Creativity

There is nothing quite like the feeling of being creative!!!  One of the reasons that I make, do, and create stems from a long-standing family Tradition.

My father's family decided about 10+ years ago that instead of drawing names and buying gifts we would MAKE our gifts.  This has been an amazing journey for what is already an amazing family.  One of my counsins put it perfectly when she said that it is really incredible to see what each individual comes up with.   Not to toot our own horns, but we are a pretty "crafty" bunch.  We have seen many different handmade gifts given and received through the years, there have been group favorites, repeat items and planned exchanges to get a favorite handmade item made by that one individual.  The gifts range from bird houses, blankets, pillows, clocks, shelves, shoe racks, oil paintings, pencil drawings, decorative tiles, cookies, tables, chalkboards, clipboards, baseball bats, wall hangings, quilt racks, candles, aprons, duct tape wallets and potatoe canons to name just a few.

This year I have my Uncle Lee and I will not reveal the gift that I have made for him, but I will say that this wonderful tradition makes each of us require the need to know our family members even better to get the creative edge in order that our gift will be something they will treasure forever.

Thank you to Nancy for suggesting this idea so many many years ago!  You are a gem!

Charm Bracelets with Special Meaning!

As I mentioned in a past blog post, my mother-in-law Nancy is a romance novelist.  As with most writers, she has a close group of "writer-friends" that she uses as editors and/or critics and vice versa.  This Christmas season, she asked me to help her find special charms for each of her writer friends specific genres to incorporate into a bracelet for each.  She also wanted to use charms that represented her own recent set of books.  We used several different colors of beads, some found from my bead-stash and others purchased, and used a stretchy, fits-most wrists easily, thread for stringing.  Some of the charms were Werewolf paw prints, handcuffs, handguns, hearts, books titled "romance novels", typewriters, Egyptian themed charms, horses, horseshoes, fairies, dragons, and almost anything else you could imagine.  Many of the charms Nancy was able to special order from Chubby Chico Charms!

The gifts were presented to each friend and were much loved!