Handmade Holidays

This year I am having a homemade holiday as much as possible. I love Christmas. I love giving gifts. I love red and green. All of this creates a situation where I typically buy and spend a lot during the month of December. I am usually pretty good about paying cash for things, but generally end up spending more than I should between gifts, decorations, holiday craft items and Starbucks, etc. So this year, when things are tighter than normal, the plan is too spend as little as possible on holiday items. I will be making a lot of gifts and adding homemade items to my holiday decor. I started my gift list in October, so I'm hoping to not stress myself out with last minute creating. Thanks to some design team deadlines, I have spent the past few days making Christmas crafts. This weekend I started several holiday projects including this cute little tree:


This tree is based on a project I saw on Cheeky Magpie's crafty blog. I will be offering a tutorial for this tree at Scrapgal's holiday crop on December 5th and 6th. You should definitely stop by for lots of holiday ideas and inspiration. The design team girls are all working on great projects, tutorials and inspiration to kick off your holiday season. For some sneak peeks at what's in store for that weekend, check out the Galblog.

As I mentioned, I began the holiday gift planning back in October and have already completed two projects. I am knitting, scrapbooking, jewelry making, baking, etc. Gift ideas for the girlies on my list are pretty easy, but the men are harder. I may end up buying guy gifts. Got any good ideas for handmade gifts for guys?

As part of my knitty gift spree, I purchased these speedstix to use with a pattern I found online. These things are size 50 and if you know anything about knitting needles, they are HUGE! In fact, it's pretty comical to look at and I feel like I'm knitting in the land of the giants when I use them. Here's a glimpse at how ridiculous they look:



To really get an idea, here's one of the needles next to more regular sized needles I'm using on another gift project:


Are you planning (or already working on) any holiday projects this year? Got any fabulous handmade gift ideas?