Green Christmas

Our goal this year was to make Christmas green. In order to do that we had some major thinking to do about what to get for family or what to make for family. Much of what we did this year was made, or purchased locally. The only thing we had to outsource was the flax seed (more on that later) that had to come from Iowa.

We asked that all our gifts be made, purchased second hand, traded for or internet based. This is the run down of what we got from others.

Mary Jo and Windy gave us some wickedly fun stuff! Jacob and I each got a green to the core scarf hand made, an earth friendly message sweatshirt that was traded for, a fabulous crystal (made by the earth thank you very much!) And an Eckhart Tolle 2 cd The Realization of Being. MJ gave me some great gift tag ideas that I'll post about later!

Jason, Jacob's brother gave us an Amazon gift card that is delivered electronically, no waste! Perfect!

My parents got me a tortilla kit for making home made tortillas! I have wanted to do this for a while now since I make my own bread I thought this would be a good venture to step into. Jacob got several jigsaw puzzles which help distract him during his upcoming surgery and recovery.

For each other we went with 1 want and the rest was home made or needed like gifts. For example Jacob's "want" gift was Tomb Raider Anniversary for Mac. I was a horrible to buy for girl because I couldn't come up with a want gift. I really didn't need or want anything. But I did get a new blanket that I now that I think about desperately needed. I was using 2 skinny wimpy blankets and my robe for a cover at night. Plus 2 new spatulas since mine had wimped out on me. Jacob made me a necklace holder and I made him a photo collage with updated pictures that he could take to work.

A pretty simple Christmas for us.

*Gift Spoilers ahead.... if you haven't gotten your gifts yet*

We made therapy bean bags, pieced together from multiple websites. Our chosen "bean" of bean bag is actually flax seed. Apparently flax keeps it's heat for longer there for less microwaving. We referenced these sites:Sew mama sew and, And sew it is.

Other gifts included the bees wax candles from Tahuya River Apiaries plus votives made by Mary Jo at Raven Rocks Studio. We also gave out our home made suet, see earlier post about how to make that. We also sent out dried fruit (that we dried this summer), cookies, breads and russian tea.

I know there is a ton of links in there, but I wanted to document where we got the ideas from. Thanks to everyone for a wonderful Christmas. Thanks for making it green and homemade with and for us.