Homemade Gift Exchange

My siblings and I draw names for a Christmas gift exchange around Thanksgiving time each year.  It's always a hyped up process that involves writing down everyone's name on precisely the same size piece of paper and then asking my dad (a neutral party) to first draw the order of names, and then to re-draw again to see who drew who's name. 

In the past there had been only three basic rules:
1.  Spouses can't draw spouses names
2.  Twin can't draw other twin name
3.  $50 spending budget

This year one of my younger brothers piped up and said something along the lines of "Are we doing handmade gifts this year?"

We laughed at first.  Then the idea grew.  My mom described a homemade gift exchange that she once did with her siblings and how it was fun and how my uncle still has the gift she made him many years ago. 

We decided to give this handmade thing a try.  The 2012 Christmas exchange rules were:
1.  Spouses can't draw spouses names
2.  Twin can't draw other twin name
3.  $50 spending budget
4.  Handmade gift 

Hubs and I had fun with this one.  We both put together the same homemade gift - with different customization for each of our name draws.

We bottled some of our homemade raspberry wine and made homemade labels. 

Although simple in theory, it was a little time consuming.  We had to purchase small bottles of wine, consume the small bottles of wine, sanitize the bottles, peel the labels off the bottles, fill the bottles with the homemade wine, cork the bottles, cap the bottles, and shrinkwrap the top of the bottles before we could put our labels on.  It was totally worth the work.  We were so happy with the way the came out.  We could hardly wait for them to be opened.

I drew my older brother for the gift exchange.  He has a dog named Freddy that was the muse for my labels.

Hubs drew my older sister for the gift exchange.  His two labels were inspired by a "How to Draw Cute Animals" book.  

For some reason we don't have a picture of his other label on its own. Oh well.