Handmade gifts...

Hope everybody had a wonderful Christmas!  We are having our family Christmas today since Carey had to work yesterday.  I'm not doing a big dinner.  I'm making chicken and dumplings with a vegetable side, and Kasey is bringing pie.  I stewed the chicken and boned it a couple of days ago, so the hard work is all done.

Now I can show some of the family gifts  that I've been working on that I couldn't show ahead of time.   I purchased tulle on a spool on special for half off awhile back, and I used it on every single gift instead of ribbon...SO easy to just tie a bow, fluff it out, and have it look great.  To the boys' gifts I added some dragon paper mache ornaments that I got on sale last week...they were each a different color and style.

The boys are so hard to buy for, so I resorted to giving cash, but I didn't want to just slip a check into an envelope.  When I came across this idea , I knew it was exactly what I wanted to do too.

I Googled 'money origami' and found some interesting ways to fold bills that I thought the boys might think were cool.  I chose to try the flower fold (shown in the middle below) and the heart fold (shown in the bottom right-hand corner, though the shape doesn't show up very well in the photo).  The other bills I just folded simply.  I glued the paper candy liners to the bottom of the box, and I used a tiny bit of glue to glue the bills into the candy liners.  I used a liberal amount of glue to glue the coins down...I wanted it to look nice when opened and not strewn every which way...and those boys can clean it up later.  :)

Each boy's box includes one $20 dollar bill, one $10 bill, one $5 bill, one $2 bill, three $1 bills (the flower uses three bills), and assorted coins. I wish I had been able to find darker colored boxes to add more contrast, but all in all I thought they turned out very fun looking, and I think the boys will be surprised and happy with them.

Tomorrow I'll show another gift that was fun to do.