
All set and ready to go
Another holiday season come and gone. The tree is down, stockings and a variety of chachkies are safely tucked away to a worn banker box in a corner of attic storage until next year. Aaaahh, peace and fucking quiet. The silence is welcomed. This year was a bit stressful – more so than years past. Family was in town from Chicago for 10 days, there was a death in my boyfriends family that left us separated the whole holiday break, my two and three year old niece and nephew were sick, and for some inexplicable reason I decided to make all of my Christmas gifts just a month before the holiday…while on holiday for Thanksgiving in Quebec. Aside from the time crunch to get everything accomplished, winter never really arrived. We’ve had a week or two of cold temperatures, but all of December was very moderate with balmy temps in the 40s.
Homemade gifts – Worst and best idea ever. I always love the idea of homemade gifts. I love giving them and always love receiving a gift that’s homemade. However, four weeks is nowhere near enough time to complete this task. Somehow we pulled it off (somewhat).
The kiddos are easy – toys. I spent every weekend in December felting, a new hobby of mine. I made a variety of stuffed felt woodland animals for my neice and nephew. I had so much fun making these guys and they paired adorably with this darling book, The Secrets of Winter.

Felt plushies for the kiddos
For the adults the theme was a kitchen/culinary themes crate. Each would include a hand carved wood spoon (another recent hobby), salted bourbon caramel, homemade caramel filled bonbons (bourbon caramel & tobacco caramel), hand dyed ombre kitchen towels, and optimistically thought I would be able to sew waxed canvas knife rolls and aprons. The aprons and rolls were not complete, but that’s what birthdays are for – right?

In progress spoon
Salted Bourbon Caramel
2/3 cup heavy cream
1 cup sugar
1 stick of butter
3/4 tsp salt flakes (we used Malden smoked salt flakes
1/2 cup Bulliet Bourbon
Method
1. Slowly heat the cream in a saucepan and put aside.
2. In a different saucepan, add sugar on medium heat until it starts to melt around the rim. Gently stir with heatproof spoon until it’s completely melted.
3. Add butter, small cubes at a time and stir until melted. Slowly add the warmed cream and stir until smooth.
4. Let the caramel cool down a bit- 10 mins or so before adding salt and bourbon.
5. Pour caramel into jars. Use a funnel to make life easier.
**We also did a version of caramel where we steeped 1/4 oz.of pipe tobacco in the heavy cream before making the caramel for a tobacco infused caramel. This gives the caramel a peppery, sweet note. We used this caramel along with the bourbon caramel to make bonbons as well. The sauce is awesome on top of vanilla ice cream!

some of the goods/tools for giftmaking
Moral of the story is, if you’re going to make shit by hand, make sure to have enough time allotted. Great news is I have a couple of months to refine my sewing capabilities in order to complete birthday gifts and perhaps get a head start on next year.

wrapping it up

finis
Words and Photos by Candice Alinovich