Our family strives to keep gifts at Christmas simple and meaningful. Last year each child received one homemade gift and a book from us. As our family grows, both our immediate and extended family, as well as our circle of friends I've had to find a balance between my desire to have a handmade Christmas, my hope of blessing family and friends with meaningful gifts and the reality that time is limited, especially with three little children.
I came to a point, just recently, where I realized that I couldn't accomplish what I set out to do for our handmade Christmas this year. So I chose to scale back and delegate my husband to purchase some gifts for certain family members. They won't be handmade by me but they will still be meaningful, environmentally friendly and perhaps handmade by someone else.
It can be easy to get caught up in making a handmade Christmas so much so that there is little time left to actually enter into the quiet reflection of Advent and the celebration of Christmas. This year I truly want to experience this special time with my family. Of course there will still be plenty of knitting, sewing, baking and perhaps even some needle felting, but finding balance is what I want to do.
This post is being shared with Yarn Along and KCCO.
It looks great! It is hard to find that balance sometimes isn't it? We are very lucky in that we have a very small list of people we exchange gifts with so it makes a handmade Christmas much easier to accomplish.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful sweater!
ReplyDeleteSo true, what you say about handmade. It seems no matter what we do, Christmas can often lead back to hurrying about and feeling stressed! We all have to reach a point where we draw a line for ourselves, and maybe buy someone else's handmade goodness for gifts instead of giving our own. :)
It is looking fantabulous! I had to do the same. I was so stubborn and really wanted to make baby booties for my nephew..but I kept trying and trying and had to give up. I couldn't do the techniques in the pattern I was trying to do. So I decided to give up and just do what I can and maybe try new knitting skills when there isn't a deadline.
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