Monday, October 4, 2010

Making Xmas Gifts

K started a knitting class last week, and is hoping to make some scarfs for Christmas gifts this year. That got me thinking that I should get all 3 kids involved in making some presents. We are going to do these to start.

1) Marbled Paper (with shaving cream!!) We did this years ago, and ended up losing all the papers we made accidentally. Will try this again. Directions here.

2) Bottle cap necklaces. I think these are so cute. We made a few this weekend and will be working on more. Great gifts for the girls to give their friends! Cheap too!

Any more ideas?

3 comments:

Jill said...

A wall thingy (birth record) for anyone with a small child, that can be cross stitched.

I have made tea towels (cross stitched with patterns from COLONIAL PATTERNS)-- they often sell towels at a discount as seconds, if not, still very cheap- about $1 a towel and there are a ton of patterns for every season, hobby and so on, and if you join newsletter can get a discount each month.

I have also made magnets (craft store wooden shape + paint + glue +magnet) -- a circle one could be a ball, the sun, a '#1 teacher' button, and so on. Keep the kids busy and make gifts all at once.

I also got some tote bags of various kinds and you can paint, cross stitch, iron on, etc. and make either something 'cool' for teens like a hobo bag, or embellish 'green' bags for grocery toting. Pretty sure you can get those through colonial patterns, too, but they might be more than a craft or discount store (mine were from WalMart). Let me know if you want to see pictures.

Homemade cookies, chex mix, etc can all be made ahead of time and frozen. Save things like coffee cans and decorate the outsides of them with paper or felt. You can freeze the cookies in large containers and then break them down into smaller batches to go into coffee cans and so forth later on. I've tried choc chip, pnut btr (the kisses fall off if you do the ones with kisses), and sugar cookies (w/and w/out frosting) and they all freeze well. Pnut btr and choc fudge, as well. Tasted just as good in FEB (I hid some and suprised hubby on his birthday the 29th) as it did in Dec.

Jill said...

Duh. Felt food for small kids. http://www.lifeisnotbubblewrapped.com/2010/10/03/felt-food/

Here's the bags I did. The iron ons came off in the wash, at least on one of the bags, but it was a discounted one, so I guess I'm not super surprised. Both girls got a lot of use out of the bags. http://www.lifeisnotbubblewrapped.com/2010/01/09/cool-gifts-made-at-christmas-time/

Christman Benjamin said...

Personalised gifts are also a great Christmas gift idea. You will be giving your loved one something truly unique and a gift they can treasure forever.