gifts for kids this year

I had really wanted (and meant) to post our homemade gift ideas this fall. Trouble is, fall always turns out to be waaaay busier than I anticipate. :/
And then our December.  Oh, our December this year was insane.
So here we are already, after Christmas... and after New Years!
So better late than never, here are the handful of gifts we put together this year...

Kids Gifts up first:

If you're looking for more ideas, I did post all of our kids' gifts last year and the year before that we made the ABC books for a couple of kiddos, found in this post.

This year some newbies were...

Dream Pillows... I did make Sawyer one of these last year (seen in the post linked above) and it is still one of his favorite things. It was the kids' idea to make some for their cousins this year. We made a couple of moons; a couple of kitties, an owl and a heart. We also added good dream/sleep herbs to the stuffing.  For most of the cousins, we matched them up to new pj's or bathrobes... outerspace jammies w/ the moon pillow, owl jammies w/ the owl pillow, etc.

Basic tutorial for pillows here.

Laptop Chalkboard...
My sister really likes "green", "natural" and imaginative toys so I was trying to come up with an idea along those lines. This is what we turned out:

Two boards, hinged together, I chalkboard painted a "screen" and vinyl cut a "keyboard" with my Silhouette. Ryan routed (routered??) out a touchpad shaped recess to hold chalk and a little sponge eraser. They're also Mac fans, so we added a little apple emblem as well. ;)

Car Caddy Bundle...

I whipped this up in about an hour with all leftover materials... and bought a few new matchbox cars to add to it.  I perused a few 'roll-up car mats' online for ideas and then went from there and just winged my own version with the fabric I had: 

 



Perfect to throw in a diaper bag or purse for waiting at the dr's office or in a restaurant, etc.
There are plenty of tutorials to go off of if you search for a roll-up car caddy! ;)


Part Two: Gifts for the Grown-Ups up next!