. Make a trivet from a collection of wine corks, cut to even lengths and
glued to square or other shape of pegboard
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2. Refrigerator magnets
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3. Make bath salts by coloring and adding scent to epsom salts; put in a
pretty bottle or glass
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4. For friends with a fireplace or woodstove a log carrier made from
canvas or possibly denim, and pine cone fire starters (pinecones
partially dipped in wax)
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5. Picture frames or small mirror decorated with seashells, decoupage,
buttons, or other.
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6. Homemade candy sampler
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7. Other "specialty" food (examples: breads, cookies, pickles, jams or
jellies)
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8. Handmade stationery (perhaps decorated with rubber stamps, dried
flowers, sponge painting, cut-outs with craft knife). You could also
make letterhead type stationery on your computer...I'm doing this for my
grandmother who writes a cooking column for the local newspaper and has
a lot of correspondence with people who send her recipes, etc. It will
have her name and address on it and a cute picture of a teapot and
cookies.
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9. Cross stitch bookmark; sampler; pillow top
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10. book of family favorite recipes
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11. Knit a scarf, mittens or even a sweater if you're really ambitious!
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12. Build a bird house, letter box, magazine holder
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13. Earrings or other jewelry, made with shells, feathers, Fimo craft
clay, or other, and mounted on jewelry findings (these are really cheap
at craft stores)
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14. Crocheted afghan
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This is a inexpensive and very cute gift. You make a recipe of Rice
Krispie Treats and then take 2 sandwich bags and put them on your hands
and spray them with Pam. Then you take two large pieces of Tinfoil, and
shape it into a cross, and put the Rice Krispies in the middle of the
tin foil and shape it into a Hershey Kiss. Then you may print out some
sayings on your computer in large letters that say BIG KISS or whatever,
and put it in the top, and wrap it up in the foil. There you have it, a
Giant Kiss for the kids, made of rice krispie treats, and the kids Love
it! I found my marshmallows at a canned good store for 3 packages for a
dollar, and then bought a BIG bag of rice krispies. Have fun!
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You need a glass jar (you can either buy a holiday jar with a decoration
already on it or just use a plain jar either from your house or from the
store), a bag of scented potpourri, one strand of Christmas lights (any
color you choose) material or tulle and ribbon. All you do is put the
entire strand of lights into the jar leaving the cord hanging out.
Arrange the lights so they fill the whole jar. Next you put the entire
bag of potpourri inside the jar making sure it's spread out. Then, you
just cover the lid with the tulle or material and tight it around the
neck with a bow. If you use regular material, you will need to make
small holes in the top. When you plug it in, not only do the lights look
adorable but the heat from the light spreads the scent of the potpourri.
It's wonderful and they're always a huge hit!"
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A no-cost gift idea for the kids to make for grandparents, aunts,
uncles, and friends is to take a calendar (free from banks), designate a
month/s for each child and have the children draw, color or paint
pictures. Make sure they sign each one. Attach the pictures to that
month using glue or tape. Now, every month the recipient will have a
personal picture made especially for them by someone special. A good way
to show off the children's artwork.You can also let the children make
frames out of cardboard then decorate them and glue on strips of magnet.
Then the recipient can put them on their refrigerators and every month
the children send them artwork to display.
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"Gift of the Month" Clubs. Where you give a child or adult a book of 11
vouchers which they redeem for a certain gift each month of the year.
Personalize the vouchers with the persons name and what they will be
receiving. Give them the vouchers with the first gift. For example:
sticker of the month, cookies of the month, car of the month (great for
boys, matchbox- style car), even small rubber/plastic toys like animals,
or anything they may like or collect. These gifts cost like $1.00 each
or maybe even cheaper. And it is a big hit knowing they will receive a
gift each month.
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This year we are going to give each family a matching scent set of dish
soap and air freshener. They are making some really neat scents (like
orange & grapefruit) in dish soap and air fresheners. You can get
grapefruit scented dish soap in the Ajax brand for a dollar or less at
Walmart or Dollar General (or other discount stores). Glade makes a
grapefruit scented air freshener in the can. The dish soap is dark
magenta colored, and the air freshener is in a pink and white can, so
they look nice paired together. You could use other fragrances or even
other product mixes (like maybe a scented solid air freshener). I
purchased a pack of 100 brown paper lunch bags at Walmart for the gift
bag for $1.23 + tax. If you use the solid air freshener, you can fold
the bag at the top and punch 2 holes in it (one near each end) and run
thin ribbon or twine through it and tie it in the front middle. Use
scissors or a knife to make curly ends in the ribbon. Since I am using
the can air freshener, it will be too tall to fold the bag closed. I am
going to get some red, white and green gift wrapping tissue ($1/pack at
Dollar General) and make it look like the fancy gift bags you often see,
with some of the paper coming out of the top of the bag. I'm going to
make my own tags that read:
"GRAPEful for His many blessings" grapefruit scent "ORANGE you glad it's
Christmas?" orange scent "Wishing you a BERRY Merry Christmas!" berry
scent, etc.
I figure this will cost me between $2.00 to $2.50 per gift. It's cute
and it's something people can really use. I'm really tired of giving
gifts that people stash in their closet and pull out for their next
yardsale. I hope this idea helps someone else, or maybe even causes an
even better idea to sprout in someone else's head.
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My children like to make snowglobes to give to the relatives for
Christmas. Heres how: Take a jar - the flatter, the better. Also, make
sure the lid is watertight. Now take a small plastic toy. We normally
use the cast-offs we got during the year from MacDonald meals or as free
gifts. Glue this to the inside of the lid. Fill the jar with water and
glitter, screw the lid back on, and voila! You can soup this up by
pouring some food colouring into the water, or even some bits of
left-over styrofoam. You can also decorate the outside of the jar, all
around the bottom. We like to pick a theme Africa with lots of geometric
shapes in brown and tan or China, with tiny little chinese symbols etc.
Hope this helps some of you
(`´·.¸ (`´·.¸ *¤*
¸.·´´) ¸.·´´ )
«´¨`·.. ¤
"Worry looks around, sorry looks back, Faith looks up."
~Angelique~
¤..·´¨`»
(¸.·'´ (¸.·'´ *¤*
.¸) `´·.¸)
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