Quick and Easy Christmas Gifts

Dear Readers,

We hope you are enjoying your day, and basking in the peace of the Christmas season. Here are some little Christmas gifts we have been working on, that we thought we'd share with you, to give you ideas for some simple gifts to make.

The first are little acorn needle keepers (needles keepers should have something hard to keep them from going into the cushion), made from the caps of large acorns. We painted some pink, but they look pretty au naturale, too.

"Somebody" played with this one and cracked it, but it still looks good.

The cushion is made of a circle of velvet with gathering stitches around the outside to make a ball-shape, stuffed with polyfil (We were going to use sand, but it was rained on!). We sewed a small circle of gathering stitches on the end to imitate the cute little tip acorns have on them. We then glued the ball into the acorn cap, and that was it! Simple, practical and quick.

We put a pin in these, since needles are hard to see in photos!

If you don't know any seamstresses, they also make great decorations, as you can see!

Next, we made eye pillows out of scraps of flannel and denim (Make sure that denim is clean-looking now; the grunge look is all right for pants, but few people want it on their face!), about four inches by ten inches.


We haven't stuffed them yet (We're out of flax seeds), but we will fill them with flax (white rice would be good, too), and whatever yummy herbs we want to mix (i.e. lavender, rose petals, hops, etc.). We actually LOVE using the sagebrush that is so plentiful in this part of the country, but you might have a harder time getting it than we (If you want some, just let us know. We'd be glad to send you a "sniff"!).

These are super-easy, being two rectangles sewn together (Remember to leave an end open for turning and stuffing.). Children especially love the stuffing part, and older children can help with the stitching, too.


Meanwhile, we'll be perusing our old books and magazines to find more Christmas ideas to share!

A Hint to Santa Claus

If I were Santa Claus, I'd give
Ben Brown a whooping lot of things--
A train of cars, sure as you live,
A Noah's ark, a ball that sings,
A pair of skates, a book, a bat,
A bag of candy, pretty fat--
And all of this because, you see,
Ben Brown is me!

~Susie M. Best

Blessings to you,

Marqueta