Handmade Hanukkah

I decided to start a new tradition in our house for Hanukkah this year. This year I plan to give only homemade gifts, most of which I will make myself.

I don't mind how centered around gifts the holidays are these days. It's just a part of our culture that most of us have embraced or learned to accept. I loves me some good holiday shopping! Perhaps a little too much. I know that isn't what the holidays are about and I try to teach Lilly that it isn't all about the presents.

What I don't like is how greedy everyone is. I don't like the toy commercials and other holiday commercials that imply you are a bad parent if you don't get everything on your greedy little kid's list. Maybe it was different fifty years ago when the holidays were the only time of year when kids would get gifts. But these days people are constantly treating their kids to new toys, clothes, or electronics and finding reasons to justify it. When did this become the norm? It's ok to make a list of things you want for the holidays, but demanding you receive everything your heart desires should definitely land you on the naughty list. Remember YOU ARE NOT A BAD PARENT if you don't get everything on your child's list. Besides if you celebrate Christmas, you don't even get the credit for giving the best gifts. That jerk Santa does. He takes all the credit for all the hard earned money YOU spent and all the time YOU took picking out the perfect gifts while he kicks back sipping hot cocoa and stuffing himself with cookies. 

Above: Enormous Snowmen we made on Christmas Eve a few years ago when we were living in Missouri! This is one of my most favorite family memories :)

Lilly is still little and when we give her a sticker or a pencil she freaks out over it and gets so excited! I want to hold on to this as long as possible and to show her how lucky she is to be getting anything at all. Last year we gave her small gifts each night of Hanukkah. One night she got a candy bar. One night some crayons. One night a little Cinderella Polly pocket toy... I know one day she will see the holiday movies and TV shows, and see what her friends at school are getting and wonder why she too didn't get a power wheels Ferrari and her own 50" flat screen TV, which is why I want to start this tradition now.

To kickoff our Handmade Hanukkah I am going to give a handmade gift every night. In the future I imagine it will slowly dwindle down to one or two nights of handmade gifts. I'm hoping that starting when she is so young will be just the beginning of a meaningful tradition that will help spark her creativity as she creates some gifts of her own and helps her appreciate the time and care we put in to the gifts she receives.

Now I happen to be pretty crafty, which will come in handy, but I know not everyone is. Lilly loves the Disney Junior show Sofia the First. Sofia has an amulet necklace she wears and Lilly has been begging me for one! This is the first gift I plan to make for her. Andy and I have also decided to make her a shutterfly type photo book, but instead of just a photo album, we are writing a story about Lilly and using photos and her own drawings for the illustrations. Lilly also asked for a locket, so I am going to make her one. I just started making hair bows so I think one night I'll give her a few of those as well. I haven't come up with an idea for each of the eight nights yet, but I'm working on it!

Above: Sofia the First inspired amulet necklace I made. You can get it from my Etsy shop, the Banana Boutique

I know everyone isn't as crafty, but there are lots of ways you can start your own handmade gifts tradition. Maybe making and framing a photo collage, painting ceramics at a nearby studio (like Hands On Ceramics in Columbia, MO). Perhaps baking something is the way to go. There is always sewing or knitting... And a whole internet out there full of ideas! Craft stores like Michael's even have classes where you can learn to knit, make jewelry, or decorate cakes.

A few years ago we painted a pie plate together as a family for Andy's grandma. She makes the best apple pie! We personalized it and covered it in Lilly's handprints. When we gave it to her for Christmas she opened it and said "Finally! A gift I can keep!" Everyone else was like "Hey you aren't going to keep my gift!?" We knew what she meant though. That this gift was something extra meaningful. If we are going to take these holidays and make them all about gifts, we may as well make those gifts special and meaningful instead of spending tons of money on more junk we don't need.

