Christmas gifts

Some projects take months to complete. So between trips, vacations, grandkids, pickleball, bible studies, fishing etc. we managed to finish these projects for Christmas. Some are long in the finishing, like the soap and some are faster, like the whale.

Soap. I start making soap in late summer. The weather is warm and I can work outside better. I make soap from scratch-have been doing it for over 15 years. It's the only soap my family used growing up. We still use it exclusively at my house and I make it for family and friends. Soap from scratch means, water, sodium hydroxide (lye), various combinations of oils and butters, scents, and sometimes additives such as lavender, or calendula petals.

Some of the soaps 

Enlarge this picture and you can see the different soaps I made 

We made a sign post for my son-in-law. He saw one on a trip we all took to the beach and I remembered that he really liked the idea. So I made one with places he had been, wanted to go to, or had passed by. It took a while to gather all the drift wood. The main post was a branch from one of our pine trees. We sprayed lacquer over it all to help preserve it. It now sits in his "man cave". 

Notice the backpacking sign-distance is about a mile. It's a family joke! 

Bad lighting but you get the idea 

I did some sewing for Micaela, a t-shirt dress and purse from some fabric that she saw at the store and really liked. I could not think of something to make for Zeke, he got a present from the store!

This one was for Jeni, my daughter. She saw this sign in a local consignment shop and really liked it. I didn't want to pay the consignment price for it-too much $. I looked up the saying on the internet and it's all over the place, and didn't have any copywrite associated with it-so I did it myself. The wood is her old fence boards. My other son-in-law has a plasma table and could cut some metal trees for me. 

While we were at the Olympic National Forest last year we spent some time at the beach. There we found this piece of drift wood that looked like the body of a whale. So we hunted around for the fin and the tail. Mr UAW put this together for me for Christmas. 

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I like most of my Christmas gifts to be homemade. It does take some time and thought. And it usually saves some money.