Money is tight for a lot of us this year. The price of food is still cutting into our budgets as is the cost of almost everything. This is where making holiday gifts will help balance holiday gift giving. Of course, there will probably be products that you want to purchase. Young children and high schoolers don’t take kindly to receiving homemade gifts. However, co-workers, employees, employers, your child’s teacher, and grandparents are often much more open to homemade gifts.
Home baked goods
One of the easiest and least expensive things to give at Christmas time is homemade baked goods. Homemade yeast or quick breads are always appreciated by recipients who don’t bake. Holiday cookies are always a welcome tasty treat.
Different types of homemade popcorn can also be a hit. Years ago I gave a batch of homemade caramel and peanut popcorn to my friend’s children and they thought it was the best popcorn ever! The popcorn doesn’t have to be sweet either. Cinnamon, butter, spicy, and green onion ranch are just a few ideas that you can make and share.
Homemade teas
This is something that I have recently started making. I can make a lot of tea at a discount price.
Homemade herbal blends
Don’t have the money to go out and buy supplies? Take the herbs in your cupboard and combine them to make delicious herbal blends.
Making herbal vinegars or vanilla is also a hit.
Homemade Cleaning Products
Have you ever made your own laundry detergent? If so, consider sharing a batch to several friends and share how you made it.
Have you ever made orange cleaner? Again, share a pint and share how you made it.
Create a book where you share all your homemade cleaning products.
Coffee block candles
This idea came from a church project that our pastor’s wife shared many years ago. The outside of cheap plain candles were softened by placing the candle in hot water for a couple of minutes and then rolling the candles in coffee beans. When the candle was lit, the coffee smell permeated the air.
Sewing and Embroidery
If sewing is your thing, you can make all sorts of simple items using scraps from your scrap bag. You can make anything from potholders to clothing to quilts.
Crocheting or Knitting
If sewing isn’t your thing, but crocheting or knitting is, you can make potholders, dishcloths, vests, sweaters all kinds of things. You’re just limited by time and the amount of yarn you have available to you.
Wood or Metal Craft
If you have these skills, there are numerous things you can do as well.
Give a Free Digital Product
I have done this a few times for friends and family who I knew couldn’t afford to purchase one of my books. For Christmas send them an email wishing them well for the holidays and then offer them one of my books for free. This way, they get my book. (They’d get the book and I might get a review in return which is a win-win for both of us).
You might also consider sending a pdf for free to writing customers telling them that it is your Christmas gift to them. You would share new information that will be coming out to the general public in the New Year, but you are giving it to them now as a free gift. You might even combine it with a free consultation as suggested in the next idea.
A Skill Trade Ticket Booklet
Perhaps you don’t have any craft skills, but there are things that you can agree to do that can be of value to people you want to gift. How about a skill ticket booklet.
This idea is simple. Just create a list of things that you would be willing to do during the next year for this person. For a family member, it might include skills like “do your turn at dishes for an evening” For a neighbor it might be something like “mow your lawn while you’re on vacation (for free of course)” or “watch your kids for an evening” For a co-worker, you might offer something like “bring you coffee every day for a week”. For a business associate you might say “I will give you a free consultation for your business.
Consider a Barter/Swap Meet
Speaking of trades, here’s another idea to get more bang for your holiday gift-giving buck.
It might be too late for this year, but next year, you might want to consider a barter/swap meet to trade what you make with friends who also make craft items. Here’s how it would work. You and your friends would bring your goods to a centralized location. There, you could bargain with them about how you can exchange what you have for what they have.
This way, each member of the swap has an opportunity to have homemade Christmas gifts to share with your family that are not like something that you made last year.
Because everyone is in a centralized location, you can make more complicated Trades for instance, if you have a crocheted item and a friend of yours makes soap and wants your crocheted items but you don’t want soap, but you do want another person’s birdhouse. You can trade your crocheted item for the soap and then trade the soap for the birdhouse. The trades you could make would only be limited by your collective imagination.
These are just a few ideas that I thought of, but I bet you could think of a few of your own. You don’t have to be a Scrooge this Christmas when you have homemade options like these.
Do you have a person on your gift list who loves to read? How about giving a book from The Locket Saga Series this year! The first book in the series is When God Turned His Head. Available on Kindle and in paperback.
The Perpetual Homesteader 