christmas "I need to make something handmade for everyone" disease

    Every year for christmas I have this overwhelming urge to make something for everyone I know as a gift. Every year I say to myself - "self, not this year - it's so much easier to buy stuff and you won't be stressed out".
At least for my immediate family I have gotten over it and buy stuff - we are wrapping gift cards creatively with poems included so that is my creative outlet for them, but I digress.
   So I did start out saying keep it simple and then started perusing all the different web sites for crafts and I started on twitter where there are all sorts of ideas coming to light daily and then lo and behold - I suddenly had a list of things I wanted to make. Since I am not super human, have a real job and like to sleep - I ended up making just 2 projects - but of course had to make a dozen or more of at least one of them.

For some reason I missed out on the whole mug rug
craze of the last couple of years, so I started in on
my scraps and had fun practicing machine quilting on
these. If you haven't made mug rugs before - you must! They are a quick fun gift or make some for yourself - I now have 2 at home and one on my desk, a great way to use up scraps.

for your phone and earphones

 Now these below are re-usable snack bags and once you get the first couple made, are fast,fun and addictive. They are lined and have velcro (make sure you get the kind with no glue so you don't gunk up your machine) on the whole top of the inside so they close nice and secure.

for your snacks

for your hockey pucks

for your dog treats

for more dog treats:):)

for your golf balls

magoo loves his treats!

the tutorial for these snack bags is here if you want to try some. If your purse or bag is like mine - you need about 5 or these just for your bag to organized. 

So that's what I've been up to the last couple of weeks - now I am going back to my real passion of making art quilts. I am going try to blog in an art quilt blog every friday and call it "freestyle fridays". I want to try something different each week and post the results - be it good or bad. Well if it's really bad it probablly won't see the light of day:)

I thought it would be a good challenge for me and I just hope I can come up with something every week. If not - oh well - but I will give it my best shot.

go to http://theartquiltblog.blogspot.com/ next friday to see my first freestyle friday quilt

(I have started it but I'm not tellin' what it is:-)