Handmade Christmas gifts

Seriously... is Christmas less than two weeks away already??? How did that happen? This time of year is so crazy for us anyway as we have a lot of family birthdays crammed into the Holiday madness as well. My poor oldest is that kid who gets ripped off in the party category because his birthday falls smack in the middle of December! I fully intended to do a party this year... then I blinked and his birthday is in two days. The best I will be able to rustle up is Angry Bird cake pops for his pre-school class. Boo!

But  I have been busy at work with hand made Christmas gifts for almost everyone on my list! I am hoping to share at least a couple of them this week! The first is part of the gift for my son's preschool teacher. Since I am new to the whole "school" thing I don't know what people normally do for teachers. But we just love both of his teachers this year. They are so sweet and have made his transition from home all the time to part time school so enjoyable for him! I wanted to do something different than just a treat basket. (My usual stand-by gift). It started with a pin... of course.

Source: stamp48.com via Lori on Pinterest

I wanted to try something similar to this. To be perfectly honest; I got a little too ambitious and it didn't turn out exactly like I had in mind. Once again, I leapt into a project without thinking through all of the details. I think it cam out ok though.

I started with some inexpensive knit fabric from JoAnne. I got four yards and was thinking I could do the teacher gifts plus some for friends as well. And here is where I messed up. Instead of reading the instructions closely to realize I should have used two yards for the length. I figured the width of the fabric (58") would be fine. It is ok, but if you do one I recommend using the 2 yd length instead. I ended up using exactly 1/2 yard of fabric per scarf.

I found a quote about teaching I liked and used a Tee Juice marker (also found at JoAnne) to do the writing. I wrote it out in cursive and then sewed a little pom pom trim onto the ends of the scarf.

Here is the finished product.

Our newest family member trying to check it out. Please also ignore my insanely dirty floors!

I tried it on, but only got an iPhone picture of that. You can see that it is too short to loop all the way around, but I think it still works. 

Let me know what you think. What kind of DIY gifts are you all working on?? Seriously... I need some more ideas! :)