This year I decided I’d make something homemade for each of my kids for Christmas. And not just, like, toothpick picture frames… nay! I decided to make each kid an intricate gift that requires pinning and basting and sewing and hard liquor (if only I drank). Now, because I worry that my children are three of my four blog readers, I can’t tell you directly what these gifts are. But I will give you blurry picture clues and vague descriptions that will leave you puzzled and wanting to know more!

For Jachin I am attempting to make something that I’ve never made the likes of before. There is no pattern for this. I am winging it. And me + an idea + a sewing machine + winging it (almost always) = disaster. But I’m going for it.

These are squares of material. Think squares. Lots of them. Sewn together.

These are iron-on pages. You print out pictures of things, like… oh, I don’t know, Nintendo characters, and then iron them onto white squares. (That is dark blue minky behind there. Minky, if you are not familiar with it, is super-soft fuzzy material that feels like kittens rolled in cotton balls. Minky can often be sewn to the back of lots of squares that have been sewn together. You follow me?)

These are some of the iron-on pages. I know. Totally cute.

Shhh… no blabbing to Jachin.

Now we move on to Zoe. Zoe, as you may recall, wants nothing but Julie the American Girl for Christmas. I have it on good authority that Santa may be bringing the goods. Therefore, I am sewing Zoe something that has to do with this:

See? How they match?

And it goes with this:

Hello? Can you get more 70′s looking? I don’t see how.

And Deacon, well… okay, I’m not super-worried about Deacon reading my blog, so I’ll just flat out tell you what I’m making. (Plus, I actually work on it in front of him. Because he’s a baby. And two minutes after I’ve put it away, he’s forgotten about it. Because he’s a baby. And on Christmas day he’ll open it and be like all, Yay! I’m a baby and I’ve never seen this before in my life! )

It’s a Quiet Book. The Quiet Book that I started making when I was pregnant with Jachin. Yes, I have been working on this Quiet Book since 1998. Because have I told you how bad I am about finishing things I start? The Quiet Book is actually the token object that is referred to every time I embark on something new. Like, I will start ripping out everything in the boxes in the basement and labeling and color-coding and Jon will come down and look at me in the center of a disaster and say, “Umm, is this going to be like the Quiet Book?” And I’ll shoot him with my angry wife laser eyes. And then a week later I will have abandoned the color-coding labeling project and you won’t be able to walk around in our disaster-ridden basement.

Yeah, it’s like that.

But this Christmas is it! The Quiet Book will be completed! Jon will have a stroke! Pigs will fly by our windows on Christmas morning! And then we will shoot them and have fresh bacon!… but that’s something else entirely…

Okay, did you get a good look at creepy Jonah?

I guess a few days in a whale’s stomach would make you a little worse for wear.

Anyhoo… these are my current projects. Things that I have to finish before Christmas morning. Which — if I know anything about myself — means that I will be up until 3am Christmas Eve finishing them.

Are you making anything homemade for Christmas??

Clue #16 that your geek-itude is rubbing off on your children-

If you hear your children say the following while watching A Christmas Carol:

“Why is Captain Picard playing Scrooge?”

(If you do not understand the above clue, rest assured friend, you are not a geek.)

No one crying. No one hitting. No one whining. No one with their fingers up their nose or anyone else’s nose. Showered, hair brushed, and generally clean.

And it’s immortalized on film.

Score.