We have to admit that this year has raced by far too quickly and Christmas is almost upon us. Some of you will be organised and have almost finished your Christmas shopping, while others may not have started yet and are awaiting November payday.
When I was younger, I remember loving Christmas and waiting for this season all year but as I grew older, the joy of Christmas started to disappear and, instead of feeling jolly, I felt overwhelmed – Christmas decorations (which also involves a big Christmas clean and a front room reshuffle to fit the tree into the room), presents, cards, family dinners… everything was becoming stressful. This was when I decided to take a step back and figure out how to make Christmas less stressful and also cut down on some of the associated costs.
Christmas should be about the festivities, traditions and spending time with your loved ones, however, we get so wrapped up in ensuring we find the perfect gifts for everyone that some of that gets lost along the way as it all gets so expensive and overwhelming.
Here are some homemade gift ideas that not only will you enjoy making but will be greatly received by your loved ones
Christmas Decorations
Salt dough is a fun way to make lasting memories and keepsakes with your children, and they make great presents for Grandparents to cherish for years to come.
Salt dough is very each to make, you will need:
2 cups of plain flour
1 cup of salt
1 cup of water
What to do: Mix the flour and salt well together then slowly mix in the water until you have made a smooth Dough. Turn this out onto a floured surface and kneed for about 5 minutes. It is best to leave standing for around 20 minutes before using it. (Just like Bread Dough).
To make a handprint robin, press your child’s hand into the dough and then cut around the shape, add a hole so you can hang up your decoration once you have finished, then bake in the over for 1.5 hours at 110 degrees. Allow to cool down completely and then you can paint.
These are Robin decorations we made for family members. Varnish once dried and they will last forever.
Framed Personalised Prints or Quotes
Making personalised prints or quotes is a great gift idea for family members. You can make something truly personal to them – be that related to their job, name or their hobbies.
If you have a Cricut machine then you are already off to the best head start. Creative Fabrica is a marketplace for crafters and designers where you are able to find millions of illustrations, Fonts, 3D SVG’s, Logos, patterns and UI & UX Kits. Once you sign up and choose your subscription plan (which can be cancelled at any time,) you can unlock access to thousands of creative assets with a commercial license included and compatible with any machine. This way, you are able to gain access to all the resources you could possibly need to make some wonderful Christmas gifts for your family and loved ones. Take a look at their Free SVG’s files and you will get some great ideas for your personalized gifts.
Print out or use your Cricut machine to create some colourful and creative gifts – add a frame and you have a cheap yet beautiful gift.
Homemade Christmas Cards
This is something I have done with the children every single Christmas since they were born. They love helping to come up with new designs and they are great to send to family and close friends – they are far better than mass-produced store purchased cards.
We make hand and footprint cards as they are quick and easy to make in bulk and they help to showcase how much the kids have grown each year.
Fudge is actually very easy to make yourself at home and there are so many recipes you can find. I use my slow cooker to make ours – just pop in your ingredients (depending on your recipe there are usually only 2 or 3 ingredients), leave off the lid and let it all melt together, ensuring you stir every 10 minutes or so to avoid lumps forming.
It will take around an hour and 10 minutes (ish) to make using the slow cooker method and to make into lovely homemade gifts I buy the foil takeaway containers available in supermarkets, line with greaseproof paper and pour in the fudge mixture. This then needs to go into the fridge to set.
While this is setting you can decorate the tops of your takeaway containers to make wonderful homemade gifts. The kids love doing this and each year we make a slightly different design and different fudge flavours.
Here are our Snowmen from a few years ago – we gave them to the teachers as presents and they went down a treat.
These are a few other things I religiously do in a bid to help keep the costs down:
Saving old Christmas cards to use as gift tags the following year – put them away with the Christmas decorations and you’ll easily find them again next year.
Buying Christmas wrapping paper and Cards after Christmas – they are so cheap by New Year that it seems silly to me to buy them at full price – also store these with the tree/decorations and you won’t be searching around madly come next December
Shopping in the January sales and sales throughout the year – I get the Children’s Christmas PJ’s in the January sales (we always have new PJ’s on Christmas eve), buy in the next size up to ensure they will fit and store safely away.
I also pick up little bargains throughout the year to keep down the costs – gift sets are usually really cheap after Christmas, toiletries, perfume sets etc. and they make wonderful gifts for adult family members. Just remember where you’ve stored them!
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Clare
Hi, I'm Clare (Emmy's Mummy). A former Nanny and Mother of 2 - Emmy (born February 2010) and Harry (born October 2012). We are Essex based and share our adventures and misadventures of a busy crazy life.
