Christmas 2016

I promised a quick Christmas post. This year was a bit more quiet than many previous years. I hardly saw anyone. My Christmas party only had 5 guests who could make it, Christmas dinner with my Mom got cancelled at the last minute due to weather, and my Dad had to work through the holidays.

In addition to all this, I was once again suuuuper broke this year. My job at the upholstery job barely had me employed for half the year, and I only did a handful of clock repair jobs. I've been just barely managing, but I'm going to have to go job hunting again. This all sounds rather sad, but I did have a nice time through the holidays. :D

I decorated for Christmas, but not quite as much as a few years ago. I used a "new" wreath for the front door this year. This is a wreath that my Mom donated to me several years ago and that I had never used. It's a beautiful wreath, but it has an odd mix of colours (silver and orange) which doesn't really pair well with most of my other traditional red and green Christmas things. HOWEVER, it does look great on the new front door.





The tree looks the same as the past few years, and I'm still loving the bow toppers. The mint green living room always looks great during the holidays.



The dining room ready for the annual Christmas Dinner Party. This year I made boeuf bourgignon again, and my friend Devin also brought a homemade chili. We all had a wonderful time, ate a nice meal, exchanged gifts, and later played Cards Against Humanity.



Here are a few of the handmade gifts I made for friends this year. These are small notebooks (5x7") covered in salvaged leather.



One of the main gifts I made were handmade soaps. These were made with a store-bought glycerin and olive oil "soap base". I would have liked to make soap from scratch, but apparently they take a month to cure before they can be used, so I didn't have enough time for that. The soaps here are Lavender-Chamomile (at the top with the small flowers), Lemon (clear yellowish), and Oatmeal & Honey (unscented).



Everyone also got a personalized Christmas ornament with a hand tooled leather label. I made about 20 of these, and even mailed a few of them out with cards. The hard felt shapes were bought in a pack, and I added the silver rings to them for either a ribbon or a hook.



A last "artsy" shot in the dining room.



I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, and Happy New Year 2017!