So this year, I ended up making a few hand-made gifts. My favorite are these:

(see tutorial here) They went to my sister and her family. Plus Peter got a practice one. I made this board for my brother’s wedding:

It was a lot of fun to do. I went on a walk and took all the pictures of the letters, and then found house numbers for the date. It then went together with a lot of photo-editing and mod podge.  Finally was this grocery bag holder for my mom:

(see tutorial here) That project plus sewing lots of skirts for my brother’s wedding was too much on my poor sewing machine. Now the sewing machine not only has the previous problem of a mis-aligned needle, but the tension is very off. I need a machine repair–but it’ll wait until Georgia.