This weekend we had our Rio Rain Christmas party... I know, a little late! But we just couldn't find a time before Christmas to get everyone together at a decent hour.
The party was awesome! The manager invited us all over to her place for a meal and gift exchange. She hired some local cooks to prepare an amazing meal of locally inspired dishes and let me tell you, it was phenomenal!
I tried very hard this Christmas to make my gifts as green as possible and I was even more aware of this for the Rio Rain party as it is an eco-friendly store, afterall.
So, it was a couples thing and we were supposed to have a guy gift and a girl gift. My wonderful better half was working on a gorgeous wooden box that we were going to fill with manly things... but at the last minute it didn't come together quick enough so I had to scramble. I ended up getting a cookbook from Ten Thousand Villages. It's called "More With Less" and it's similar in its goal to the other cookbook I have from there (see my previous post about
Recipes from around the World) in that it tries to give recipes that help us reduce the excessive amount of food we consume in the West so that the rest of the world can have enough. More with Less is a great cookbook - full of homemade recipes. So I included a copy of the cookbook and then I made two of the snack recipes - some chocolate-chip oatmeal cookies and some cinamon-topped muffins.
I made little origami boxes out of parchment paper and wax paper to wrap them in. The cookies were funny because they called for peanut butter in the recipe, but we don't have any in our house because the kids can't eat it and close friends of ours have a son who is very allergic to peanuts. So I usually use sunflower seed butter instead. Little did I know that when sunflower seeds and baking soda/powder are combined, they turn green! So the whole batch of cookies ended up green! I looked it up online and discovered the route of the green and apparently it's not dangerous at all so I just left them like that. Now I know what to use come St Patrick's Day!
My girl gift was my special project. We have had these really cute kids shirts in the store that have a rock-paper-scissors motif on them (they're made by Fig clothing) and all of the girls were complaining that we didn't get them in adult sizes! So I bought one and chopped out the motif and used it to adorn a skirt-bag.
A friend of mine from
Metro told me how to make a bag (purse) out of a lined skirt. It is very simple -
1. Measure from the waist down and determine how deep you want your bag to be. Then leave half an inch or so for seam allowance and cut a straight line across the bottom of the skirt. Save the scraps!
2. Trim the bottom corners so that they are a little more curved.
3. Turn the skirt inside out, pull the lining up and out of the way and then sew the bottom edge. I usually do a couple of runs on this to make it nice and strong.
4. Do the same thing with the lining, but leave a few inches un-sewn so that you can turn it the right side out.
5. Turn right side out, pulling the main body of the bag through the hole in the lining. Stitch up the hole by hand.
6. Using your off-cut from the bottom of the skirt, make two straps for the handles. Take the cut-off piece and cut it in half so you have two equally wide loops. Cut along the side-seam to make two strips of fabric. Fold the strips, right sides facing, and sew a seam down the length. Turn the strip inside out and fold the rough ends in, sew a seam to secure. Iron flat.
7. Attach the straps to the bag. Because the lining is already attached, I usually just sew them to the inside of the bag, with a square of stitching to secure them in place.
Ta-da! You're done!
For this bag, I used a skirt I bought for $1.69 from the Salvation Army. It was fully lined and had these cool little pockets on the front that made really cute pockets for the bag. I also used the collar from the kids shirt I took the motif from to make the stripe detail on the handles (I just ripped the stitches joining the collar to the shirt, cut the collar in half lengthwise and at the seam to make two strips.). You can't really tell from this photo, but I used a contrasting robins-egg blue thread throughout the bag and I found this fabulous button to match (also from Salvation Army!). The orange loop for the button was just leftover fabric from the t-shirt.
I also made a little "gratitude wrap" to go with this gift. It is just a little fabric pouch with
pockets for cards, envelopes and stamps so you can keep all your "thank-you" supplies in one place. I got the idea from the fabulous
Soule Mama website. I tried to follow her VERY SIMPLE PDF instructions but went HORRIBLY wrong!! Seriously...
I was thoroughly disgusted with myself but Mr Joyful made me pounce right back on that horse and try again. I'm glad he made me! The second time, I didn't bother with the batting in the middle and I changed the construction and fastenings... just kinda made it my own and I was much happier with the results!
I even used the leftover scraps from the pockets to make matching cards.
Finally, just to give all the gifts a little touch of eco-chic, I also made furoshiki fabric wraps to wrap up the gifts. I had read about them online somewhere and I thought they were a great idea... squares of fabric that you use as gift wrap but unlike paper, they can be used over and over for years to come. So I made a furoshiki for each gift and included a little write-up on what they were and how they could be tied.
The larger, black and silver square was made from a scarf I found at a garage sale. I lined it with some leftover black fabric to give it a little more weight so it could be re-used more (it was quite delicate otherwise). The beige fabric started life as fabric that I used to make a dress. The dress was horrible, so I re-used the fabric to make cushion covers, but they were too slippy on our leather sofas so here it is again... and it's perfect for the furoshiki!
I had a lot of fun crafting each of these gifts (and wraps!). They were all made mainly from recycled or re-purposed materials and they were unique... you definitely can't find this kind of stuff in the mall! We had an amazing time at the party... those people are a lot of fun to hang out with - a really great bunch of people. I am blessed indeed!
