Tag Archives: Christmas

Last Minute Handmade Christmas Gifts

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Crafters and knitters go all out this time of year. Oh what fun it is to make a Christmas stocking from a pattern. Yarn mills and spinneries sell Christmas stocking patterns for $4 online (or you can buy the kit for $20.) But for some of us, it might be too late. The hands on the clock have ticked past, and we can no longer enjoy the luxury of plenty-of-time-to-prepare; instead we must resort to what I call last minute “Christmas Eve Crafting.”

 

 

Martha Stewart’s site has a great idea for a last minute handmade gift. Fill organza sachets with herbs such as lavender, tansy, wormwood, cedar, patchouli, rosemary, cinnamon, or cloves to repel moths. These sachets are a sweet-smelling alternative to your grandmother’s chemical smelling mothballs. They are pretty easy to make. Just buy the organza squares and decorative ribbon from a Joann Fabric Store and dried lavender from a flower store.

Another idea comes from a mother and creative designer in Charlotte, NC. She blogs about this great last minute handmade gift idea.

DIY family photo magnets. Get your magnets from Hobby Lobby and follow this blogger’s tutorial. All you need is photo paper, chipboard from the back of a notebook, rubber cement, and a white marker. Such a personal and inexpensive gift for your family and friends!

Our favorite last-minute ideas are Christmas ecards. A life szver if you forgot to send a printed card to someone. Frankly, I save myself time and effort and send all my friends and my family members a fun or a heartfelt ecard with a personal message from me to them.

Our Sexy Fruitcakes ecard makes light of that time old culinary Christmas gift – the fruitcake. Whether you hate the taste of them or love them, fruitcakes get a bad rap. Lucky for us, The Food Network’s Alton Brown gives the fruitcake a makeover with an updated recipe finally allowing the fruitcake to, in the words of Justin Timberlake, bring sexy back.

Christmas ecards are the ultimate last minute gift. We hope Doozy helps you this Christmas Eve Eve so that you remember everyone on your list.

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Weather Forecast: Snow?

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Christmas is less than five days away. What’s your weather forecast?

 I recently watched Irving Berlin’s White Christmas On-Demand. I love the lyrics to the  song, Snow, that Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Danny Kaye, and Vera Ellen sing on the  train from L.A. to Vermont. The lyrics go:

“I’ll soon be there with snow
I’ll wash my hair with snow
And with a spade of snow
I’ll build a man that’s made of snow”

The show business foursome leaves the palm trees of Southern California for the snowy scapes near a New England Inn. According to the Chicago Tribune, “A white Christmas, as defined by the National Climatic Data Center, is one with an inch or more of snow on the ground at 6 a.m.”

The places in the U.S. with the highest probability for White Christmas each year are two cities in Michigan (Marquette and Sault Ste Marie), two in Minnesota (Hibbing and International Falls), and one in Washington (Stampede Pass.)

 

 

 

Chicago has a 40% chance of White Christmas each year. New York has a 10% probability. And Los Angeles is 0%. So think of us this holiday season when you send Christmas ecards. We’re warm here in the balmy weather of Southern California busy making gifts; instead of the toys Santa makes in the snowy North Pole, we’re making Christmas ecards!

 

 





				

				
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A Christmas Carol vs. The Nutcracker

			
						

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Families across the country journey to local, regional, and national theaters to watch these traditional shows that are synonymous with the season. It seems to me that people can be divided into two camps: A Christmas Carol People and The Nutcracker People. There is of course the rare breed of species that is on the fence. If you are someone like that, please find below my arguments for each, and let me know what you decide!


Case for A Christmas Carol.


Supporting fact #1:


There’s a whole literary following of the Dickensian style. You know – Victorian England, British accents, poor working conditions and miserly bosses. Going to see A Christmas Carol sends a message to the world: “I am literary. I love words and fine writing.”


Supporting fact #2:


You will probably leave the theater with a good moral learned. The themes of regret, guilt, greed, and gratefulness will permeate any theatre-goer’s mind and even leave a few of us crying with tears of recognition. Spectating A Christmas Carol can make you a better person.


Supporting fact #3:


The ghost of Morley is downright scary! This is a much bigger thrill than seeing a horror movie at the cinema.


*If you find yourself in the A Christmas Carol People camp, consider your gifting style to fall into this category of Christmas ecards:




Case for The Nutcracker.


Supporting fact #1:


Dancers are athletes as well as artists and watching ballerinas do their thing is awe-inspiring. Here. This video will explain what I’m talking about. When you watch a good ballerina perform, and you see the holes in the shoes and the muscles working to their capacity, you feel so much respect for the art.


Supporting fact #2:


Silence. Unlike, A Christmas Carol, there are no lines of dialogue in The Nutcracker. Simply, sit back, meditate and watch the dreamlike sugar plums grand jete their way across the stage in silence to the melodic sounds of Tchaikovsky.


Supporting fact #3:


Be a kid again and romanticise that you, in a way, are Clara being courted by your own prince!


*If you find yourself in The Nutcracker People camp, consider your gifting style to fall into this category of Christmas ecards:




				

				
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Tis the Seasons for Greetings!

			
						

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We’ve been working the elves since early November and now we’re excited about our 15 New Christmas and Seasonal Cards that now appear on the site. Our workshop is still open, however, and we will present a few more new Christmas ecards in the next few days. Our Winter holiday ecards this year cover two types of greetings for the occasions. Our newer line of elegant imagery coupled with mature, heartfelt sentiments expands this season with egreetings that capture the essence of what makes Christmas special to us and which we share with our families. Of course, with our name as “Doozy” we couldn’t leave humor aside. This year our animation spoofs the “Nutcracker” ballet, expose why Santa’s reindeer fly (warning: beautifully inappropriate humor here), and watch how snowmen heat themselves.


Our Doozy classic best sellers are back too. You just can’t beat a Rapping Rudolph… I know I’d pay just to hear Santa exclaim, “Let’s get jiggy!” So please take a minute to have fun perusing the cards, find one that makes you laugh or touches you, and let a friend in on it by sending the greetings you like best. I’m sure they will appreciate your thinking to send them an entertaining animation.


 


				

				
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