One reason I have greatly appreciated the Holiday Planner is the motivation it has provided to give me a little advanced encouragement to plan early in making homemade gifts. I have always desired to do so but the thought never crosses my mind until December hits. Homemade gifts are often less expensive and also more appreciated due to the thought and time we put into it. They keep the holidays simple by keeping you at home rather than rushing around in the holiday madness trying to find the perfect gift! It is also much more sustainable! Don’t choose huge projects! But also, take the time to begin now in thinking up ideas of what might be most appreciated by your family.
Evaluate where your skills are! I don’t want to get involved in a woodworking project, because I have no skills in that area. I can bake and I can sew to a reasonable level, so I began scheming up how I could use these skills to bless others.
Ideas include:
Photo gifts – grandparents always love these! Updated pictures of the grand kids are always a great way to bless the grandparents and they can never get enough. Walmart & Costco offer an array of fun gifts with the use of photos (From photo mugs, calendars, photo albums, etc). You can do it all online!
Themed Basket Gifts -This is a fun way to go! Choose a theme that revolves around a favorite hobby and go for it! For a ton of great ideas, visit Homemade Gift Basket Ideas or TipNut’s Ultimate Guide. These work great for housewarming, bridal showers, and baby showers as well! You can find baskets for a great price at Goodwill or your local Thrift store. Baskets are the great alternative to wasting excess wrapping paper and still looking nice and attractive!
Baked Gifts/Gifts in A Jar – whether it be a mix in a jar or pre-baked goodies, I don’t think you can go wrong. Mix in a jar can be anything from a baked good ready to throw in the oven, seasoning mixes, beverage mixes, etc. For more ideas and recipes, visit Razzle Dazzler Recipes or Gifts from the Kitchen or TipNut’s Recipes & Resources. You could even adapt some of your favorite recipes for a jar! If you want to do some Christmas gift baking, get it done ahead of time – in November and freeze it! These are wonderful gifts for neighbors as a way to reach out and share Christ’s love during the holiday season. NO wrapping paper needed here either!
Sewing Gifts – There is an abundance of free patterns online for: aprons, quilted coasters, pillow cases, laptop sleeves & cases, etc.
For more ideas, visit Buy Nothing Christmas for a full list of alternative ideas! (Thanks to my sister-in-law, Autumn for the link!)
Care to join me in avoiding the use of wrapping paper this year? I want to be a good steward and thus have made it my goal to avoid it altogether! For a great list of alternative green wrapping ideas, visit here. Baskets and jars here we come!
What are your homemade frugal gift ideas?
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I so enjoy your information, Lindsay and wonder if you might have an answer to this dilemma when it comes to making the gift jars…I am trying to use only natural foods and do not want to use non fat dry milk which is called for in some of the recipes. Any thoughts on what to substitute? I think coconut milk powder would work in the chocolate milk recipe, but not so sure about something like beef stroganoff.
One year, when funds were on the low side, I made trivets for my family. I went to Lowe’s and bought large ceramic/slate tiles, put felt on the underside, and painted them with acrylic paint. I painted in black on most of them and put the household’s name (like “The Smiths”). I also found some inexpensive “transfers” that you can rub onto the tile (scrolls, other borders). I gave them with a black easel, so that they could be stood up the kitchen counter as decoration like a pretty plate. I suppose you could also hot glue picture hanging brackets to the back to make a wall decoration. Each one probably ended up costing about $4-5. I also thought about using smaller tiles to make personalized coasters, but I haven’t actually tried that yet.
It’s 2010, so don’t know if anyone will read this. Two ideas – one is that Santa fills the stockings. Certainly keeps the realism and because kids DO know their parents’ budget limits makes them understand their wants have to be realistic for items out of the stocking. The other one, I should have listed it FIRST, is that the kids get 3 gifts or toys. After all 3 gifts were given to the Christ child on his day, so should certainly be right for children now.
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
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.
