Angry Birds, Scooter, and Radioactivity

Thanks to a brilliant suggestion from Kim, a new Mayfield tradition emerged this year!

There hasn't been any formal 'gift swapping' that has happened each year in our family.  We exploded into such a huge number of family members that it always seemed overwhelming to do an organized swap of any kind.  BUT Kim's family does a Cousin's Gift Swap and it has worked well, so she tossed out the idea for our family.  The stipulation which made it a SURE winner was... the gifts would be handmade!  Meaning the names of each cousin were randomly drawn by another cousin and the gift that would result would be created by that cousin.  My kids flipped over this idea!  The thing that makes it darling is that the cousins' ages range from 18 to just under 2 years.  So the creation processes were so varied and just down right genius.

Our kids were finishing up school until the 23rd.  So we gathered all our supplies earlier in the week, but they didn't get to actually sit down and start creating till early on Christmas Eve.  It ended up being an incredible day of them 3 sitting in the family room all together goofing around and making presents.  It was a blast!

Savannah drew lil' Nate.  He loves to play Angry Birds on his dad's IPad.  Savannah decided to sew him some stuffed Angry Bird Characters.

 We gathered lots of fleece, and she started sewing.

 Here is the first panel of the first bird... RED bird, he does indeed look angry, snicker!

 Done with bird #1.  I must note that Savannah did this all by herself.  I thought I would get to have to help her but her sewing skills are truly superior to mine and she did this solo.

 Her projects were quite labor intensive and the fact that she is still the 'mommy' to a very needy goat, made the job take most of the day.

 The pig was the most hilarious of the 3 characters that she made.  I can't believe I did not get the final shot.  You can go here to see all the tutorials.  Even if you have no desire to make these, please click the link to see the cuteness of the pig... Savannah's turned out perfect.  She also made Yellow Bird.  We all got so silly this day, I can state though that no birds or pigs were injured in the taking of these photos!  Snicker!

 Ty drew Noah's name.  Ty knew that Noah was getting his very own scooter for Christmas from his parents.   Ty also knew that Noah's favorite color was green.  Armed with these two facts, he wanted to make Noah a tshirt.  So Ty searched the internet for a scooter silhouette... literally on about the 17th page of images, he found what he wanted.

 The silhouette could not have looked more like Noah.  And Ty found the perfect font too for the phrase, " I ROCK my scooter!"

We did a freezer paper stencil.  Ty proved to be very stubborn firm in the fact that he didn't need my help!

 And he was right.  He did an amazing job!

 Christian drew Kyle's name.  Christian loves fun tshirts.  His favorite tshirt right now has the biohazard symbol.  So he thought it would be fun to make Kyle a radioactive tshirt and they could be toxic together, grin.

Since all the family and cousins were already here for Christmas Dinner, it was the perfect time to do the swapping.  I just can't explain the fun that ensued!  I wish I had not gotten quite so caught up in the moment to absolutely forget any photos.  But trust me, it was creative, adorable, brilliant, and heartwarming.  The gifts were each and everyone so specifically created for the receiving cousin.  Such an amazing new tradition!