Home Made Gifts

I cross-stitch. I have made Christmas socks for my kids, husband and self. Since it is time consuming and I only plan on making one for everyone I make my kids wait until they are eight to pick the pattern they want.

I am hoping to have one done by June this year :)

"I love to give homemade gifts. Which one of my children do you want?" LOL!! MY mom gave me a magnet with that on it.

We love those blankets, too! We like to do the photos. My family is all far away, and giving special photos in nice frames seems to always be appreciated.

We have also painted/decorated terra cotta pots and put a nice plant/flower in it.

We made sculpey Christmas ornaments one year - a burrito for a friend who loves Chipotle, and a yellow lab for some other friends. Their dog passed away that year and we wanted to do a memorial gift. Of course, if it weren't for the fact that the dog's name was on it, they may not have known what it was!! LOL! But, it was the thought that counted :)

My SIL gave us vodka with cranberries in it- she also made vanilla flavored vodka for another family member. She says it's really easy. Of course not the best for involving kids....but the adults sure seemed to like it!! :)

I'm a scrapbooker and love to make cards and have made sets of cards for gifts. A recent bridal shower gift was a Close To My Heart card/recipe box covered in pretty paper (soooo easy to do! measuring/cutting the paper is the hardest part but not that hard) and I made up a set of thank you cards in her wedding colors and she said she loved them and they were too pretty to use! Maybe for those special occasion thank you's when she's past the stacks of thank you cards for wedding/shower gifts she'll use these cards?

Msg me if you want to see what I did as I know links aren't allowed on here.

we have two plum trees and the fruit ripens all at once, so every year I make lots of jam. It's very handy to keep on hand for those times you want to give someone a little appreciation gift (teachers, neighbors who took in the mail when you were away, etc.).
My more time-intensive gifts were the matching girls and doll pajamas I made for my daughters and their favorite cousin. I also made a bunch of extra doll jammies to give to their friends as birthday presents and my daughters helped me make matching doll pillows to go with the jammies.

Bath salts. Start with epsen salt and baking soda and add dried herbs. I recently made some with rosemary, an astringent, chamomlie flowers, muscle relaxant, and lavender flowers, general relaxant. On Monday, my daughter-in-law hit a patch of ice on the hwy and did a couple of donuts and slid off the road into a snow bank. Luckily no big injuries or car damage but a fairly bad case of whiplash. Last night I finally talked her into a hot bath with my bath salts and she felt sooo much better.
I go to Goodwill and pick up nice looking glass containers with covers, use a bit of tape to hold the covers on and give it as a gift. You only need 1/4 - 1/2 cup of the bath salts in a tub of water.
I also like to crochet baby afgans and lap robes, but daughter, 24, tells me she and her friends don't like the crocheted baby afgans because they are too scratchy. Personally I think all babies should be welcomed with an afgan made specially for them. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

I make food gifts. I make cakes and cupcakes and give them, with the recipe attached, on a pretty or holiday appropriate platter or serving box.

I love to crochet...it's very time consuming but people love them as gifts. I have made many baby blankets and right now am working on hat/scarf/mitten sets for next christmas for those I want to give.

Your right, the blanket you're talking about it AWESOME. I've had two made for my household and they're my favorite to snuggle under!

I also make soaps, soy candles, just made some today....
I started making rice and flax seed pillows with essential oils in it..
like to bake things and put it with the other things I made.
And also crochet started just a little while ago, so much fun.....

Another tip, is to safety pin the blankets together, so they don't slide and get uneven while tying.

I have a small craft business and I enjoy hand making gifts. I do jewelry, greeting cards, scrapbooks, and other paper gifts. I LOVE to make baby gifts! Bibs, burp cloths, ribbon blankets, cloth wipes, diaper covers. I generally try to make all my gifts.

I've made some scrap books...
for MIL a holiday one with pictures of Christmases for the past 10 years
for friends of our vacations together

My girlfriend made me an angel out of that crinkly paper about 10 years ago. I still bring it out every Christmas.

I learned how to make handcrafted soap (oils/fats plus a lye solution). It's way cheaper to make really nice, skin-loving soap from scratch, even if you order some of the "spendy" items (like the fragrance oils and things like cocoa butter or shea butter). And then I start making bath bombs (aka bath fizzies). It's a lot of fun, and if you wrap them up in a wrapper with a nice label (I just used MS Word to make some labels), people go ga-ga over them. FYI, I made usable (though not pretty soap) on my very first attempt, and nice usable soap (as in, can give it away) within 3 tries.

I love homemade cookies myself, as I don't have much time to bake (and I have a terrible sweet tooth). Also, my brother makes awesome homemade salsa.

I think a lot of it is how good the end product is, and how well it is presented. I noticed with the soap that w/o a nice label, only the diehard soap fanatics would get excited, but with a label, pretty much anyone loves and thinks it's awesome. Packaging it up in a basket with some filler and a ribbon and/or card just makes almost any homemade gift seem awesome. :)

(If you want to learn about soap making, I suggest checking out http://www.millersoap.com/; for bath bombs, check out http://www.teachsoap.com/, and I'm also happy to answer any questions if you want to message me).

I made a growth chart for my daughter, and have made a few for friends for baby shower gifts. Super cute and fun!!! My mom and I are making my daughte a memory quilt out of her old baby clothes, burp rags, bibs, etc. I've never sewn and my mom has never made a quilt... So it should be interesting!!!