Handmade Christmas - Signs

This year for Christmas I was really inspired to make as many handmade items as I could, using materials I already had here at the house.  Financial reasons played heavily into this decision but also just the idea of cultivating a heart of gratitude in my children and wanting to be a good steward of things we (or others as the case may be) had already spent money on and were just sitting around. 

I came across this great idea on a blog a year or more ago.  When my mom passed away last December I saved what I refer to as "the pie list" off of her refrigerator.  She kept a list of what type of pie every family member liked on the side of her fridge.  I knew as soon as I saw it what I would do with it.  Mr. Steady took the list to the copy store and had it enlarged.  Then I took a picture I no longer liked and a stretched canvas I had purchased previously.  On the large sign for my dad I wrote "Pie fixes everything", a saying from a sign Mr. Steady and I saw on our second honeymoon two years ago.  Then around this I copied, using carbon paper, my mom's pies.  Dad's favorite is blackberry so it went on the center top.  I just kind of moved the others around until they fit.  Then I painted each pie type. 

 I did something similar for my brother, using the stretched canvas.  His favorite was coconut cream so it went first.  I didn't have room for the whole "pie fixes everything" so I just put PIE on his.

I think it's really fun to have a memento of a loved one's handwriting.  I have some of my great-grandmother and grandmother's handwritten recipes.  Even though I never met either of them it's fun to know what their handwriting looked like.