Merry Faux Christmas...

We've clocked our first major Christmas celebration of the year. Every second year my parents host 'faux christmas' so that people don't have to try and negotiate multiple gatherings on actual Christmas day. 'Faux Christmas' is fairly traditional in format, with turkey, gifts and general over indulgence, the only difference being it is held a week early.

Minty's 'moulin rouge' christmas skirt got its first airing - though it was too cold to wear the singlet I had made to go with it. The silk gives it a lovely three dimensional ballooning. It's a little hard to see the tulle ruffles in these photos, but they do add an extra element of fun. I think this may well be my favourite project of the year. I'm in love and a little sad that this would likely look comic in an adult size!

Here I am with baby Lilly in her nurture sling (bless!). I kidnapped her and rocked her to sleep in the sling so that her mum and dad could relax and open their gifts. If you have any new mums or bubs on your Christmas list who you are looking for gift ideas for I can't recommend this sling highly enough. You can even get a gift voucher on their website so that the lucky recipient can choose their favourite colour and size. And it's a small family run operation so you can feel good about buying handmade. (I'm not getting any kickback to plug these - I have just loved using mine with both my kids and now with baby Lilly too!)

And while we are on the topic of presents…

I'm going to talk about some of the gifts I made in this post, so if you will be attending 'real christmas' please stop reading now. There will be some spoilers. If you insist on continuing to read please commit to pretending to be surprised on Christmas day. I've held off as long as I could but frankly I'm beginning to struggle with relevancy in this space seeing as I haven't been able to talk about anything I've been working on, and by the time Christmas is over I will probably be too over it to bother posting about any of it. If you are (god forbid) still searching for some handmade gift ideas there is still time to whip up some of these, so I hope you find this wrap up useful…

STOP READING NOW IF I AM SEEING YOU AT CHRISTMAS…

YES YOU…

GOODBYE!

Ok here goes…

First stop - ruffle butt onsies. I loosely followed this tutorial. The fabric is Amy Butler.

And because I am mildly obsessed with gathering fabric and ruffles this year (in case you hadn't noticed) - here are some gathered clutches come pencil cases for the glamorous scholarly types in my life, of whom there seem to be quite. They have card holders inside, useful for a library card, photocopy card, or ID swipe card (or of course credit card if one is using it as a clutch). The fabric is liberty, on linen, lined with some cake rock beach and red dots from my stash. You can find a tutorial for these here.

Reversible liberty headband for new mum who may or may not need to glam up neglected hair! Find tutorial for these here.

Precious liberty silk scarf for my equally lovely mum. I must say I wanted to keep this for myself! Instructions on how much fabric you'll need etc found here.

Boxes of yummies including, peppermint bark, pistachio and cranberry chocolate squares, and chocolate dipped shortbread (I love this recipe). Cute reindeer and silver Christmas trees found here (such a fun shop!) I really want to get myself some of these red pixies for next year!!

And an ultimate inventor's box for my nephew - containing inspirational schematic drawings, all sorts of tools, and construction bits and bobs, safety goggles and a book to draw his wild imaginings in. Basically I was hoping to put together a starting point for all kinds of creative play.

That's it for tonight - lots more handmade gifts to share in the next couple of days…