The "Ilyssa" plate

While my sister was in town we decided to go and paint ceramics. She is the one who re-introduced me to painting ceramics as an adult. I happen to think that the ceramics place we have here, Hands On Ceramics, is way better than the one she goes to on Long Island... It cost less, plus it’s bigger, friendlier and has a more relaxing feel to it.

Since my sister was in town, I decided to paint her plate this week. She painted an awesome tray to look like the Giants' football field. The sides of the tray had an incline so she painted those to be the stands. It looks super awesome. I'm not so sure my plate looks a whole lot like mys sister. But hey, I tried!

P.S. I am pretty sure I am ruining some sort of surprise by telling you about the football platter and then posting pics on here. So, um, SURPRISE MIKE!

I'd like to know, if you could do any art project, what would it be? 

Above: Ilyssa Painting

Below: The Giant's Football Stadium Plate

Even more plates

I went with my husband to paint some more plates at Hands On Ceramics last weekend. I decided to paint the plates of my mother-in-law and my father-in-law. Andy decided that since I was painting plates with the families’ faces on them that he should paint the plate with my face on it. I thought that sounded like a good idea. The plate is very different from the other ones, which makes it really interesting. I love how Andy’s art is so cool and very stylized. As I mentioned in my earlier post about painting these family plate portraits, getting a likeness is not easy. I had to keep asking the opinions of Andy and my sister-in-law, Lia, to tell me if the portraits even remotely resembled my mother and father-in-law and I had to keep changing things. Here is how our plates turned out…

Above: Andy’s first try at drawing me. He thinks it looks like our friend, Joel Shettlesworth, had a baby with Rosa Parks. Apparently I have lips the size of Kentucky. 

Below: Joel Shettlesworth and Rosa parks

Below: Andy’s finished plate portrait of me. He wanted to make sure everyone who eats at our house knows I am Jewish. Andy, I love you.

Above: My mother-in-law

Below: My father-in-law

Number:12 Part II- OR Adventures In Painting With A Toddler

(Plate 2 of 8)

Over the weekend I painted the second plate in my series! I went to Hands On (my favorite ceramics place EVER) with my sister-in-law, Alyssa, and we took my daughter Lilly. Lilly just started walking a few weeks ago, so I let her hold my hand and walk around with me in the ceramics place while I chose a plate to paint. A woman there, who also brought her much older kids in to paint, saw Lilly and said to her in a baby talk kind of voice, “What was your mommy thinking bringing you here?” 

WHAT!? LADY I KNOW MY OWN KID. MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS! I just ignored her.

Let me explain. I have a weird 15 month old child. She is generally in a pretty good mood. Quiet when she is focused on something and easy to handle. She also sleeps 12 hours a night and takes not one, but TWO naps a day. I have been trying to get her down to one nap, but she simply can’t make it. So I use that time to do stuff around the house, or relax. It’s pretty nice… We know we are LUCKY. Most toddlers couldn’t handle a quiet place where you need to sit still for an hour, so I guess I can understand why that lady thought I was nuts. Even so, that was pretty rude for her to say. Also, Hands On Ceramics is very accommodating of any age.

So, anyway, I figured we could get started and if Lilly couldn’t handle it we would play while Alyssa finished up her picture frame (which turned out awesome by the way) and I would just come back some other time to finish. Lilly stood on the chair next to me, I took off her shirt so she wouldn’t get it dirty, and she helped me paint the underside of the plate. We also put her hand print on there! It's so cute!

I decided since Lilly was with me, to paint the Lilly plate. It doesn’t really look like her. I mean you can tell it’s supposed to be her, but it looks how I expected the Andy plate to turn out. Even so I love it! Can’t wait to see how it turns out after it’s fired in the kiln!

Lilly did a fabulous job. That dumb rude lady even complimented her behavior admitting that she had a child the same age at home that she would never bring to a place like that because he couldn’t sit still for 2 seconds. HAHAHA. My child is way more awesome than yours. HA.

