stuff your stockings saturday - puzzle blocks

Welcome to the very first week of Stuff Your Stockings Saturday!

Every Saturday between now and Christmas, I hope to share a crafty handmade stocking option that you can make to stuff the stockings of your children, pets, friends, spouse, etc.  Many of the ideas that you will see featured in the first month were linked up over the past few months on my stocking stuffer share-along page.  Go check out all the ideas and you may find some stocking inspiration!


And I hope you will scroll down that stocking stuffer idea page and link up your own ideas as well.  I'm looking for more great ideas and tutorials to feature in the months of October, November and December!

And here's an added surprise for you! 

Not only do I hope that you will be inspired to make your own handmade stocking stuffers, but some of the guest bloggers on Stuff Your Stockings Saturday will also be giving one wonderful reader the chance to win a handmade version of the stocking stuffer being showcased for the week!  

What?  I know . . . you can make it AND you can win it!  So exciting!

To kick off our first Stuff Your Stockings Saturday, I want to introduce you to the wonderfully creative Camille from MotherLode.  Check out the sweet little giveaway we have in store for you today at the bottom of her post.

Hi everyone, and Elizabeth! First, I LOVE this blog!

Thank you so much for inviting me to guest post and share a stocking stuffer idea with your readers Elizabeth. I really enjoy making and giving handmade gifts, yet often feel overwhelmed by all of the ideas I want to make versus finding the time to tackle it all. Elizabeth, you make it look so easy, and fun, and your approach makes it feel oh-so-possible!

. . .But probably not this year. I am behind-beyond-the-point-of-ever-catching-up in pulling off a handmade holiday.  We had a baby last Christmas, and we are still trying to find our groove as a family of four. But, never fear - this blog has rubbed off on me enough to at least commit to filling our stockings with handmade gifts this year.

And I'm taking full advantage of the opportunity to share here by whipping up my first stocking stuffer idea - a set of storytime puzzle blocks for my almost-five-year-old daughter Delaney. 

Over Labor Day weekend while lingering under quilts and reading with my daughter I realized a subtle yet certain shift underway - she's gravitating toward longer chapter books with more complex themes and less pictures, which are slowly sliding into the nooks and crannies of our home reserved for our favorite books while her favorites for so long now, picture books, are slowly becoming buried... perhaps to be just as quickly forgotten as they were to become fast favorites? It doesn’t seem possible, considering how many times we’ve read them, over and over and over again. We even tried to hide them, to allow them to be enjoyed anew when they resurfaced - which seemed to happen rather quickly. 

With this awareness I knew one thing - I didn’t want either of us to forget these special books. I decided to make a set of storytime puzzle blocks from her all-time favorite books from the first five years of her life.  For now, these puzzle block will go in her stocking . . . but maybe when they lose their appeal, they will be tucked away for later - to give to her future children along with the actual books so they can share a part of their mom’s childhood.

So I started hunting through the shelves looking for the books I’d spent the last few years trying to hide. They weren’t too hard to locate - they were the well-worn ones, showing signs of love and loyalty and lots of lazy-day lingering. 

Those books, along with a whole slew I schlepped home from the thrift store recently, have led to my first stocking stuffer gift completed PLUS three more sets to give as gifts this Christmas. Oh, the victory!

I owe it all to the wonderful motivation I receive right here - it's just the nudge I needed to get the ball rolling. And to show my appreciation, I would like to offer a set of storybook puzzle blocks to one lovely twelve crafts till Christmas reader.

The thrift-store books were spilling off the shelves that day, a few even jumped into my cart unassisted, literally! It was hard to narrow it down, but I finally chose books in these three categories - vintage golden books, classic board books, and Christmas stories. 

And yesterday we had quite the storybook puzzle block making workshop underway here.

It took a long time to get everything scanned, printed, precision cut, mod podged, dried, top coat of mod podge, dry again, then ready for their big debut right here with a photoshoot bright and early with the morning sun.  Whew! A lot of work, but I just LOVE how they turned out! 

I have a tutorial on my blog Mother*Lode to make your own puzzle blocks. But if you're in a similar predicament as me - so many ideas, so little time, then wouldn't it be nice if you won a set and didn't have to make them yourself?

So try that first.

Enter the giveaway, think positive, cross your fingers, and see what happens. If that doesn't work . . . and unfortunately that will be the case for every single person who enters except the one lucky winner . . . then please do come on over and check out the tutorial. They really are super easy to make and the sweetest gifts ever.  Very well worth the time and effort!



And for the record . . . thanks to scanners and printers and trusty technology, no book was harmed in the making of this project. Because the books are all alive and well, I would love to send them along with the blocks if the winner isn't oppose to receiving used books as a gift. Most are in great shape. A few are not, but I was buying with the intention of cutting them up so wasn't as picky about condition. 

Are you ready for details about the selections available to choose from? I'll show a couple of pictures from each set, but I have so save a few surprises!

SET ONE: Vintage Little Golden Books

First up is a set of vintage Little Golden Books. These were my favorite growing up. Maybe that's because my twin sister and I often got a new one when we went to the store and were well behaved. So we had a lot of them. My mom still has them. I remember them all, and I love coming across them again.

1) The Three Bears illustrated by Feodor Rojankovsky
2) The Poky Little Puppy by Gustaf Tenggren
3) Richard Scarry's Chipmunk's ABC by Roberta Miller
4) The Shy Little Kitten by Cathleen Schurr
5) The Saggy Baggy Elephant by K. & B. Jackson
6) Winnie-the-Pooh and Tigger by A.A. Milne

SET TWO: Classic Children's Board Books

This set of classic children's board books would make a wonderful gift set for a baby!

1) Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney

2) The Mitten by Jan Brett

3) Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? by Dr. Seuss

4) Just In Case You Ever Wonder by Max Lucado

5) The Foolish Tortoise by Richard Buckley

6) The Eensy-Weensy Spider by Mary Ann Hoberman

SET THREE: Christmas Stories

Though harder to come by off-season, I was able to round up a handful of Christmas stories for this set of Christmas blocks. The selection is hodge podge with vintage, classic and contemporary all mixed in!

1) The Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore

2) The Gingerbread Man illustrated by Karen Schmidt

3) Raggedy Ann and Andy Help Santa Claus by Polly Curren

4) The First Christmas, retold by Gaby Goldsack

5) Olive, the Other Reindeer by d. Otto Seibold

6) Christmas Mice by Bethany Roberts

And finally . . . for fun . . . and an extra entry into the giveaway - this tower of blocks represents my daughter's all time favorite stories from the first five years of her life. Can anyone name all six titles? 

Thanks so much Camille!  What a wonderful idea to stuff the stockings of the children in our lives!

Now, here's how you can win your own set made by Camille:

*Leave one comment for each entry.*

1)  Be or become a follower of twelve crafts.

2)  Be or become a follower of MotherLode.

3)  Link up an idea/stocking stuffer to the stocking stuffer idea page.

4)  Help promote Stuff Your Stockings Saturday by posting the button (code on sidebar) on your blog or on the stocking stuffer idea that you linked up.
5)  List all the books represented in the tower of puzzle blocks.  ;)

Giveaway will be open for entries until Friday, September 17, 2010 @ 11:59 PM (CST).

Craft on!