Ornaments

Making your own ornaments gives you a sense of accomplishment, long-lasting tree decorations, and thoughtful gifts. Some designs include religious themes including crèches, angels, and stars. Others include Santa Claus, stockings, presents, gingerbread houses, and elves. Most activities in this book need intermediate skill levels. They highlight readily available materials and show doable approaches.

Bob Drake's latest might be my favorite yet. After the unusually stripped-down Bob's Drive In, Bob decided to rebound and make an "overproduced" album and oh boy is this thing ludicrously dense. Bob's way too good of a producer to let the concept get away from him, though, and the result is these are songs that have a huge depth in the arrangements. Especially impressive considering it's, as with all of his albums, basically a one-man project.