Great Gift Ideas

Lets face the fact: deciding a gift for your loved ones and friends is often a difficult task as there seems to be too many gift ideas to choose from. Lately, I have come across some great gift ideas which you will find great too!

With coffee and tea being one of the most commonly drunk beverages in the world, your loved ones or friends, may most likely be coffee-drinkers as well. If that is the case, coffee sleeve from Posy Lane may be an excellent gift for your loved ones or friends. These coffee sleeves, not only keep the gift-recipient’s hands insulated from the hot coffee drink, but also being monogrammed, are great gifts highly customized for him or her. What’s more these coffee sleeves are made from reusable materials, enabling the gift recipients to make an environmental statement as well as a fashion statement about themselves.

If you are considering gifts for children, personalized placemats are excellent choices of gifts. As we all know, eating is the forte of most children, thus what’s better present to give to these young kids than these personalized placemats. These placemats are no ordinary boring placemats, these feature games appropriate for the kids as well as other activities on the back. These placemats come securely laminated and hence are safe for the children.

Last but not least, as Mother’s Day is Near, if you are considering what gifts to give to your beloved mother who has toiled hard to bring you up and shower you with unwavering care and love, you may consider mom agenda, which comes in varied different colours. These organizers even come with a 17-month calendar running from August 2009 to December 2010 and have different formats such as week-at-a-view format and monthly view formats.

I hope after reading this post, you have some great ideas for the choice of your gifts!

Monogrammed Coffee Sleeves and More Fancy Items on My Mind

I am a coffee person. I believe I might have inherited this from my granny who used to stay with us when I was still in high school. I remember her so well: she wakes up at around 4 or 5 in the morning, and always find her sitting at the dining table, holding her coffee mug on the right, while her left hand making table taps in tune with her soft hum. I started to have my coffee since then on. I used to take 3-5 coffee cups a day, but managed to tone down to 2 cups now. I fancy monogrammed coffee sleeves lately, since I intend to have my personalized coffee cup. Would it not be even more enjoyable to have coffee with so much style?


Fancy #2: My bestfriend has a monogrammed towel wrap that really looks good on her, a birthday gift from another friend who ordered it online. This towel wrap is a non-traditional cut from the bath towel we usually have. She gave me the link, and look at this simple black towel wrap with sequins that caught my eye:


Fancy #3: Bedtime is the real bonding moment that I have with Tarko. That is the time when I get to read books to him, talk about anything or everything that interests him, or just tickle him until he begs me to stop. I realized yesterday that a couple of his books are missing, and fact is I cannot remember who borrowed it. So I am also thinking of putting children's die cut stickers on his books, to personalize it, such as this:


So what kinds of stuff do you fancy, too?

Weekly DIY Roundup: Coffee Sleeves and Mug Cozies!

I am a coffee drinker year round, but especially in the winter of course I like my coffee to stay hot, so mug cozies and cup sleeves are the way to go! I love to make sleeves from recycled felted sweaters, and you can easily adapt any of these designs to make them with felted wool, just by cutting the shape out and stitching as needed. Here is a super simple sleeve pattern by The Caffeinated Crafter:



Freakapotimus has another simple pattern for a coffee cup sleeve:


And a third basic sleeve pattern, this one made with gorgeous Noro yarn, can be found on another knitting blog:


Moving on to mug cozies, danido crafty designed a great adjustable one, so it'll fit all of your assorted mugs!


I think this design by mk carroll is beautiful, and it's made to fit either a mug or a french press:


This one by My Fair Katie has a different way of tying onto the mug, with i-cords:


Chronicle Books offers an excerpt on their website from their Winter Knits Kit, including the pattern for this mug cozy:


This mug cozy by Pippi Knits Stockings is designed to also function as a hand warmer!


Hooks and Knives wrote up a super simple crochet pattern for a coffee sleeve:


And yarnattacks on instructables shows us how to crochet these great mug cozies that also act as coasters!


Idle Hands has a very detailed how-to for this sewn coffee sleeve with a pocket:


Poppy tutorials shows us how to sew a velcro coffee sleeve that can double as a cuff!


Mary Ray on Craftstylish explains how to use a twin needle to make this super cool sleeve, I love it!


Also on Craftstylish, Shannon Dennis shows us how to make this sleeve from an old sweater:


And I'll show you one of mine, made with a felted sweater, with some embroidered embellishments:


So now you can keep your coffee (or tea!) hot and prevent your hands from burning! Comment with any of your favorite patterns or tutorials that I missed!