I gave Lilly dry brushes with no paint so she could “help” me and that kept her occupied for about 30 minutes (an eternity in kid-time). I also gave her a coloring page and some crayons. I watched her very closely the entire time. Then I began painting the plate-Lilly’s eyes and took my attention away from her for about 1.5 minutes. In kid-time that’s like 45 minutes of amazing time for a kid to repaint your house or crash your car into a McDonalds. BIG MISTAKE. She stepped right off the edge of the chair and crashed right into a McDonalds. No, but she did fall onto the floor. She was totally fine, but cried for a very embarrassing 5 minutes while the rude lady glared at me probably thinking, "TOLD YOU SO!" That witch. Then all Lilly wanted to do was dump crayons on the floor. So I finished up the plate while Alyssa held her for a couple of minutes and then we played while Alyssa finished up.

All in all, we had a great time! We didn't let the man (I mean rude lady) get us down! I would definitely bring Lilly back. There are a lot of fun things for little ones to do at Hands On Ceramics. Lilly loves painting. She also loves eating paint, but that’s another story for another day.


Hey guys!!! Read this: 
 "Just to let your loyal readers know.... the MEAN lady was NOT the owner of Hands On Ceramics.... in fact.... the OWNER loves to see all ages of kids painting and tried to keep the cutie occupied. FYI !!" - Lisa Gromer, owner and operator of Hands On Ceramics . It's true! Lisa helped us out by helping me get Lilly's hand print on the back of the plate (and suggesting it) and bringing us crayons and books! She is SUPER awesome! 

Above: Lilly Plate Before Kiln

Below: Lilly Out Shopping

Number 12: Paint a set of 8 dishes at Hands On Ceramics

(Plate 1 of 8)

For our wedding, Andy and I did not register for dishes. Not for fancy ones anyway. We just aren't fancy people. I'm not interested in buying matching dishes. Since I went to paint ceramics with my sister in New York and I made an awesome chip and dip bowl with our last name on it, I've liked the idea of creating a set of  plates that were personalized for our family. I thought it would be cool to have personalized plates. Not too many people do. They will be way more special. So the idea I came up with was to paint a cartoon of each of our family members on the plates. Who wouldn't want to eat off of their own face when we have them over for holidays? This is how my goal to paint dishes came about...

So over the weekend I finally made it over to Hands On Ceramics with a bunch of friends for a girls day out. I finally got started on my plates. I decided to paint Andy's face on a plate first because I didn't want to paint my own face. Even though I have a very nice face, I thought that was kind of conceited of me. So I pulled up a Facebook photo of Andy on my phone and penciled it in on the plate first. 

Now, I'm an ok artist. I only feel comfortable saying that because I had better be after all the training I have had. I took serious art lessons after school and over the summers, not to mention classes in school, from ages 8 to 20. I am not really that great though. Just alright. My biggest problem is that I can never get a likeness when I do portraits. That is until I painted the plate of Andy.

Completely out of left field I actually got a likeness. It looks just like him. How did I do it? I seriously have no clue. But I hope I am able to repeat this accidental awesomeness on the rest of my plates. If not, I'll just paint the name of the person on the plate so people know who it is... 

I have changed the number of plates to twelve so that I can also paint our whole families instead of just the three of us and the cats. I am painting the cats for guests. In case the whole family is over for dinner along with a few guests. We will all be eating off our own faces and who will the guests eat of? The cats. Problem solved. You're Welcome.

Above: Plate is painted, still needs to be fired in the kiln and then I get to pick it up on Thursday! It will be all glossy-like then. I'll post a pic when it's truly finished.

Above: Amazing Mickey cake that KC made for me!

Below: me and ma paintin ladies

"Me=Fashion Wizard"

I got so many compliments on this outfit that me being a fashion wizard is the only logical explanation. See those shoes? Those are 6 inches tall. Ok, no Andy measured and they are only 4 inches. They are the only heels and tallest shoes I have ever worn/owned.