am going out in that cold. I am telling her to come in the house and sit on the couch with me. She eventually came inside and slept next to me on the couch. She has been doing that a lot lately. Her tiredness worries me, but I am trying to treasure our snuggle time. She will be 10 this coming year.
I found out this year that I have a Jewish ancestor on my mom’s side, and I have always been so fascinated with Judaism and have studied a bit over the years. This year, I decided to try to learn how to celebrate Hanukkah officially, and my dear friend brought a menorah for me. I learned after this photo that you aren’t supposed to put all the candles in at once and that you burn the candles all the way down each night. I have much to learn, but this year, we celebrated Hanukkah, Yule, and Christmas, and it felt right to me. It seemed important to have all that focus on the light.
I was worried we were not going to have a Christmas tree this year. It was just a few days before Christmas, and I hoped a little tree from our property. It seems wrong to just cut down a tree for my own enjoyment, so I told Ron my idea of taking a tree from a patch of trees because they won’t all make it when they are too close. This tree has zero on the backside, but this side was perfect. I love her! We could not find a single tree stand for a live tree here in our part of Maine, so Ron bought a small bucket, filled it with rocks and water, and it worked! I was grateful.
The only perk I can see to this hard cold we have had this December is that I get to make ice lanterns. Aren’t they magnificent? If you live where it is cold you can make them too. I created directions for making them in the Winter Solstice issue of the journal.
I spent a good bit of this week making gifts for friends. This is one of the tiny Solstice cakes I made to share with others.
The tiny cake was inspired by this big cake. I make one every year and use the same snowmen candle holders every year.
I did my best at making a witch bowl candle, and it’s pretty good. However, I have much to learn. Hopefully, I will have them perfected by next year. They include oranges I dried plus cinnamon sticks, star anise, and whole cloves.
I also make these light balls made from Christmas lights and Solo cups. I gave this one to a dear friend to brighten her spirits. These balls of light are just lovely. I had hoped to make a bunch for our yard but rest took priority. Hopefully, next year, I can make more!
I made cranberry and popcorn strings for the turkeys on Christmas Eve. They loved them but not as much as they love Craisins (that’s a whole other story). The chickens LOVED theirs though, and that made my heart happy. The baby chickens were like, oh, we like popcorn!
This is my favorite stocking and favorite candle, so I felt they deserved a picture. Ron calls this candle my Ebenezer Scrooge candle. : )
It seemed proper to close my photos with one of Bairre on the couch on Christmas. He’s so happy when he’s on the pillows. Happy winter holidays, no matter what you celebrate, from all of us and Bairre. I hope you get some good rest like Bairre. He’s an expert at taking it easy.

Homemade Gifts for the Holidays

~ Crystal Sands ~ 4 Comments

Every year during the holiday season, I see the memes on social media that focus on normalizing homemade gifts, and they make me hopeful. Truly, there is nothing better than a homemade gift, one that is made with love but is also useful in some way. I guess that’s a caveat I have about homemade for the holidays–usefulness goes a long way in my book. Of course, some things are just special even if they aren’t super useful, but if I can manage to make a special gift that is also useful in some way, I am most pleased.

With that in mind, I wanted to do a round-up of homemade gift ideas and instructions from the journal over the years. Whether you can eat it, wear it, or light a room with it, we have some great homemade gift ideas for this holiday season. I hope this list inspires you in some way to give a lovely, useful, homemade gift this year.

Just click on the blue title to be taken to the directions.

Easy Cranberry Bread

I have given this as a gift to rave reviews. It pairs perfectly with good salted butter, so I will buy some of the really good butter and put that with the bread in a cute little bag. It’s so good and such a treat warmed on a cold winter’s day.

The Best Homemade Cookie Box

You can substitute any cookies you like, but a box of well-made cookies with enough to share with others is such a special treat. I highly recommend those Starry Night cookies!

Beeswax Candles in Up-cycled Jars

What is better than the gift of light? These beeswax candles are easy to make and are so simple and good. They last for close to 40 hours, are unscented, and the beeswax is actually a bit of an air cleanser. You can add scent by adding some essential oil, but this recipe, as-is, uses some organic coconut oil, which gives the candles this very slight sweet smell.

Box of Fat Archie Cookies

This recipe is the most popular on the site, especially during this time of year. It gets thousands of hits, probably because these cookies are so comforting and cozy.

Old Maine Flag Quilt

This quilt is relatively simple to make and can be made in about a week with even a busy schedule. It’s a great idea for anyone in your life who loves Maine or that old Maine flag.

A Jar of Jam

Even if you don’t have fresh berries right now, you can use frozen, and jam on toast or fresh bread is such a special treat in the long winter–kind of this sweet reminder of the summer. You can also make Christmas jam, which I have not done yet but am about to try today.

A Sheet Music or Story Ornament

This one is one that is just sweet and meaningful. If you have special ornaments that have stayed with you throughout your life then you know how meaningful something like this can be. Whether you are using music your child wrote or a poem or story they wrote to make an ornament for grandparents, this is wonderful homemade gift to consider.

Homemade Vanilla in a Beautiful Bottle

You will have to plan ahead for this one, but if you make it now, the vanilla will be perfect for next year’s holiday season. Homemade vanilla is delicious and saves a lot of money. In a beautiful gift bottle, a bottle of homemade vanilla is the perfect gift for the baker in your life.

Other Ideas

This year, I am giving the gift of seeds from Ron’s garden and homemade hot chocolate, complete with vintage thrift store mugs and homemade marshmallows. Other ideas include a poem, a letter, a photo book, and if you know how to crochet or knit, well, you have all the power.

I would love to know if any of these ideas speak to you or if you have any homemade ideas you are willing to share with readers. What are you best homemade gift ideas?

photo credit: Sweta Meininger, Unsplash