I’m not exactly sure what all I’m doing this year. I LOVE making things and I Love giving things that I’ve made to people, BUT I also don’t know that some appreciate it, so I’m trying to decide whether I want to spend my time and energy on making them something or not. I wonder if anyone else has this dilemma? I do a good bit of sewing. I also have a small embroidery machine, so I do monogramming and stuff and I got several -17 I think – scarves on sale for about $2/each and embroidered each child’s name on it (6 for friends kids, and 11 for nieces/nephews.) I also did a small scrapbook for my mom with pictures of my kids in it a couple years ago. This was probably her favorite gift because she loves when she knows I’ve spent time doing something for her. I also made her an apron for mother’s day, so making things for her is always a good thing. I’m thinking about using Wal Mart and making up some note cards for her with pictures of the grandkids on them. I’ve made outfits, crayon rolls, hairbows, pjs, purses for young nieces/nephews before. And I love the basket idea too — one year I sewed stockings for family members, or even buying cheap ones and putting some goodies in it is good too. Kids love the game night or movie night type baskets, get or make a cute game for them and some popcorn and goodies. With 17 nieces and nephews, we’ve had to do family gifts and basket type of gifts are always great. Oh, and candles, I made candles with things like flowers, coffee beans, etc around them one year, those were a big hit. Can you tell you’ve got my creative wheels turning again??! I’ve actually been making things for our church bazaar so I’m already in the mood to be making Christmas gifts. I can’t say I won’t be buying ANYTHING for Christmas. My girls will be getting a couple toys, this summer I got a toy on clearance for my nephew so I’ve already bought a couple things, but I really do love making things for Christmas and can’t wait to go check out those links you mentioned.
For wrapping, we normally buy stuff on clearance after Christmas if we are going to wrap things, or we use recycled stuff from the year before. Instead of wasting money on bows, we either won’t use them for us, or for some family members I will make up the tags and its been a tradition for us all to buy a Christmas ornament (again usually cheap the year before) and tie that on the top, then we will be using them on the tree next year. Or we might use actual ribbon, that can later be made into hairbows or put onto baskets. Lots of ideas — I love thinking about all of this early. Thanks for the reminder!
in reading your gifts, one thing that came to mind is hand making games for the kids. i saw in a magazine how to make like a tic tac toe game out of sea shells. i know you are creative enough that once you have a basic idea you can make anything happen. i really thought this was a cool idea. my kids love games and puzzles. i saw at walgreens here in my town that you can put pictures on puzzles and all sorts of things. even playing cards. how cool is that. its not too expensive. about 20 bucks. but who would have thunk it?!!! any way, just wanted to share that.
I LOVE homemade gifts!! Wish they would catch on with more people…I always feel like the weirdo who has to “make” her own gift. THanks for the ideas…my SIL has been wanting a laptop bag-I never thought to make her one!
-kristen
There are some fantastic ideas here. We’re going to be working on a simple, less expensive, more handmade Christmas this year. I’ve been looking for ideas and see some great ones here and in the links you supplied. Wonderful!!
My husband makes homemade almond rocha (however it’s spelled) and it is delicious. We just wrap these up in plastic, put it in pretty tissue wrap or a gift bag, and tie it with a bow and give to our extended family.
He has made a calendar every year to give to the grandparents (although only one is left, we’re still doing it). I’m not sure how he does it, but he takes digital family photos and resizes them so he can fit several on a 8 1/2 x 11 page. The page always has a colorful background he selected. He laminates them at Kinkos and prints a bunch of free calendar pages off the internet. He three-hole punches the calendar pages and the pictures and uses three rings to join them together. I’m not explaining this very well, sorry! He only uses one actual big picture page for the calendar to make the project easier, so the picture page stays the same and you just tear off the dated page when you’re ready to go to a new month.
What do I do? (Not much….lol!) I have made crafts, though I don’t really enjoy craftmaking much as I’m not real handy. I have made homemade gift baskets (I loved doing that) and baked some goodies to give. My parents (both our parents) really only wanted time with us and time with the kids, as they had so much stuff already. So sometimes, it’s just the gift of time they desire. All of our parents are gone now, except for my mom, and I treasure the memories of our time with them.
This post is perfect to get me brainstorming. Since everyones budget is a little tight this year my siblings and I have decided to do a homemade Christmas. No store bought gifts. I will be taking the photo route. Although it doesn’t have to stop at family photos, I have given framed scenic photos as art for the home. Or if you are really artsty you could give a painting or drawing as a gift.
Thanks for the great reminder!!! One year to cut down on wrapping paper my mother and I hit up the local fabric store AFTER Christmas and bought up a bunch of clearanced 90% off fabric and made gift bags for the next year. They were a huge hit and was great to see them circulate in the years following. I also haven’t bought Christmas wrapping paper for about 2 years. We save the paper and gift bags from the year before, store them and use them again. Also paper grocery bags stamped with a potato in a fun festive pattern work great for wrapping up gifts too.
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.
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.
I’m learning to crochet, so the kids are getting some crooked scaves from me…my mil has been painstainkingly making 3 quilts the last few months. I’m also doing a lot of baked goods and mixes. A boss of mine would make up cookie dough, roll it in a log, then freeze it in wax paper…fast and easy cookies!