Brown Paper Packages tied up with string.... (Part II)

*NOTICE* THIS IS PART II OF BROWN PAPER PACKAGES, FOR MORE PICTURES AND AN INTRODUCTION, SEE BROWN PAPER PACKAGES TIED WTIH STRING (PART I)*

For my niece I made two little dolls. One was the Princess and the Pea taken from here.


Mine isn't quite that nice looking, but not too bad (at least I don't think so). I also made her a Rapunzel doll, based off the same design. I've been informed she liked that one best, so that makes me pretty happy.

For the men folk and some neighbors, I whipped up a batch of homemade fajita seasoning (the one Mr. Curly and I use all the time). I made some potato soup in a jar (not pictured). I also made my mother-in-law's spaghetti sauce, but instead of freezing it, tried my hand a water bath canning. The results:

You can't see it in this picture, but the sauce has little flecks of green (basil and oregano) in it that makes it very Christmas-y looking.

The sauce tasted delicious hot off the stove and all the jars sealed. I've already had one friend tell me it was great, so obviously, I'm not too bad at this! Next summer I plan on home-growing some tomatoes to make this recipe and also try my hand at jarring salsa for Mr. Curly as he seems to go through it at an alarming rate!

This last summer I made freezer jam, but now with the canner (and my mom has a pressure cooker I may borrow), I believe I will try canning jelly (if I can find a strawberry farm around that is).

So those were my homemade gifts! Next year, my sewing will be even MORE ambitious, because for Christmas, I got THIS!!!

I went from 10 stitching options, to 74!! I can do quilting! It does button holes automatically!! It can sew through 7 layers of cloth all folded together!! It is one of the first machines that I actually read the entire manual before I even took it out of the box.

And once I got it out, I made myself this:


It holds a composition notebook, one 2 x 10 book, my wallet, checkbook, cell phone, sunglasses, and my little make-up bag that I keep my pens, chapstick, meds and other odds and ends I don't want the Curly kids playing with in. And it's pretty and all my own design (I need to work on that - great design, but poor construction planning lead to more hand sewing than anticipated). The little button loop holds the house keys I only need on weekends and can never find.

And this is a really long post, so I'll stop now.

Post title from The Sound of Music.