Lining 'Em Up

I am finally getting myself together and will be packing up some gifts to bring to the post office tomorrow. Yay! I'm not done, don't think I'm that on top of things. Of course Hanukkah's been over for how many days now? I'm trying to ignore that and just go with the whole "holiday season" thing (which I am normally totally against because, let's face, when most-not all- people say "holidays" they really mean Christmas-but we're not going to get into that right now). Anyways, here's a quick look at some of my presents so far. Most of my friends and family peeps are getting some combination of what you see here.

Number one: little notebooks. These were totally inspired by this post by Amy. They were so super easy to make, it was ridiculous. I bought this paper at Paper Source and totally wish that they had more of a variety of this printed kraft paper than these three designs. But hey, I think these turned out pretty cute. I think I'll have to keep a stash of these on hand from now on for last minute gifts.

Number two: Hot Cocoa Mix. I stole this recipe from Martha (find it here), and modified it a little by adding 1 tablespoon of cinnamon and 1 tablespoon of cardamom. Love it. It would also be good spiked with some creme de menthe.

Number three: quilted potholders. Thanks to Hannah for this idea. These are basically just large coasters, so it wasn't anything too amazingly new, but fun nonetheless. As Melissa says, these are all about the fabric (do you not just die over these itty bitty houses?!).

Finally, I made a mix CD with custom made CD sleeves (they're the same printed paper as the mini notebooks above-I'll show photos later). I used a lot of the music I've bought recently and included lots of local bands that I've come to know (not personally) and love over the last year since moving to Minneapolis. Here are the artists I included: nada surf, feist, love-cars, st. vincent, iron and wine, ice palace, mirah, yo la tengo, rilo kiley, the decemberists, travis, low, tortoise, sparklehorse, mason jennings, that dog. If you like any of the artists I just mentioned and haven't heard of others (most likely the local mpls ones), I highly recommend checking them out, this mix is on very heavy rotation over here. I haven't put together a mix in a long time and I had so much fun with this one-I picked out all the songs and then Jared helped me put them all in order. I did have to talk him out of doing this is in some fancy audio engineering program and crossfading (blah blah blah) between all the songs. Yeah, we're keeping it simple.

I hope I'm not giving too much away to people who may be receiving these gifts... There's still more to come, including the baking that will get underway tonight. It's been really fun putting this all together, and (as you can tell from the links above) I've tried out some fun new projects that were totally inspired by many of you out there in blogland, so thanks!

Also-the shop is now updated with many many new items. There are still a few more that I'm hoping to get up there tonight or tomorrow. I've got lots of new items, so please head on over there to see what's available. I'm happy to do gift shipping if it's a present and if you need this by Christmas, let me know and I'll do my very very best to get it there in time. Thanks!