OK, so I'm posting this a little late. On the outside chance that anyone desperately turned to my blog for last-minute holiday advice, they were undoubtedly disappointed. But, better late than never, and these recipes and ideas are applicable next year, St. Patrick's Day, Arbor Day, all those other major holidays.
I began the holiday season short on cash, unemployed, and paranoid. Fortunately, I also like to make stuff. Homemade gifts are thrifty, thoughtful, and fun. First, I decided to make cinnamon dough ornaments. My friend Heather made me a couple last year, and my other friend, Martha (Stewart) reminded me of the recipe:
You'll need only three ingredients: a bunch of cinnamon, applesauce, and white glue, Elmer's or similar. In a bowl, mix together 1 cup of ground cinnamon with 1/4 of a cup of applesauce. Once this is blended (use a spatula or a spoon) add 1/2 of a cup of glue until thoroughly blended, then let sit for one hour. Using a wooden rolling pin and your hands, flatten and roll out the dough on a flat surface. Make the dough however thick or thin you want (it doesn't shrink much) and cut out into desired shapes, making a hole for ribbon or string if you want. Then, you can either air-dry the ornaments for 24 hours, turning every few hours so the edges don't turn up, or you can bake them at 200 degrees for two hours, flipping once. Being an impatient person, I opted for the baking method. It made my house smell nice, but some of my edges did curl a little.
Once the ornaments were dry, I painted them using acrylic paints. This part was the most fun, and reminded me of craft weeks at my hippie elementary and middle school. For the three weeks or so between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we'd drop all schoolwork and be elves, which meant beading, basket-making, embroidery, god's eyes, and other random stuff like leather key chains, salt dough ornament, and like any self-respecting alternative school, lots and lots of tie-dye. Obviously, craft weeks are some of my best school-time memories. When we weren't making spider-web earrings and stealing more than our one-daily-allotted candy cane off of the tree, we were playing hearts and spades, spying on each other, and playing in the snow outside. It was grand. Painting my cinnamon dough ornaments reminded me of listening to stories while quietly working with my hands-- I put This American Life on, and mixed up my paints. My shapes were shooting stars, hearts, elephant and brontosauruses. Once the paint had dried (and I left some blank) I strung different types of ribbon and string through the ornaments, grouping them in pairs.
Another Martha project that was slightly less successful was my foray into soap-making. "Making" is kind of a misnomer, since I melted down clear and white glycerin soaps from the grocery store, scented and dyed them, and re-poured them in layers. The recipe and directions are as follows:
Obtain a bunch of clear and white glycerin soaps, available at natural grocery stores or at craft stores. Melt two cups of each soap at a time, keeping them separate. Stir red food coloring into the clear soap, and peppermint essential oil (careful, this stuff is potent, you probably won't want to use more than a couple drops) into the white soap. Using a loaf pan or baking dish as a mold, pour the soap in alternating layers, so it looks like a candy cane. Let set for at least four hours, when the soap should be ready to pop out of the pan. Then, cut into slabs using a (very) sharp knife. I wrapped my soap in tissue paper, tied it with red and white string, and used little labels.
Now, as I said before, this was only a semi-successful project. The first type of white glycerin soap I bought simply refused to melt. It must not have been pure glycerin, because it became chunky and weird, even when melted in a double-broiler for a long time. I had much better results with a second type of white soap. Also, though, I found that my soap, while effective and nice smelling, turns the washer's hands slightly pink. Um, too much food coloring? Thanks for letting me know, Martha. I dunno, it's not bad, it looks more like a healthy ruddy winter glow, at least in certain lights, so I went ahead and distributed the soaps.
My third project was vegan sugar cookies for my non-butter-eating friends. (Poor souls) I found this awesome recipe online, and was pretty pleased with the results. I also made peanut butter cookies for my grammy using a recipe from a Betty Crocker Cooky Book from the early 60's.
For my niece Maddy and my baby friend Nora, I made felt stuffed animals. Super easy and a lot of fun-- my basic embroidery skills were more than adequate. Maddy's animal was a bunny, as pictured, and Nora's was a penguin inspired by this project, which unfortunately I forgot to get a picture of. I also embroidered the edges of pillowcases for a couple friends, again, easy enough to do while obsessively watching the second season of Big Love.
As far as packaging, this seems like a no-brainer at this point, but it's worth repeating that one does not need to buy wrapping paper, cardboard boxes and the like. OK, so I broke this rule a little bit... I got on-sale tins for the cookies (I didn't want them to get crushed) and I purchased a couple boxes when I ran out of ones big enough. For those which I'd saved, I wrapped them in grocery bags, and used flimsy coupon-type paper as padding and insulation. It also goes without saying that magazine pages make the best wrapping paper ever-- Annie Leibovitz photo shoots and slick ads for vodka make the prettiest packages.
