Stocking Stuffer Bags

Raise your hand if you LIKE wrapping stocking stuffers.

Anyone?

For me, it usually involves neck cramps and teeny tiny pieces of wrapping paper and teeny tiny pieces of tape and why do we wrap them anyway if they get stuffed in a stocking? I guess some people don’t, but since this is how we roll, I have come up with a solution.

Reusable stocking stuffer bags.

Yes. This idea might not help you now, with only, what four days until Christmas? But after Christmas, get thee to your nearest fabric store and buy up the holiday fabric at a nifty 75% off. I think Jo-Ann’s Fabrics still had Christmas fabric marked down in June. And pick up some clearance holiday ribbon as well.

If you can get enough different fabric prints, you might even be able to make enough bags that each person in the family gets an individualized print for his or her stocking. Then you can just stuff all Z’s stocking stuffers into the Hello Kitty bags, give Homes the manly holly, and there’s no need for name tags even! Yes! Brilliant!

I even made long skinny bags for toothbrushes! Doubly brilliant!

Caveat: this idea works better if you don’t foolishly hope, for the better part of the year, that the stocking stuffer bags will make themselves. Because I am wiser and more experienced in this craft, I can assure you: they won’t. So now I am madly sewing stocking stuffer bags. And while I sew, Z is very, very quiet in her bedroom.

And then, I finally notice how quiet it is, so I get up to check on her, and find her room looking like this:

After I make threats and cry, I take a look around her room and realize that at least 64.4% of the things strewn about were stocking stuffers from last year. So I might just take her stocking stuffer bags and stuff them. In the garbage can.

You know I won’t. But I gotta admit, it’s a tempting idea.

I won’t be updating the blog over the next week so that I can focus on sewing more stocking stuffer bags spending time with family. Happy Holidays, everyone!

Mommy’s Christmas Sweatshop

“If you don’t put another bead on that ornament, I’m taking the beads away!”

Nothing like threats to really foster that Christmas spirit. To my credit, she asks to do the craft

Zs Homemade Orna-na-ments

project. “Oh!” she says. “I want to make another orna-na-ment.” To her credit, she’s two. After threading five or six pony beads on a pipe cleaner, she’s ready to move on to lining up rubber duckies or arranging an elaborate dinner for her stuffed gecko.

To my credit, I have festive Christmas music playing in the background. To her credit, yesterday was the first clear day after a handful of rainy ones, and sitting still didn’t sound fun.

To my credit, I’m aiming for Christmas to be about giving, not just receiving…even though I’ve dropped countless hints about the Laptop O’ Dreams. To Z’s credit, I don’t think she quite understands the concept of a Christmas deadline (after all, she doesn’t have an email inbox full of reminders and coupons ominously counting down to the Big Day).

To the relief of both of us, we can always take a break from beading. There are all sorts of additional holiday tasks readily adaptable to a two-year-old’s capabilities and temperament. So far I’ve had her put stickers on the Christmas card envelopes, sweep fallen needles from under the Christmas tree, and help with house cleaning before family comes. Soon she’ll be stirring dough for Christmas cookies and helping me wrap presents!

The best part of this is: these Christmas “chores” are fun anyway, and they’re even more fun when I view them through the eyes of my daughter.