I had high hopes this Christmas. I truly believed that this year would be the year I would make hand-made Christmas presents.

I really wanted to put my new craft skills to good use and maybe even save a few pennies while I was at it.

Just a few of my ideas included: a hand-made lamp shade, an iPad/kindle cover and a children’s apron. All doable and really fun projects too.

As my friends and family will now of course know, after opening their recently given Christmas presents, I completely didn’t manage to make a single gift.

In the end I just didn’t have enough time to get them made. There comes a point where you have to start that Christmas buying just in case your handmade gift comes out all wrong and you don’t have enough time to go shopping after this discovery.

In the words of my teenage brother this amounts to an ‘epic fail’.

The extent of the repercussions of my lack of production are untold, but suffice to say that Matt is currently using a scrap of my wadding for an iPad case.

I did, however, make my own Christmas themed wrapping paper using some seasonal rubber stamps and brown paper. This must count for something, surely?

So, my New Year’s resolution must be that next Christmas I make more than just the wrapping paper.