Handmade Christmas : Owl Fingerless Gloves

I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas! I sure did - my sweet hubby indulged me with lots of awesome handmade gifts from Etsy, including these adorable grey owl fingerless gloves which were a custom request from Coco and Cocoa! I love them so much - I even wear them inside the house :)

I am excited to see that they are available in the shop now so I can share them with you!! Gloves are handmade to order so you can get them in your favorite color.

I have always loved Julie's cable knit owl hats with vintage button eyes - I've written about them before - and when I saw the new fingerless gloves she's been making recently, I thought they would be so cute with the owls on them too. Well, aren't they??

What were your favorite gifts this year?

DIY Raspberry Lemon Sugar Scrub - Handmade Bridesmaid Gift Idea

Well, I promised you all some more DIY Wedding stuff! I made this delicious homemade raspberry lemon sugar scrub as part of my bridesmaids' gifts goody bags. (I'll be sharing more of those soon as well). It's a beautiful happy color pink, it's moisturizing, and it smells amaaaaaaazing (seriously - good enough to eat)! Oh, and it's super quick and easy to make!

Now of course, it's not strictly wedding related, but it's the reason it came about, so it is to me. I love the idea of using this homemade scrub for any gift giving occasion, and it's definitely great as part of a gift basket (filled with other homemade goodies, of course!) Hostess gifts, baby shower gifts, etc. etc., it's perfect, right??

And if you want to make it extra special, see below for info on etching a monogram right onto the glass jar!

DIY Raspberry Lemon Sugar Scrub

DIY Lemon Butter Lip & Skin Balm in Altoids Tins

This rich Lemon Butter Balm is amazing and extremely versatile. You can use it as a lip balm, cuticle cream, moisturizer for hands, feet, elbows, knees, body, etc. It is deeply moisturizing and will do wonders for your winter dry skin, and it has a lovely subtle scent, which reminds me of honey lemon tea. 

Of course you can play around with the 'flavors' by adding essential oils to the mix. I really only used the lemon extract because I had it on hand and didn't have any lemon essential oil around, which would have made for a stronger scent (you would probably only need several drops instead of 2 tsp of extract).

I poured mine into Altoids tins because I happened to have a giant stash saved up (I used to keep them for jewelry making supplies...back when my stock was small enough to fit in these tiny containers :). Plus I thought they'd be kinda cool and they're the perfect size to stash in your purse!