If there were a prize for Best Cousin of the Year, I can guarantee I would not be in the running.  My cousin’s little baby is a year old, and I still have not sent a gift.  When you’re sending a gift late, it’s a pretty safe bet that the family has more toys and blankets and accessories than they know what to do with.  So since Martin and I cannot start tearing down walls in our temporary home in the suburbs the way we did only a few days after moving to Berlin, I figured I’d better get my hands busy with something until our next construction project can begin.

A homemade gift seems like just the ticket for a working mom.  I picked up some fabric, onsies, and yellow fabric paint.  Then I made my best attempt at drawing a giraffe stencil and sewing a lined bag.  A couple hours later, our baby gift was ready to go:

What do you think?  (The juicy details of how to make your own stencils will be on their way, so don’t you worry!)  Any other ideas for us late gift givers… or on-time ones?  We’ve never done the baby gift thing before, so any tips from things you’ve given to things you’ve gotten could be real life savers.  We have a feeling we’re going to be doing this an awful lot in the coming years.

p.s.  Thanks to Christy’s shots of her smiling little girl at A Lil’ Welsh Rarebit.  They were enough to get my mind whirling for this project!