Another Handmade Christmas

Who doesn't love a handmade gift? Or, perhaps a better question, who doesn't love making homemade gifts? Ok, maybe not all of us, but with Pinterest we can at least imagine right??
I for one have really come to love both. They are personal and sentimental and I get to be creative and artsy-fartsy.
I have wanted to re-do/DIY a play kitchen for Charles for a while now but lack of time or finances or 'that-perfect-entertainment-center-to-turn-into-a-little-kitchen-that-fits-my-imagination-and-small-apartment' have forced me to put it off. Until about four days ago. A good friend of ours found this at a thrift store and being the nice woman she is, thought of us. Thus, the beginning of my last minute DIY project to get done before Christmas morning!

In need of a little work but with not much time to do it in, I decided to simply paint it and change out the knobs for now. So on Christmas Eve I headed to Home Depot, bought some paint and hardware and got to work.

I wont get into the details of the struggle it was at the beginning to get this thing painted but let's just say that my mom came home to see me trying to rock a screaming Lawrence in his car seat with one hand and paint with the other. Needless to say she came home at the right time! 

Here is Charles' face on Christmas morning when he saw his new kitchen. 

Worth it.

Nana and Papa got some pots, pans and dishes too

I am so happy I was finally able to get this for Charles and I know he will have lots of fun with it. Big thanks again to our friend who found it for us, you know who you are :)

Speaking of handmade gifts, here is the quilt my Grandma Betty made for Lawrence. We picked out the fabric together while she was home for Thanksgiving. I love it, it's perfect!

And for the grandparent's gift this year I made shadow profiles of the boys. I love how they turned out!

I am almost done collecting the images of all the letters for my ABC book that I am making for Charles. Originally I had wanted to not only get the letters but also have photos of things to correspond with the letters, you know 'A is for apple, B is for basketball' etc.. However, in the process of all this I realized that it would be kind of hard to get photos of some of the things. Or, it would just take so much longer. I want to have this done to give to him for Christmas. And, it's one of my items on my '29 before 29' list. Henceforth, it will only be a book of letters. OR I might decide to make them into flashcards instead.
We'll see..