Christmas Cracker Swap Fun!

I bet given the Merry Christmas post that popped up this morning no-one was expecting to see me again this side of Christmas! But I just wanted to post about the Christmas Cracker Swap...

My partner for the Swap was Cat. 

And last week I got a lovely cracker shaped parcel from her. The cracker itself was huge and was wrapped in beautiful rainbow coloured dotty fabric! I love it and I am going to have to conquer my fear of sewing to make something nice with it! Even the ribbon tying each end was cute - you can't see it very well in the pictures but it's printed like a measuring tape!

Originally I had planned to keep the cracker for Christmas Day but it sat calling my name and I couldn't resist! I untied it and opened it up to discover all of the following lovely goodies...

Inside was the Your Home and Garden Christmas special (a great read filled with heaps of inspiration!), 2 rolls of lovely red washi tape (1 with really cute hearts!), 3 cute gingerbread men ornaments (so it was a great idea to open before Christmas as now I can enjoy them on the tree!) and some Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Sticks.

It's a lovely parcel and thank you so much to Cat for putting together a great collection of goodies for me!

Cat has blogged about the cracker I sent her here if you'd like to go visit :-)

And here's a sneak peek of what I did send....

Cat's a fan of crochet so I made her some handmade stitch markers. She loves Cath Kidston so I sent her some CK stickers and I also included some washi tape tealights. I also tried to fit some washi tape rolls in and they wouldn't fit so I wound some round some empty cotton reels instead. 

Here's a close up of the stitch markers...

And I couldn't pick just one quote so included these two...

"No act of kindness no matter how small is ever wasted" ~ Aesop

"What a wonderful thought it is that some of the best days of our lives haven't happened yet"

I decorated the cracker with lots of pink and aqua as Cat likes those colours.

It was a bit of a nightmare to post as I didn't want it to get damaged. In the end I cut a box in half to fashion a long box - it was a complete hatchet job but seemed to do the trick!

I did try to pretty the outside up with a little washi tape!

It's been a really fun swap and I'm definitely hoping to organise one next year as well. It's great seeing what everyone has been sending and receiving. You can see who else was involved in the swap here and there's also a linky so people can link up when they blog or post the pictures!

And this time, it really is Merry Christmas from me! See you on the other side :-)