Christmas 2014

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with your families! This time of year sure does go  by fast. We love Christmastime and can’t believe it’s already come and gone. This was Colt’s second Christmas but he was only a month old last year, so it was fun to see him unwrap presents and play with all his new gifts from his wonderful grandparents this year. We spent Christmas Eve up in Julian and then attended a candlelight service at our church, followed by dinner and fellowship with family. This Christmas I decided to hand-make most of our gifts, for a few reasons – we really try hard to avoid consumerism and the accumulation of “stuff” that we don’t really need, we also love to buy local and avoid anything made overseas, and lastly we wanted to save some money while still gifting something meaningful to those we love. I included a few photos of the gift boxes we gave, which included handmade lotion bars, handmade lavender candles, handmade chili lime sea salt, homemade aftershave, local honey and a few other goodies. It was fun to create! Deven and I also made gifts for each other, and Colt’s presents (from us, anyway!) were 100% re-gifted. Haha! We just wrapped up toys he already had, but we got a kick out of seeing him shred the paper to find out what was inside. We are so thankful for everything God has brought our way, this year and throughout all of our years.

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Christmas has never been so special.

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Handmade gifts for family.

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If you’re interested, here is the DIY  recipe I found for the handmade aftershave (link).

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Happy New Year to you and yours!