Handmade Christmas..Part 2...Bags, Mouse Doorstops, Ivy Garlands...

Hello! I hope you've all had a wonderful, magical, happy Christmas time - we certainly did in our household :)

My homemade gifts went down quite well, I think, as well as the few shop bought presents I gave as well, so hopefully next year I won't feel so worried about giving things I've made myself.

As well as the LED fairy lights, earrings and coasters I posted about last time, I also sewed some things....

A couple of reusable shopping bags (all made from fabric from my stash and an old men's shirt bought from the charity shop).

Some mice doorstops, for my mum, these are the most complex things I've ever sewn and I unpicked the seams several (million!) times, but I think they were kind of worth it! Every thing in these are reused, except the eyes, which I bought from a local, independent sewing shop. The fabric is from an old blouse and skirt bought from the charity shop, they're stuffed with some fleece left over from another project, the noses are round beads covered in fabric and I sneaked some gravel off our patio (when mum wasn't looking!) to make them heavy enough to stop doors! I even reused some plastic bags that catalogues and magazines are sent through the post in to contain the gravel before I put it in! See - plastic 'envelopes' are useful for something!!!! the pattern for these is from Sew Hip magazine.

My two best friends and I gave extremely zero waste presents to each other - nothing! We went for a Christmas drink instead!

I also managed to get a photo of the ivy garlands I mentioned before, after the house I volunteer in closed for winter they gave us the ivy ribbons because we worked so hard on them! They've been very beautifully decking our hall (and kitchen) and have just started to wilt after about 2 weeks!

This year we managed to recycle all our Christmas wrapping paper, the council is picking it up with the kerbside recycling. I saved all the foil 'paper' my mum used last year to wrap my presents, and I had enough of that plasticy shiny ribbon to wrap all my presents tightly without sellotape - except three round ones that wouldn't play along! My brother and his girlfriend watched in confusion and amazement as I coordinated a 4 bag system (paper for recycling, foil for reusing, ribbon and tags for reusing and unrecyclable stuff) for collecting and sorting all this wrapping on Christmas morning - they do no recycling in their house (I know!!) and made lots of 'oo we really should start recycling' type noises - I do hope they do!!

We also had no food waste! That isn't unusual in my house (as I usually eat it all!) but seeing as it's Christmas I think it's an achievement! We sent the turkey home with the meat eaters, the left over quorn has gone into the freezer and I ate all of my vegan sausages on the day anyway! The veggies became soup and some of the millions of potatoes fed the birds. We do have a LOT of plastic wrapped snacks hanging around though - I'm not in charge of food shopping and couldn't convince my mum to stop buying them! Maybe next year!