The Loveliness of Homemade Gifts! This week.

This week the Lives of Loveliness is focusing on the Loveliness of Homemade Gifts!

I have a long history of homemade gifts! When I was around 13 years old, I learned how to make candles and for the next five years or so, everyone on my gift list got homemade candles for Christmas! I made all kinds, and colors, and fragrances. I still have a few of them as mementos of my youthful passion.

As a married lady I decorated wreathes and sweat shirts for gifts. Most of them were received well. I usually started in September. In fact, I remember pouring over the craft magazines during the September Miss America pageants to try to decide what craft to make!

These past couple of years, with little kids and transcribing every spare minute, I haven’t had a chance to do much crafting or gift preparation. Maybe next year when Rosie is a bit older and hopefully my work responsibilities will lessen, then I can pick it up again. I really do think it is an important part of family life, to have the children pick out and help with making something from the heart, instead of buying everything.

I speak from personal experience. I can think of two gifts right now that were made for me by special people. They aren’t worth very much. In fact one might even think they were worthless, but to me, because of the people who made them and the memories they bring, they are priceless.

The first is a simple little paper angel playing the flute that hangs over my dining room table. My good friend and mentor, Anita, made that for me several years ago. The cuts were very intricate and it must have taken her a long time. Anita passed away just two weeks before my baby Raphael did, so her loss was especially bitter sweet. Her little angel just hanging in my dining room reminds me of her, and of all the happy years we had together studying music, playing duets, and attending concerts. Her simple little gift brings me so much pleasure and it always will.

An even older handmade gift is the afghan my grandmother made for me. She made one for my sister too. I think she knew that she was in her last years, and she wanted to make something for each of us to remember her by. I loved my grandmother so much, and I miss her even now more than three decades since her death. It gives me so much comfort and joy to see my baby girl wrapped up in the warmness of her great-grandmother’s afghan. It seems like a bridging of the generations in a way. It’s like my beloved grandmother is reaching out beyond the years to show love to my baby girl. I just love that image.

With the fine example of these two wonderful women, I hope that I too can make something of beauty and love to pass onto my children and grandchildren that they will cherish after I’m gone. I think that is the true loveliness of homemade gifts!