Yes I was thinking

Christmas is a time of giving, but what should you give and who should you buy for? There has been a general trend towards more modest gift giving within my family over the past two years. This suits me down to the ground because I live in a one-bedroom apartment with no space to store large, rarely-used gadgets. One method for making sure you don’t receive too many presents is to announce you’re only giving people homemade gifts this year. This is what I did. Having recently gotten to grips with my mum’s old sewing machine, I had the necessary skills to knock up some simple, functional gifts for all of my family. It took a lot of time but completing the same simple design over and over again has been an ideal way to practice and it also gave me a license to go wild in Hobbycraft. And I’m not going to lie, giving a handmade gift is a great way to show off.

One of the trickier things to manage at Christmas is working out exactly who you are going to buy presents for. We don’t want to waste money buying gifts for anyone we’ve ever said hello to but we also don’t want to be in the dreaded situation of receiving a present from someone you weren’t expecting. The thing is though, if you think back to the last time you gave someone a present and they didn’t get you anything, did you feel hurt and upset or did you perhaps feel mildly smug? Maybe next Christmas relax in the knowledge that if you find yourself in that situation, you’d be giving that person a little gift of temporary superiority. Isn’t that lovely?

I haven’t come off well in this post but if Love Actually taught me anything it’s that at Christmas, you tell the truth.

The pictures are of two things I made as presents this Christmas, a set of three notebooks and a zipped bag. Click the links for tutorials (not by me) on how to make them.