Comments on: Simplifying the Holidays: Homemade Gifts

By: Dana @ Letters to Elijah

Dana @ Letters to Elijah — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:36:16 +0000

I’m all over photo gifts. They are personal, simple, and generally frugal. Thanks for the links – I’m already starting to think about Valentines

By: JJ

JJ — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 08:33:05 +0000

Each Christmas I make homemade calendars for each household in my family. I purposefully keep them simple so relatives will feel free to write on them. Each calendar has family birthdays, major holidays, and anniversaries. Over the years I’ve added the year and place where family members were born and more recently the birthday and date of death of great-grandparents and further back.

I use Calendar Creator Plus, but I’m sure you could use other programs. I update with any deaths, births, marriages, divorces, new partners, etc. All you need to do is print off one calendar and then you can copy as many as you need. With three branches to my family, I keep three calendars, print off a new set of three each year, and then make all the copies I need. Oh, and be sure to include a January for the next year (13 months total). This is a very inexpensive but much used gift, I find. One year I was busy and did not mail out my calendar to uncles, aunts, etc. and quickly started getting requests. My poor uncle forgot his daughter’s birthday because he had no family calendar. ha

Thank you for your site. Very helpful.

By: Niki

Niki — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 05:53:56 +0000

It is so encouraging to me to see others out there jumping on the homemade gift train. I am also doing this, mostly because I want to give something personal but also to help save money.

I have recently learned to embroider, so I am embroidering pillow cases, kitchen towels, baby shirts, you name it. You can embroider on just about anything so it’s very practical. I’ve also been using scraps of cute fabrics to stitch together rice packs, which can be warmed in the microwave and used as heating pads. I’ve stitched peoples names on them to further personalize the gift.

By: DeAnna

DeAnna — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:30:38 +0000

Andrea, I LOVE this idea of the handprints!! My only problem — I don’t think I have any brown paper bags since we’ve been using “green” bags. I’m sure I could buy some kraft OR, I do have almost 2 months, I’m so getting brown paper bags next time at the store.

By: Maxime

Maxime — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:52:40 +0000

We’re doing pictures for the grandparents, aunts & uncles. I’m making my sister in law a sock monkey, she loves homemade stuff… We still have to see what we’re getting for everybody else. Thanks for all the ideas!

By: Andrea in Alaska

Andrea in Alaska — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:07:36 +0000

This brings back good memories. When we were little, Mom used our handprints in red and green to decorate the brown paper that we wrapped gifts with. Each year the paper showed how we had grown a little more. When we were older, Mom used to cut out the brown paper in the right shape for the boxes she was wrapping and then we pulled out our paints and brushes. The whole family sat down together drinking hot chocolate and sharing stories while we painted snowmen, Christmas trees, and fireside scenes on the paper used to wrap our extended family’s gifts. They were a huge hit! One time my dad used a potato to cut out an intricate stamp of Alaska, but when he turned it over–it was backwards! Good memories. I hope to start the handprint tradition with my young children.

By: Jessica

Jessica — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:42:40 +0000

I love reading your blog, it is always an inspiration to me.
This year I am sewing most of our gifts. .Pplaymats for my new daughter and nephew; stacking rings for another nephew; photo lap quilts for the grandparents and great grandparents; purses for my sisters; matching robes for a cousin and her new husband; and blankets for my son and another nephew.
I stopped using wrapping paper a few years ago. Instead I wrap with fabric. I either wrap it in something useful such as a shirt or small blanket, or if the person is crafty and/or sews I will wrap it in plain fabric for them to use in their crafts.

By: jodean

jodean — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:56:54 +0000

My family always did quite a bit of homemade gift giving when I was growing up, and when I got married, I was shocked at how much my inlaws spend on buying gifts. I have gone shopping with them and they were way stressed about making sure they spend enough on each person. At one point they gave up trying to put any amount of thought into the gifts and just worried about trying to make sure everyone’s $ amount was equal. Kind of ruins the spirit…

I realized pretty quickly that I would never be able to keep up with their spending (nor did I want too!) and decided to continue my homemade gift tradition instead. I was a little nervous the first year as to how they would react, but they really did seem to appreciate it!

A few things I have tried:
Baked goods or homemade baking mixes in a jar. (This year family and neighbors are getting canned goods: homemade apple butter and peach-pineapple-honey jam. Yum!)
Knitted scarves, mittens, socks, etc…
Crocheted snowflake ornaments (my aunt-in-law loved these so much she has requested more!)
Homemade soaps
photobooks
“certificates” for servies you can do for them (I took portraits of my sis’s kids one year when she couldn’t afford them, gave knitting lessons to my sis-in-law, even washed and vaccuumed my father-in-law’s truck!!)

Even when I do purchase things, I try to stick with things like tickets to a performance or a dinner night out rather than stuff.

It sure is a lot more fun than fighting the mall crowds!

By: Deena

Deena — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 06:58:06 +0000

We are going to be making bathsalts for several people this year. We found bags of the very fine Epsom Salt at Sam’s Club last weekend for 0.41 for an 8 lb bag…. needless to say I picked up 6 bags…. maybe overkill, but I figured it was so inexpensive for gifts, as we already have a variety of pure essential oils for our homemade cleaners and some decorative lotion bottles I received for my birthday this year.

It is so wonderful getting so many ideas from all of you. Let us keep this spark going, the more ideas the better. What a way to do things for people throughout the year, too.

By: Dona (mom24boyz)

Dona (mom24boyz) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:12:30 +0000

Fishmama at http://www.lifeasmom.com/2008/10/christmas-planning-make-gift.html had some awesome ideas posted on this..My favorite was her make a DVD one! So we are going to create a dvd a slide show of sorts for our family…I am sure everyone will get a kick out of it.