Homemade with Love

Day 20: Share your holiday crafting skills. What do you make, either for gifts, or for your yourself?

My holiday crafting skills this year were all baking.  I made tons of baked goods for several different people.  All were well accepted.  I really do have a post in the works on all the wonderful goodies I made, so I am going to use this prompt to write about a homemade gift I received yesterday.  

I have a friend named Samantha (who goes by Sam).  We have been friends for about six years.  I started going to my local Starbucks a lot so eventually I became friends with most of the staff up there.  Sam is actually the one that pushed me to apply (I was really good friends with the manager and assistant manager at the time, too).  After I started working there, Sam and I became even closer.  She wants nothing more than simply being my friend (some of my friends take advantage of my generosity of time, money, and talent...I am working on that).  We hung out a lot.  She is about ten years older than I am, and every time we are together we definitely always laugh and most of the time we cry too.  She is definitely one of my best friends.  When she got fired from Sbux (the new manager that came in was a tyrant, which ran off 16 of us baristas); they called me over and told me first because they knew I would be the most affected by it.  I, of course, burst out crying but I knew because seconds after it happened; Sam had already texted me.  Even after we didn't have Sbux in common anymore, we still continued our friendship.  I love her like a sister and I am so happy to call her one of my best friends.  

Her birthday is at the beginning of December, then we have Christmas, then my birthday at the beginning of January.  We have this certain penguin gift bag (made of cloth not paper) that I fill for her birthday, and she fills, and then I fill, and then she fills again for my birthday.  We have had this tradition for 4 years now (we also have a thing about penguins that made us laugh until we cried).  Well this year for Christmas she gave me the most thoughtful homemade gifts ever.  She made me a tote bag with an embroidered Mickey on one side and penguins on the other.  She also made me the most adorable apron with my name on it and the cutest tutu wearing hippo.  I have downloaded the pictures with my good camera yet, so you will have to make due with my cell phone pictures.  I love that she is so thoughtful and crafty.  She has made me a gift every year since we became really good friends.  She doesn't have a lot of money so they mean even more.  

Here is my apron.

One side of my tote bag.  She said he was not very fun to do because he is so large.  

I will share my baking craftiness tomorrow.