If you’re on a tight budget this season, homemade gifts can be thoughtful and go a long way. In my family, baked goods and homemade gifts have always been better received than store-bought desserts or gifts.
I’ve also done crocheted hats and scarves, small paintings, and things like homemade bath bombs, sugar scrubs, and salt soaks.
What low-cost or homemade gifts have you done or are doing this year?
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Posted by staleshrimp101
7 Comments
If they’re well made
They’re more costly than bought things at times. Considering time investment and material costs.
I gift baked goods, but never art (I paint) — too expensive.
Ehhhh, I don’t know about that. It depends on the gift, the giver, and the recipient.
If I homemade a gift for my wife, I could be looking for a new wife. 🤣
Especially something that is functional (hat), rally beautiful to decorate the home year-round (painting) and/or consumable and thus not adding to clutter and being practical as well as beautiful (bread/cake).
My husband & I bake cookies for anyone who declines to be in the extended family’s secret santa. They give us gifts, so we want to reciprocate, but we’re not buying half a dozen extra gifts. It’s cheap, everyone likes them, works out well.
I’ve also made crochet headbands & ornaments- things that are relatively quick, cheap, and are either useful or take up very little space, and only to people who I think will actually want them. I make it really clear to people that if they don’t like it, I really don’t care if they give it away.
I’m not a big fan of receiving handmade items unless it’s a consumable (love those). I don’t want to feel obligated to keep something if I don’t like it, and I don’t like the pressure to make sure I’m overacting my enthusiasm to the right level. Had an experience as a teenager where I actually liked the gift, but I often have a flat affect & I wasn’t properly masking (modulating my voice/face so they reflect my actual feelings), so the giver got hurt feelings & everyone treated me like I was an a horrible person the rest of the day, even after I repeatedly clarified that I really did like it, that’s just my face sometimes 😭
I pretty much always gift homemade! Lots of crochet stuffed animals this year, some hats, some wood burnt art, a painting, some wood carved into a book holder… Everyone says they love my stuff so hopefully they aren’t just all lying to me haha