Oh me, oh my!
Our homemade gift exchange brought out some delightful creativity in the family. We had homemade log cabins and furnished doll houses for little girls, wood-framed Lego baseplates for boys, gift baskets of treats, personalized T-shirts, denim blankets, wooden shelves, pretty scarves, knitted slippers, and more…
Here are a few our little family made, most of them super-simple. I share them to spark your thinking. I’m going to say this only once: Do not try them all. I had to make a mental note for 2014–no more than (x number) of homemade gifts!
1. Prepaid dates basket
Inspired by this website and armed with funds from a personal project, I created this for my husband: twelve envelopes containing plans and gift certificates for date nights, one for every month of the New Year. You can be as extravagant or frugal as you wish in planning time together! I interspersed bigger dates (an IMAX movie, dinner out, or a mini-golf spree) with no-cost fun (a hike, a picnic, a free concert, an intimate rendezvous). He was delighted, and the planning and scheming brought me much joy.
2. “Fun in a Box” for couples
Using an idea from thedailydigi, I made a list of spunky, low-cost, slightly tacky activities for couples to do together, and gave them to our brothers-and-sisters-in-law in Christmasy little boxes. View or print my list here: Fun in a Box (for couples).
3. Grapevine wreath with seeds
For a sister-in-law who loves to garden, I saved seeds from my flowers and herbs, packaged them in little envelopes, and hung them with ribbon on a homemade grapevine wreath. You could buy seed packets instead of making them yourself; but if you live in the Midwest and have access to woods, chances are you can find an abundance of wild grapevine. The wreaths are sooo fun to wind up.
4. Chocolate chess set
With a simple chocolate mold (available here from amazon), we made black and white sets of chessmen, gluing the chocolate halves together with caramel. And of course, here’s how to make the board if you want a playing set…
5. Sock puppets
This was another favorite project—forgiving, low-cost, and open to infinite variation. Simple instructions at wikihow… and then, the sky’s the limit!
6. Jar mixes
For another SIL, my son layered gluten-free food mixes in Mason jars.
For the fourth jar in the set, we combined bath salts with fragrance oils and a drop of food coloring, for layered relaxation.
7. Framed word art
And finally, you know the rage with photos of alphabet letters in nature, to spell inspirational words? Believe, Rest, Love and so on? We shot our own, with the kids forming the letters to spell our word of choice. Turned them black and white, added simple black frames from Dollar Tree, and called that project complete.
We even got our cat in on the E!
F
G
*****
Are you inspired? Tired? Haywired? I’m singing Christmas songs…
You are full of so many great ideas!!! I LOVE the cat and Aarick’s expression on the letter E photo!!!
I’m a very tired kind of inspired which is actually a funky combination. I find myself most creative in a quirky sort of way in this state of mind.
the sock puppets were my absolute fave! Lord knows we have enough friendless socks around here and the kids would have so much fun making them. Thanks for the good ideas!