ambitious goals and a 3D letter craft

I had lofty goals in October of this year. My goal: to make handmade Christmas gifts for my friends and family. I figured that it would be really fun and I would save tons of money.

Then, reality hit.

Reasons why making Christmas gifts was out of the question:

1. It takes much longer than a couple of weeks to make presents for everyone. This year, I need to start earlier.
Like months earlier.
Possibly tomorrow.

2. I had a baby.

3. oh... and I HAD A BABY.

I did manage to crank out one or two handmade gifts between feeding a screaming infant and putting in the Dora DVD for the one MILLIONTH time.

(Please Lord, let this DVD pacify Avery for at least 2 minutes. I just need to go to the bathroom. Oh, and Lord - would you mind running interference for me while I'm in the restroom? Please keep all flying objects far away from Charlie's little head. Thanks, Lord).

This was a gift for my niece, Anna. I bought a paper mache letter "A" and decoupaged scrapbook paper to it. Then I embellished it with ribbon, sequins, and a flower.

I attempted to distress the paper by using shoe polish on the edges of the scrapbook paper before sealing it with mod podge. If you click on the picture, you can see what happened. I'm not super pleased with the result. I think that I need to get real distressing ink and try that next time.

This was super fun to make. Too bad I only had time to do one... There's always next year!