Cheese Bug

I thought I should share the gifts we made for our Homemade Hometown Christmas back in December, (now that it's the end of January...) If you don't mind, I will toot my own horn, they are pretty cool!  I have had friends say they want me (Hubby) to make them one!  And when I say Hubby, well, he put a lot of labor into making mine!  It was my idea, but with all the tools out to do it, he found the inspiration.

First up - The Cheesehead. This is the gift that Hubby made for our good friend, Aaron.  He has family that lives near Green Bay, so he loves Spotted Cow beer and them Cheeseheads (And yes, he is pretty upset about the Packers lost last weekend).  Since we don't know how to brew beer, we choose the simpler of the 2 loves.  A Cheesehead!

Not sure if I should be called a bad blogger or just inexperienced, because I don't have pictures of how these gifts were made, shit, I didn't even take a picture of the final product, I took this picture off of Facebook.  (Thanks Leigh!)

How was it made?  It is made out of Styrofoam packaging from an old computer box I had in our storage area.  Hubby shaved it into the shape of the cheesehead. Then we hot glued a baseball hat to the inside and spray painted.  And there you have it!  I must admitted he looks pretty good in it!

The Gift I made...
First, I would like to mention my first idea failed!  I wanted to make this...

A tiki torch wine bottle. I drew, Sarah, and she pinned it!  Her and I and a couple other friends had went on a wine tasting trip the year before. It just seemed like the prefect gift!  So, not totally reading the directions, I based my torch on - first - color and then on wine brand.  I wanted blue like in the picture and the winery that we had visited had a beautiful blue bottle, YAY!  Meant to be, right! Well long story short, the wine neck wasn't right, and I couldn't find the correct size copper pieces to fit inside.  So when Hubby and I tried to make them, we kept breaking the bottles...

So plan B.  (With only 4 days til the party!  Talk about pressure!) But, I had an idea all ready in motion! During the fall I saw in a magazine these really cool recycled bowling ball garden Ladybugs.  So, while out to lunch with a friend that loves bowling, I asked if she had some old bowling balls she didn't want any more.  She looked at me weird and said, "Sure, please take these heavy, awkward things I don't have any where to store!"  So would you believe I already had them in my trunk before plan A failed...  Maybe this was more meant to be...

And here is one of the final products!

This one is actually mine. My bowling friend game me 3, if I was going to go through all this trouble to make one... and I had 3 balls, well I was going to make them all at once!  Which is cool, my garden got a little Christmas gift this year too!

What did we get in return...  Funny, Hubby and Aaron drew each others names.  He made Hubby a calendar of our group's annual canoeing trip.

"Because sometimes you wish the best weekend of the summer could last all year long."

Yes, it says Canudists... Inside joke, we really don't canoe nude! 

And his lovely bride drew my name.  Stefanie is the knitter of the group.  She made me these.

Which are awesome!  These are the best dish towels ever!  They are soft, however, they are tough enough to scrub the pots and pans!  Love them!  (She made me 4, however one was in use, surprised I had these 3 clean!)

It was a great night, with a lot of creative ideas!  It turned out great. I'm pretty sure the census was to make our gifts next year.  I better get to thinking...  I think I have set the bar high!