Time to think of Christmas gifts

 

August is the time for summer fun, beach, swimming cookouts,
and gardening, but it’s also time to start thinking about Christmas. While everyone else is sweating in the heat of the summer, you should be in the air conditioning designing and planning your homemade Christmas gifts. Back in the day when I had a huge garden and various farms around me in Northern Virginia, I would harvest fruits, veggies, and herbs and make homemade items to give away as Christmas gifts. Such as jellies, jams, marmalades, herbal mixtures, and homemade Christmas ornaments to hang on the tree. It was a lot of work, but so worth it every year.

For the next month or so, I’m going to highlight various items you can make during harvest season and store them away until Christmas. Remember you can make gift bags of goodies for each family you have on your list, plus have extras for coworkers, and friends you stop by to visit with when you go home to visit the family for the holiday, so you don’t show up empty-handed. So, let’s get started with a list of items you can make ahead of time as gifts.

Recipe Book of Family Recipes: ask everyone in your family for their favorite recipe and a picture of the dish if they have one and ask them to email it to you. Once you have compiled them all, print them off in a booklet style. The family will love it.

Spice Blends: consider creating specialized spice blends for each family, salsa, tacos, Indian Curry, Italian, you get the idea. Put the spices in a mason jar and seal then put a holiday label on the jar and add it to your gift bag.

How about dried food for soup. Take your mason jar and fill it with dry ingredients to make a soup. Write the recipe out and even Add a gift card for say $10.00 to cover the cost of any meat to be used. They should have the veggies in their fridge already. Makes a great gift that they don’t have to really cook dinner one night, you’ve already put it all together for them. I used to do minestrone, chicken, and rice,

Jellies, Jams, and Marmalades are always great gifts. I used to make raspberry, strawberry, blueberry jams and jellies then Orange Marmalade that went over in a big way to all the family members.

How about holiday potpourri or even seasonal potpourri for Christmas (Winter), Spring, Summer, and Fall. Makes for a great gift.

Bath Salts with rose petals, oranges, or another citrus.

Body Scrubs can be easily made and given as gifts too.

How about a gift box filled with bubble bath stuff like bath balls, bath salts, body scrubs, etc. Get yourself a holiday box at the Dollar Tree and fill it with your homemade items.

How about homemade jewelry for the Diva in the family?

How about making homemade Christmas ornament sets for each family on your list. I used to buy my supplies in January and begin making each set in May. By the time Christmas Came around I had enough ornaments not only for each of my family members but also for friends whom I would visit during the season.

Candles homemade are always a great gift too. You can get essential oils to add to your candle wax as it hardens, such as pine scent, orange, and lavender, oh the scents are endless. Experiment to see which one you like the best. Ask the people you plan to give them to as gifts what their favorite scent is. Don’t tell them what you’re doing, just slip it into the conversation.

Cookies are also a great holiday gift idea. I used to make mini loaves of bread, pinwheel cookies, sugar cookies, and typical Christmas cookies of course.

How about homemade soap - peppermint, orange, lavender, rose.

Macrame wall art hangings.

Each Gift bag had 5-7 ornaments in a Ziploc baggie along with various cookies, candies, jams, jellies, marmalade, and other gifts.

As you can see there is a lot you can do to make your holiday gift-giving so much more personal and fun. So, start now and you’ll be ready for sure by the time Christmas comes around. Hopefully, you’ll also come up with your own ideas as time goes by.

Artist and Author Elizabeth Kilbride is a former political operative, author, scriptwriter, historian, and journalist. business professional, creative artist, and life coach consultant. Ms. Kilbride holds a master’s in criminology and a BS in Business Management she stepped out of the loop for a while but is now back with a powerful opinion and voice in the direction of this country and our economy. As a life coach, she is available to counsel individuals to enjoy their dreams and a better life. Ms. Kilbride loves to travel and photograph her surroundings and is also a gourmet cook who loves to preserve food for the winter months.