3, 4, and 5 - and gift ideas for the females in your life

Time goes by so fast during advent - I'm really loving this season. But my advent schedule has suffered due to my car breaking down. I wasn't able to get t-shirts to paint on Saturday - and because I hvae really nice parents whom lend me their car- I now have them and we can get this activity done.

angel wings

But I had to change up Saturday, Sunday and Monday - I moved Monday's activity to Saturday - looking for old toys to give to the nieces and nephews of my au pair. My au pair really like to tidy - and she has tidied all the girls' toys - mixing all the toys, putting all the small pieces together, all the pet shops, my little pony, Barbies - into one big box, because after all their small pieces.... (can you hear the irony here?) So I started to tidy out the girls' toys Saturday, throwing away broken toys and we all found toys we could give away - we'll send them off on Monday.

home made clothing labels for the seamstress friend - tutorial found here: See Kate Sew

Then on Sunday we didn't go to visit the old aunt. She's in the hospital now, and we'll have to wait and see what happens to her. Instead we had a making-cookies swap with three of my cousins. One of cousins has a daughter the same age as my girls. We all brought one sort of dough with us, made them together and divided the cookies - so we now have for different sorts of cookies. Here in Norway the old tradition says we have to have seven different sorts - only three to go!

and why not make a binder full of free patterns for your creative friend.

Yesterday we called grandma in New York. The girls haven't seen her for four years, and they don't call her much because they don't really know her, but I know she is so happy when we call, and I thought this would be a nice way to think of someone else for their advent. And she was happy. She had just received our Christmas gift last week - a 2012 table calendar with lots of pictures of the girls.

owl banner

Today we're back at our schedule, I've cut out hearts for the girls to sew - they are so excited about using the sewing machine...

gadget charger pouch

I've taken the day off to work on a paper I have to write for my school - ten pages by tomorrow on how to improve my students ability to write papers....I started this morning... procrastination - I know your name!

bag organizer

I keep wondering what I'm going to give the females in my life for Christmas - I'm a single parent so my gift budget isn't very big and I want to be able to make some homemade gifts. The pictures in this post are some of the things I'm thinking I can make for my girl friends, cousins, s-i-l and co-workers.

cowls

Hope you'll have a nice day - and if you have any good ideas for girl friend's gifts, let me know