friend gifts

We made our friend-gift holiday deliveries on the 23rd & 24th. For the young women in the church class I teach on Sundays, a wee porcelain dove, threaded with gold silk cord. Porcelain doves are a traditional gift for me, and I love how they turned out this year. I made some big ones as well that I included with goodie boxes, but I loved (surprise) the wee ones best. They were so fine and delicate and even a bit translucent; the light on my Christmas tree shone through.

Doves are my favorite Christmas symbols: wishing peace on earth, and maybe even daring to hope for it in my jumbly tumbly heart.

Goodies this year were packaged in origami boxes made from a 12x12 scrapbook page: peppermint meringues (that I ate way too many of), almond orange shortbread, dark chocolate truffles. The truffles were all going to be hedgehogs, too, and some made the metamorphosis, but the girls' hands got tired...