Homemade Christmas Gifts
Homemade Christmas Gifts
“Christmas is a time when you get homesick, even when you’re home.” Carole Nelson Douglas
Here at BestCheap.org, our goal is to help you find low cost items that are more than just easy on the pocketbook. We’ve brought you news on the cheapest way to find hot new technology, quality low car and home insurance, and the best deals on new cars and motorcycles. Now it’s time to show you how to give the best possible inexpensive Christmas gifts.
The quote at the top highlights the best thing about Christmas. It may be a cliche, but Christmas is more than a time to get
that awesome new iPod or a gift certificate to your favorite store. Christmas is about family, and home, and feelings of
belonging. You can use this aspect of Christmas to your advantage when it comes time for gift-giving. It really is true that the best Christmas gifts cost almost nothing at all.
Here are four great homemade Christmas gifts for people of all ages. If you spend a little time on your homemade Christmas gift, and give from your heart, no one will care (or even notice) that your Christmas gift was a little on the cheap side.
A Homemade Christmas Gift for Babies
Babies are easy to buy gifts for. For one thing, they don’t understand the concept of gift-giving, and depending on their age, they’re probably more interested in the gift wrap than the gift itself. Still, people give gifts to babies no matter how young. That doesn’t mean you have to spend $100 at the local Babies R Us.
Blocks are a traditional baby toy that isn’t as common these days as when I was a kid. I loved my simple wooden blocks, so much so that my parents kept them in the attic to give to their first grandchild.
If you aren’t handy with a saw or don’t have the tools necessary, a hardware store should be more than happy to cut a set of square wooden blocks for you. Buy a 2x4x8 piece of pine (around $3 for a nicer piece of pine) and have the hardware store cut it into 3.5 inch by 3.5 inch squares. You’ll end up with quite a few sturdy and beautiful pine blocks for your favorite kiddo to play with.
Be sure to have the blocks sanded or sand them yourself with medium to fine grit sandpaper. Sand on all sides and consider staining or painting the blocks to give them a finishing touch. You can paint them however you want to personalize the gift for your favorite little one.
A Homemade Christmas Gift for Teenagers
Teenagers are hard to shop for. They’re so opinionated and yet so aloof and above it all–a nasty combination. Believe it or not, teenagers appreciate homemade Christmas gifts from the heart as much as anyone else. They just may not admit it at first.
The best way to come up with a gift idea for a teenager is to think like a teenager. When I was 16 I had my first car, and all I wanted were cool things to use in my car. A CD holder, steering wheel cover, or any other item that makes living in a car easier is a thoughtful gift and one that a teenager will actually use.
Making a CD holder that attaches to the car visor isn’t all that hard. You can find patterns online under the label “CD Visor” or “CD holder”, buy inexpensive fabric that matches your teenager’s style, and after a little simple stitching and sewing you’ve got a great cheap homemade Christmas gift for the fussy teen in your life.
A Homemade Christmas Gift for Adults
This homemade gift idea is a little bit out there but it is unique and most people have use for it–a hollowed-out book for storing money, important papers, and other hide-worthy items. A hollowed-out book makes anyone feel like a character in a mystery novel.
Go to a local used book store and find a long (and cheap) hardcover book or grab an old long hardcover book off your shelf. Using an Xacto knife, cut out a square section of the middle 200 pages or so, and prepare to blow away your gift recipient with a secret compartment book.
A Homemade Christmas Gift for (Almost) All Ages
Food gifts can be difficult because they need to be prepared a short time before giving them, and people’s food tastes vary. One great homemade Christmas food gift that everyone will appreciate is a beautiful box of homemade truffles. The first step is to prepare your gift boxes–you can buy plain white gift boxes at a craft store and decorate them any way you choose. I like to glue wrapping paper on the outside and place an elegant ribbon on the box top.
Truffles are not difficult to make at home, and they’re endlessly customizable. This recipe, from Food Network’s Alton Brown, is the easiest homemade truffle recipe I can find, and allows you to add whatever you want to your truffles to make them unique. Just be sure to prepare the truffles a few days before you give the gift, and make sure there aren’t allergy issues with the gift recipients. I’ve found that if people don’t like truffles, they use them for holiday dinner parties or re-gift them to other friends. Either way, everyone’s happy.
I’ve been making homemade Christmas gifts since I was a kid. It was a necessity then–without a job, I had no way to buy gifts for the people I loved. Now that the American economy is so anemic, homemade Christmas gifts are a necessity of another kind. Spending $200 bucks on supplies for homemade gifts for my entire list is much more reasonable than taking out a credit card just to buy Christmas goodies for my loved ones. Homemade Christmas gifts echo the true meaning of Christmas, and in the long run, the people on your gift list will appreciate the hard work and personal touch you added to their homemade gifts.
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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 28th, 2011 at 10:22 am and is filed under Gifts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.