A gift exchange!

The wonderful world of Twitter has a lot to answer for!

Mostly good stuff I hasten to add.

I am constantly amazed by the people I ‘meet’ on Twitter, and it has opened up some great opportunities, like joining in the Love What you Wear Project, taking part in the Dress a Girl Around the World sewing day, and now…

The great ‘Make do and Mend’ and ‘a year without supermarket’ gift exchange!

Just last week, I was introduced to “Team Pugh” on Twitter via the lovely Helen of Fair and Funky. Team Pugh consists of Ian, Becksie, and their very gorgeous baby Lizzie. They are undertaking “a year without supermarkets”, which kind of is what is says on the tin! You really should go and check out their blog-it is fab, and their enthusiasm is quite infectious (so much so that I am contemplating banning the supermarket in the New Year, but haven’t dared broach the subject with hubby yet-shhh..) Becksie and I had a little chat on Twitter, checked out each other’s blogs and both decided we liked what we saw and wanted to do something together to, in words of Fair and Funky Helen “#changetheworld”.

So this is what we (actually, I can’t take any of the credit for this, it was all Becksie’s idea. I have just responded very enthusiastically to her suggestions and said “yay” a lot-sorry Becksie!) came up with:

In the spirit of both of our blogs and to celebrate our shared ethos and the time of year we call Christmas we have decided to start a ‘buy nothing (especially nothing from those pesky supermarkets), homemade gift exchange’ – so through our email discussions (we are of course cyber buddies) we have come up with a set of rules:

• We will each produce a gift for the other family – it must be postable!
• Neither family must buy anything new and / or from a supermarket in order to produce this. In fact in order to not add a penny of extra expense to the festive season and in order to keep this idea environmentally friendly we must not buy anything at all and forage from our existing supplies!
• As we can’t put a financial limit on it, and so that neither of us feel pressured to spend hours making something the item must be made within one hour!
• As we only know each other from reading our respective blogs we can ask the other family 3 questions to help shape what we make and send!

So there we have it-I am quite excited!

Becksie is obviously WAY more organised than me, and already has her three questions ready. My answers are in red.

1) If your family were a colour what colour would you be? Ummmmm, I have no idea. Maybe green. Ish. Gosh, this is hard!!
2) Pattern or plain? I would say pattern in a garish retro flowered type pattern but not so sure the boys would agree-maybe we’re safer sticking with plain..!
3) Does the daddy member (or any other member) of your family have extra long feet or are they just regular? Hubby is a size 11-that is quite clown like I think.

I’m afraid I am a little lacking in inspiration at the moment, so I am appealing for a little bit of help (is that cheating Becksie? I hope not :))

First of all, what deep and probing, and terribly clever 3 questions should I ask to ascertain what would be a good gift to make?

Update: I finally decided on my questions. (I pinched one of Team Pugh’s for the first one)

1) If your family were a colour what colour would you be?

2) Cars or comics?

3) Favourite board game

AND when I somewhat belatedly consulted the lovely hubby about what colour he thought our family would be, he said yellow, which had been my initial answer, so I e-mailed Becksie and asked her if we could be green/yellow…

So now I just need suggestions for things to make please!!!

We will keep you posted….