In the Christmas spirit

Anna: I recently joined a local crafters group's email list. It's a very friendly and active group that gets together IRL (In Real Life) regularly. For Christmas, a bunch of us signed up for an Advent gift exchange. How it works is, the organizer partners up the participants, and we all had to get 24 small gifts (maximum $5 each) and one large gift (maximum $25) to exchange with our partner. I thought it was a really fun idea. Keeping in budget was an interesting challenge. On the one hand, it's really hard to find nice gifts for under $5. On the other, it's amazing what nice gifts you can find for under $5! Of course, being a crafter's group, we were free to make the gifts, too. :-D

Today's gift was a set of giant jingle bell ornaments for the tree. I happened to be sitting with my daughter's cat on my lap, and she thought they were quite interesting. LOL

The blanket under cat and bells is a crochet blanket my younger daughter is making. It's not done yet, but it is more than big enough to sling over my lap. She could have finished it off already, but decided to add another bulk ball of yarn's worth to the border. This cat LOVES the blanket, and immediately climbed onto my lap when I was done covering my legs. I got my older daughter to get this picture for me.