DIY Gift Ideas Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Everything's Famtastic

November 12, 2020January 18, 2023

Guide to the Greatest Gifts Book Lovers will Adore!

I love my kids. I love how they constantly have an abundance of creative ideas! And I love how they are always asking about Everything’s Famtastic and offering me ideas of what I could write about here. This post is the result of exactly this type of enthusiasm and brain-storming. Well, sort of… in a roundabout way… 😉

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All 3 of my kids are MASSIVE bookworms. My 2 daughters have been so for a loooong time. And my son, who just started school this year and always had an affinity for books, can now proudly read for himself. Suffice to say, that this bilingual household is overflowing with German and English children’s books!

A while back my eldest daughter wrote a (now very popular!) post about super books series for girls aged 9-12. And then my younger daughter published her list of must-read book series for girls 6 – 9 years. So naturally, they keep prodding me to write even more blog posts here about kids’ books.

But this article isn’t about books per se, rather about creative gifts for the book lover in your life. These gift ideas are perfect for bookworms of any age, especially if you are trying to avoid adding to the already sagging bookshelf!

So, what present do you give a book lover, if not books?!? Well, in this list we have thought of all the things an avid reader needs to stay comfortable, undisturbed and busy in their reading “happy place”! There’s also printables to keep an eye out for.

Be careful though! These gift ideas are SO GOOD that your bookworm may get so settled, you might never see them again! Take a look for yourself…

April 2, 2020June 26, 2021

11 Simple Steps to Sewing Your Own Easter Egg Basket

With Easter just around the corner and a lot of people having some unexpected time on their hands at the moment, what better way to cheer up your mood and your living space than with a couple of super sewing projects?!?

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This week I was lucky enough to be invited to create an easy, (child-friendly) sewing project as a guest post on the Skelly Hodgepodge blog. You can check out my “Easiest Easter Bunny Sewing Project” HERE. I bet you and your kids will have as much fun sewing these as we did! You know what happens when you start off with just a pair of bunnies, don’t you? Pretty soon there are more popping up everywhere 😉. Kind of like the felt bunnies around our place!

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The project that I will be sharing with you in this post though, is something I promised a couple of weeks back: an Egg Basket with space for 5 eggs!

Did you see my tutorial How to Sew an Egg Warmer Basket already? That version had space for 4 boiled eggs to snuggle in all nicely together. This updated version has place for 5 eggs!! Which comes in handy for those of us with larger households. 😉

Don’t just think of this as an Egg Warmer. It’s also the perfect sewing project for Easter. You can hide some coloured eggs inside and use it as a simple table centrepiece. Or for the chocolate fans fill it with Easter Eggs and you’ve got yourself a sweet Easter gift! Mmm, chocolate…

All my detailed instructions and photos are ready to guide you through this easy sewing project. Read on to find out how!

March 12, 2020October 6, 2021

Tutorial: How to Sew an Egg Warmer Basket

Around here lately it’s been all about the sewing. Karneval costumes! Shirts for my own and other children! Dresses for my girls!

Somehow in the background, the house stays (somewhat 🙈) organised, the kids get wherever they need to be (on time, no less!) and everyone is clean, fed and happy. What more could you ask for? Well, apart from a 2 week holiday in Tahiti perhaps…

Wait, what?!? Oh! A new sewing project, you say? Well, have I got something egg-citing for you 😉.

Q: What happens when you make an egg laugh?

A: It cracks up!

Easter is coming up and for some reason, this project always makes me think of Easter. Even though it’s really meant for chicken eggs, not the chocolate kind. Note: chocolate eggs also fit snugly into this sewing project 😉.

Q: Why does the Easter bunny paint the eggs?

A: It’s too hard to wallpaper them!

In this week’s post I am going to walk you through an egg-cellent, easy, quick sewing project: How to Sew an Egg Warmer Basket. Not only is it easy, it’s also fast. Perfect for when you really really want to sew something but know you haven’t got much time!

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If the last 2 posts of me interviewing fellow bloggers about their early days of sewing (you can read them here and here ) haven’t stoked that creative fire in your belly, see whether this egg warmer tutorial gets you warmed up 😉.

Are you ready to discover how it’s done?

December 19, 2019November 7, 2021

45 Excellent Experience Gift Ideas

I’m not going to pretend it’s not happening: Christmas is coming!! In less than a week folks! How organised are you? Have you already bought all of the presents you had planned to? Or are you still desperately trying to come up with some original Christmas gift ideas?

Ok, let’s just cut to the chase, shall we?

