Secret Santa

For the past few years, the girls' school hosts a little Christmas shop where they can spend a few dollars and get "dollar store" type items. They have fun picking out gifts for their sisters and hiding them when they get home and it helps out the school PTO. However, this year, my older daughter attends a different school than her sisters and didn't have the opportunity to shop that way. So we decided to pick names and MAKE (not buy) our present for each other. Everyone was very excited about the idea and couldn't wait to pick names. We (the parents) offered to help any of them with their projects if they needed a little grown up assistance. So far, no one has told who their secret santa is, which I find hard to believe if not insane...but I'm going with it. So, here is what I did for my "have-to-make-it, not-buy-it) project.

My youngest loves Karate and takes it at Star Studios. She is a green belt and just earned her first blue stripe. If anyone knows anything about karate, you know what that all means. If you don't know much about Karate, I'll use the book shelf analogy to explain. Each shelf in the bookcase is a different belt color. The higher up the shelves go, the harder each level becomes. There are three notches (belt stripes) that the shelf can rise before moving onto the next shelf (belt color). So, she is at the second shelf (green belt) and she has one notch (blue stripe) on her belt. Each stripe color (in the set of three stripes) is the color the next belt will be when they pass to the next belt color. So she will become a blue belt next after she receives two more stripes on her belt. That said, I made her a Karate uniform for her American Doll.

I didn't use a pattern because I'm too cheap and I didn't want to buy one or order it on-line. However, I did use the pattern from making Jedi Knight costumes for my middle daughter's b-day party four years ago. It actually turned out really good, and I'm even impressed because I'm not sewer. I'm more excited for Christmas to come because I can't wait for her to unwrap it. She will love it!