Homemade Anxiety

It's 13 days until Christmas. (well, the 14th day from now will BE Christmas, so you know what I mean). We're actually making progress on our homemade Christmas gifts, and I'm starting to feel like we might actually get everything done in time. But here's the thing. What comes with homemade gifts? Anxiety.

I'm starting to worry. What if they don't like it? What if it doesn't fit? What if they won't use it? Think it's stupid? Wish we'd made something else instead? And so on and so forth. That's the thing with homemade gifts, they come with anxiety on the side.

And be honest - have you ever received a homemade gift from someone and thought (Ugh....) and then had to plaster that seriously fake smile on your face and graciously accept it? I dread that smile. I'm so worried that we're going to see a lot of it this Christmas.



I think for anyone who's a crafty person, the trick is to not look at something and think "do I like it?" but rather "will (insert give receivers name here) like it?". And that can be seriously tough. Thankfully, we only really give gifts to our immediate families at Christmas, so we should have a pretty good idea of what they will or won't like. But you never know. We could be wrong. We could strike out.

And then there's the idea of reciprocating at Christmas. Now - I'll be honest and say that I don't think this is an issue with mine or my husband's family - because they all recognise how much time and effort goes into a homemade gift - but what if the person looks at your gift and thinks "Gee, I spent $X on them, and all I got were a pair of mittens/scarf/tote bag/t-shirt/etc".

So how do we combat that? I don't know the answer... but I know I'm worried about it.

So - friends, family, blog-readers of the interwebs - I'm asking you a favour this year. If someone presents you with a tag-less, homemade whatever - and it's not exactly your cup of tea - before you plaster the fakey-fake smile on, instead of seeing the gift (whatever it is) try and see the time, energy, love and concern that the person put into making that thing Just. For. You. And then smile, because what you're being is their love, their time, and their attention... and then for NEXT year, you can drop hints about what they might make you instead. ;)

Tea.