Handmade by Little Hands

We talked a lot about celebrating handmade/homemade holidays during December and many of us showed gifts we made for others. Today I’d like to share some handmade gifts I received from my nieces & nephews (ages 3-10). Each of the oldest nieces & nephew decorated a terracotta pot for me. Most likely my sister found [...]

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My Handmade Holidays

With all my traveling, sewing, soap making and present wrapping, i missed out on participating in much handmade holiday conversation here at Not Dabbling, so my post this week will be a run down of all the projects i worked on this year. Check out An Austin Homestead in the next week or two to [...]

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Personalizing Gift Tags

At our house in Michigan, we’re spending the next few days wrapping and decorating all the gifts we’ll be giving over the next couple of weeks. It seems I just don’t get along with the cost of wrapping paper and gift tags, so instead I try to reuse when possible or use up what I [...]

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Adventures in Jelly Making

When I decided to go local and package-free, one of the things I had to do was learn to make sweets, since I have the sweet tooth to end all sweet tooths (sweet teeth?). This has been a less-than-successful effort. While I’m pretty good with cookies, my quick breads never cook all the way through [...]

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REAL Holidays: Making Fabric Napkins

I learned to sew when I was 15 or 16 years old. My mom bought me a machine (the same one I still use) and I had some basic lessons from the store where the machine came from – more to familiarize you with your new machine that actually teaching you how to sew. I [...]

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A Time to Slow Down

The holidays used to be rush, rush, rush for me. It wasn’t unusual to find me shopping during the last few days before Christmas for last minute gifts. While I wasn’t a devoted enough planner to shop on Black Friday or a good enough procrastinator to wait until Christmas Eve, I was still great at [...]

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Handmade Gifts for a REAL Holiday: Making Cards

The holiday season is upon us. One of the gifts I decided to give my nieces this year is cards. At first I thought I would make them each a stack of personalized “monogrammed” cards. Then I realized that they are at a point (8 and 10 years old) where they like projects and new [...]

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Handmade Concoctions

Sometimes we think that putting up food is all about canning, drying, and freezing. But there are items that compliment our foodstuffs that we can also put up for the lean times of the year. Items like extracts, wines, and vinegars are a few things that many people don’t realize they can make at home [...]

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A bit of dabbling in South Texas

Is this really true?  Pinch me? Am I really writing here with all these other wonderful contributors? What an honor. My husband and I have been living north of San Antonio on the edge of the Hill Country for almost four years. When I arrived here I really wasn’t sure what I was going to [...]

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Shaving Cream Painting

Recently one of our autumn projects was to make these nifty painted leaves. I found this awesome tutorial via Pinterest, created by Little Wonder Days. We had all of the items available in and around our house and it was completely doable for a 7 year old with minimal guidance, and easy enough for preschool [...]

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