Handmade gifts and stinky feet

Are you finished with you Christmas shopping? If not, might I remind you that Christmas is in two days?  If you need a last minute gift but want to avoid the mall, why not consider making something? While our Christmas will definitely not be a homemade one this year, I do wish I had put more time and energy into making presents.

  

One of my favorite gifts to give is a pretty package of homemade marshmallows and hot cocoa mix.  To make it super simple, buy holiday cellophane bags at Target and tie them together with a pretty ribbon. If you want to take this to the next level, you could make hot chocolate on a stick (and if you do, please send me one to try- I love this idea!).  

Image via www.sunset.com

An easy, but well received, gift that I have given in past years is a dolled-up paint can with sand and narcissus (paperwhites) bulbs inside.  Forced bulb kits that include paperwhites and amaryllis are very popular during the holidays.  This homemade version can be done for less than $2.00 a piece, making it an economical gift to make multiples of.  Find written instructions here. 

Do you read Design Mom?  Every year, her children make gifts for each sibling.  I think my favorite gifts this year were the bleached out tees.  

Image via Design Mom 

Need more ideas?  Martha Stewart, of course, is full of them.  You can find dozens of homemade gift ideas here.  While some of her projects are charming and look reasonably easy, others look ridiculously hard.  Then there are those that are just plain ridiculous:

image via www.marthastewart.com

Do you have any ideas for easy handmade/homemade gifts?  If so, please share!  

P.S. 

Before I go, here's a conversation I had with Hadley tonight.  We were driving home after dropping off a white elephant gift at Tyler's work Christmas party.  Hadley asked if I would tell her a "once upon a time."  The story started off as "Once upon a time, there was a little girl..." She took it from there, and told me that the  little girl was named Hadley and there was a little boy named Blake.  They went shopping at the mall and they got hungry, so they had a pretzel and drank some water from a straw.  Then they bought a ring present for their mommy. "What did the ring look like?" I asked.  Hadley told me the ring was "big" and "minty."   Wondering if she was making things up, or if I should really expect a ring for Christmas, I asked if the little girl bought anything else for her mommy while she was at the mall.  Her response was, "Yeah!  Feet!  Big, stinky feet!"  Hmm... I guess I'll have to wait two more days to find out the truth.  I'm thinking she's full of it!