Advent Conspiracy Gifts

I posted a while back about our church doing the Advent Conspiracy. While we didn't do a great job of spending less money, Eric and I tried to make our gifts more meaningful this year.  We still bought several gifts but really did give a good college try to make many of our gift receivers feel like we spent more time thinking of them.  Here are a few things we came up with:

Eric made this for the girls:

The stable turned out so cute and the girls love it!

I made this for my sister in law with much appreciated help from Carisa, a very patient and awesome knitter!  (I also knitted some washrags for my sisters and mom like I promised! I'm sure they were thrilled...)



Made the black one for my friend Anna's sister - it's a little scary homemaking something for others, but hey, if I can do it...you definitely can!

 I had my friend, Amy (who can make any idea come to life) make these prayer journals for several members of my family:

My sister in law was selling Bead for Life bracelets which I thought made perfect gifts for the girl's AWANA, preschool and Sunday School teachers!

I think she's still selling them until the end of January if anyone wants a bracelet or necklace for a good cause!

We wrote a Welcome to the 'Boro pamphlet for Eric's brother, who just moved here, humorously highlighting places to go and things to do. (Also got him some chamber bucks to spend so he wouldn't feel totally jipped).

I got my blog made into a book for my Grandma and Grandpa who don't have a computer:

Maybe next year, we'll figure out a way to spend less money and also give meaningful gifts, but I think we got a good start anyway.  I also found it to be even more exciting to give gifts because while we were making some of these things we spent so much time thinking about the people we were gifting to.

I definitely recommend trying the Advent Conspiracy in one form or another. It was fun to get creative for a change!