Day Two: Stockings

Jon and I tend to be last minute gift people. We are those people who spend the time between a wedding and the reception buying and wrapping the gift. In fact, I've wrapped at least two gifts on the hood of my car while standing in the shopping center parking lot. When it comes to Christmas, we are no different. Because we are never home for Christmas, we usually celebrate our own Christmas sometime after December 25. Which means, in our world, that we also shop after December 25. Once we have gifts for each other, we usually discover that we have no wrapping paper (because, let's be honest, to wrap our gifts for our extended family, we bummed wrapping paper off whoever we spent Christmas with). We have given a number of gifts to each other wrapped in newspaper (which is often hard to find at our house, since we don't subscribe to a paper) or "wrapped" in the bag the gift came in or "wrapped" in a gift bag that we received a wedding gift in. When we do have wrapping paper, it is not unusual to discover that we don't have tape. And if we do have tape and wrapping paper, you can bet we don't have any bows or ribbons. That's just the way we roll.

Until this year.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Jon and Julianne Gilchrist are finally growing up. This past weekend we crossed all but one gift off of our list for our extended families. And I even bought some of Jon's stocking stuffer gifts. AND a birthday present for Jon--a whole 5 days before his birthday.

But bigger than that is this: we have, at our house, this very moment...wrapping paper, ribbon, and tape. True story. And I have already begun wrapping gifts.

Here's proof....

But the real point of this post is this:

While we were shopping, we went to a fabric store. And I bought fun Christmas fabric to make us each our own stocking! Jon was ever so patient and didn't even balk when he heard the total at the register (if these work, they will be more pricey than our current dollar store stockings...if they don't work...well...we've paid for me to develop a hobby?). So now, I am beginning the project of making quilted stockings for the three of us. Without a pattern. I know what I want them to look like. And I have made a quilt before. But I have never had to deal with anything that wasn't square...so we'll see if they end up looking more like an "L" than a stocking. I will keep you posted as I progress. So far, the fabric has been washed. Step one is done!