Buying gifts for Christmas, en masse (but birthdays too) can be stressful. You’re daydreaming of having a few days off work. Maybe planning what you are going to feed everybody. The shops are full. It seems that every other person in your town is out there RIGHT NOW doing the same harried shopping trip. If you’re lucky you can go shopping alone, without the kids who GUARANTEED will see more things to add to their Christmas wish list. And if it’s a successful shop, you have to lug it all home, wrap the gifts and hide them somewhere (don’t forget to remember WHERE!!!) until Christmas.

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If you are trying to be even the least bit conscious of reducing the plastic packaging and waste in your household (like we have been trying to do. Here you can read about some small steps to try to get started!), it all feels like a big, dirty contradiction.

So is there anything you can do, to still enjoy gift-giving this holiday season without the shopping mall stress and mounds of paper, packaging and plastic? Sure there is!!!

Give the gift of an experience!

Don’t know what I am talking about? Well…

November 21, 2019May 24, 2024

How to Sew a Patchwork Infinity Loop Scarf

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Last week I was feeling fired up and feisty, what with all those totally powerful inspirational quotes! “Go get ‘em!” was the message I was pumping myself up with and bringing you along for the ride too 😉. What?!? You didn’t see it? If you feel like you need a bit of motivating to pursue your goals, then be sure to check it out here because it will really give you the kick up the butt you’re after!

And what now? Well, It’s official. The cold weather here in Germany has continued it’s march towards winter. So while I may be energised and motivated, I am also damn cold!!! The days are getting shorter and shorter, so much so that the kids are walking to school by the light of the moon. And a flashlight. 😉 For the sunshine-y Australian girl in me lousy, grey, cold weather = ~~time to hibernate~~ time to find fun projects I can accomplish indoors.

If you’re into sewing like me, but also trying hard to not waste too many materials while you’re at it (Hello! #reducereuserecycle), you’ve probably got a stack of odd-shaped, leftover pieces of fabric hoarded away “for later”.

Do I have the PERFECT sewing project for you!!! (And I’m gonna show you how to do it!)

*** drumroll please… ***

August 18, 2019June 26, 2021

What’s So Great About Photos?

Halli Hallo! Here we go again, another round of Everything’s Famtastic to enthral and delight you. Last week’s post about dealing with grief was kinda heavy and not my usual thing. But then again, the passing away of so many friends and family in such a short time is also not “my usual thing”. But nobody is ever alone in their grief. I just hope that my post reached the right person at precisely the time when they needed some reassurance, comfort and strength after losing someone special.

One of my “usual things” however, is photographs. I take a LOT of photos. Just ask my Hubby. Or my kids. Or pretty much anyone who has known me for a while 😉. I take photos with my mobile phone. I take photos with my big fancy-pants SLR camera.

I not only take a lot of photos, oh no. I collect photos from my Hubby’s mobile too. And when we get together for special occasions with friends or family, I like to check out what photos anyone else took too. Which means that I have a fairly large collection of photographs.

Ahem. *clears throat* I don’t think that I have been quite clear enough. I have a REALLY LARGE collection of photos. I haven’t done a hard-core sorting and cleaning out of photos from my laptop in years. Since approximately 2014 to be precise *buries face in hands in shame*.

Ok confession time. I take a LOT of photos. I have more than 40,000 photos stored on my laptop dated from 2014 to present. I am a photography addict.

There is just so much to do with all those photos… *wails*

March 31, 2019March 16, 2022

Sew Yourself Cute Fabric Baskets with this Easy Tutorial

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Hello and willkommen to Everything’s Famtastic this week! How’s things looking in your part of the world? Here it’s been all a bit hectic. Mostly a typical week actually 😉. But I did squeeze in some more sewing at home. Sitting at the sewing machine is certainly a happy place for me 😊. A definite highlight of the week was Miss 7’s school music concert. It was really sweet- nearly 60 second-graders had been practising a number of song and dance moves for a few months. **so proud**

Do you remember the other week I wrote about how we have begun the mammoth task of decluttering and tidying our house with the KonMari method as inspiration, so far we have been tackling clothes. At last count, 4 out of 5 of us have decluttered and superbly (if I do say so myself) stored our clothes in a more ordered manner in the wardrobes. The billions of books in the house are still terrifying me and will definitely need an all-hands-on-deck approach.

But what I wanted to share with you today- for FREE!- is how I made those cute fabric baskets I had also talked about in that post.Easy to sew, multi-purpose, use any leftover fabric you have lying around, look great… WINNER!

So, are you keen? Without further ado, start your sewing engines! Here’s what you’ll need to sew your own collection of handmade baskets:

November 30, 2018June 25, 2021

Make Classic Calendars from Your Fantastic Photos

So, it’s already November, which means the clock is ticking towards December. Not ticking. Racing toward December. This of course means Christmas is coming, ready or not!

I am generally not prepared weeks in advance for the so-called silly season. But I AM determined to do things differently this year. That means getting organised with gifts. Or at least gift ideas…