The best Christmas ever starts now!

This week I released my first ever ebook, How to make ALL your Christmas Presents. (It is available on the blog and on the face book page).
Thank you for all the lovely comments and letters!

Over the next few weeks I am posting all kinds of ways to continue to save money at Christmas and have the best Christmas ever.

Yes, we are starting now! Because to make your own gifts, cards and treats it will happen if we get started with a realistic amount of time to do everything!

The ebook covered a series of ways to make your presents suitable for those you are giving to, that will be fabulous and inexpensive. Also how to present things to give them that wow factor. It also covered how to choose things that suit you and your own skills. You do not have to be crafty to make all your own presents!

The savings can be incredible. Of course it all depends on what you have been spending. Taking the pressure off financially and having money instead for the emergency fund, a family holiday or pay off debt is wonderful. And Christmas need not be "less".  In fact I feel I can make lots of spare gifts and give to more people than I might otherwise be able to afford to. It makes Christmas better!

My worst scenario used to be the last minute rush. You know, when you are desperate and have no time left, and you buy something way too expensive as you simply have to get something!  It's a terrible feeling! I've avoided this in the last few years just by starting early. This one change alone is a big saving if you have tended to do that.

So lets take the pressure off financially and work wise and do a little bit each week from now on in. I take the same approach to birthdays. In our family most of the birthdays are in December and January so everything happens at once!

A few weeks ago I posted the wash cloths and cleaning cloths I was making in a bobble stitch I had found on You Tube.  Since then I have used up the smaller amounts of cotton that were left over to make dish cloths. I have always seen them in pictures on other blogs and on Pinterest and thought how sweet they looked.  For these I have used Shell Stitch which I learned also on You Tube.

The thing is for anyone who can crochet if you can do chain and double crochet you can do these stitches. Both the bobble stitch and the shell stitch are made up purely of chain and double crochets, its just the order you do them in!

If you cannot crochet but would like to learn it is really easy. You can learn and be crocheting in a day. Ask someone to show you or use You Tube and set aside half an hour to get started. Learn how to chain and then how to so single and double stitches. It just takes a little practice and is really good fun!

I have found quite a bit of cotton in op shops and if I see it I get it! Otherwise my cotton comes from Bendigo Woollen Mills. They will send you out a colour chart and they also have big sales so that is when Mum and I get our cotton. It is beautiful quality.

In the e book I talked about choosing things to make that your recipient will love. I find men the hardest.
My uncle likes natural products, things without chemicals, natural cleaning products... stuff like that. He is also big on cleaning. So I made him wash cloths and dish cloths and added natural bamboo cleaning cloths and natural soap. I know he will really like that and yay I have a male present completed!

Knowing the colour schemes of friends and family is how I work out suitable colours for gifts. My daughter Chloe has pale blues in her kitchen...

And then I have the colour schemes of my sister in laws and my Mum and various friends. So I try and make something suitable for each of them. 

Mostly I make stacks of three and tie them up with a ribbon. Some will go with other items like tea towels with crochet edges and some will go into hampers I am making up with all kinds of kitchen things in them. It all adds up and these are really quick to do. And they are great for using up left over cottons as each one is only small and contrast edges use up another left over colour!

These are some of the things I am doing but the things you might work on can be entirely different, things suited to your skills and talents, and that was what the  ebook covered.

If you would like to join in on some of the projects as we lead up to Christmas and treat it as a challenge, watch out in op shops etc for an old Christmas tree. a couple of projects are going to use old Christmas trees. I bought a new tree in a box for $4 as the box was damaged. I found this in the January sales... and I have big plans for this $4 tree. Also in the lead up to last Christmas I saw several trees in boxes thrown out on the side of the road as well as in op shops. So grab one if you see one!

I hope you are having a wonderful weekend. Today is lovely, sunny and I have a lovely day to look forward to! xxx