So I pretty much caved in... but did better than I thought...

Okay so confession time. I have bought some brand new and "unnecessary" stuff. Basically, what happened was that 2 weeks ago, I received FOUR, yep, FOUR invites to children's birthday parties over the next 2 weeks! As a newbie sewer and crafster, I am fairly slow at making stuff and there was no way I could come up with pressies for 4 youngsters in the space of 2 weeks (and still parent and work and look after the house at the same time).

So I wrote a little post in Nappycino pretty much announcing that I am breaking my challenge and that I needed some ideas to buy eco-friendly pressies for children. I realised that just going out and buying any pressie was not going to sit well with me after all this time. The members at Nappycino gave me such great ideas though! And I only ended up breaking the challenge a tiny bit.

So this was what I ended up giving:

3 year old Boy: Homemade playdough shaped as dinosaurs on different coloured rocks. I tried to find a nice container for it in 2 Op Shops but couldn't find any so I ended up buying a box from Oxfam made out of recycled paper. But then I also felt a bit bad at such a rush job pressie though, so I bought a paper mache dinosaur coin box to go in the pressie. A huge thanks to Kelli from Natural Parenting for coming up with this poem for me to put in the pressie:

Angus this is your special day
we are new friends who've come to play
can you find us in the rocks?
we are the ones without striped socks
we can be your new pets if you dare
but only cos we know you care

5 year old Boy: A vegetable gardening kit with a little stuffed toy helper. Huge thanks to Michelle from Nappycino and fellow Canberran for supplying me with seeds, seed mix soil and beautiful large tin bucket. I ended up drawing each vegetable on some recycled paper (made by my kids!) and then using contact paper to "laminate" them. I mounted each sign on some wooden chopsticks I had at home and was no longer using. I then made a little horse to go with the kit. The horse was already partly set up by Kristy from Nappycino. (Thank you Kristy!) She had already given me the basic shape and all I needed to do was sew it together and add a mane and tail. I then enclosed it a little poem to go with it:

Hello, my name is Hoop De Doo
I love to garden
So I'm here to help you!

To go with the gardening kit, I did buy a spade. I had no spare spades and the gardening kit really needed at least a spade.

5 year old Girl: A treasure box filled with a doll, a bracelet and later on a necklace. I got the treasure box and bracelet from a second hand shop. The doll was from Oxfam and was hand-made from Bangladesh (fairtrade of course, because it is Oxfam). I made the necklace, but did buy the beads. I did make sure the beads were Australian manufactured to make sure I wasn't buying any sweatshop/slave products.

1 year old Girl: Pillowcase with the following poem (found on net) embroidered on it:

May the wings of the butterfly kiss the sun
And find your shoulder to light on,
To bring you luck, happiness and riches
Today, tomorrow and beyond.

So there you go. That's my gift-giving crisis over.... and of course, the timeframe meant I didn't get any pics of any of the gifts. Oh well.

Still a HUGE THANK YOU to all the people who have helped me get these pressies in time without me breaking my challenge too much.