Are you making your Christmas gift list? Do you wish you could give some more eco-friendly gifts?
Here are some ideas for eco-friendly gifts you can make. Three ideas you can make for the kids, and three ideas the kids and you can make for adults.
For the Kids…
We made this tree house for my big boy’s fourth birthday this year. We used off cuts of silver birch from a tree my brother had removed and put it all together with a couple of screws and a hot glue gun. This looks much more complicated to make than it is, it was actually lots of fun, and with inspiration from Childhood101 and Irresistible Ideas for Play I am sure your kids would LOVE to get this on Christmas morning.
A little easier than the tree house, we made this set of round, random shaped, wooden blocks from small pieces of gum tree that would have been fire wood. Sliced into rounds, the kids helped sand them smooth and we made a cloth bag to store them in. That was more than three years ago and I know that those blocks are still being played with today.
Box Projects.
There are so many things you can make for your kids from cardboard boxes! Christie from Childhood101 is the box project guru and she’s made everything from kitchens to cars!
For Adults…
When I first saw this post at Epheriell Designs I knew I wanted to do it. I’ve been quietly collecting second hand tea-cups ever since. So simple and yet so pretty, and if you already have succulents growing they are very easy to propagate. A great gift for aunts and grandmothers!
Home Made Edible Goodies.
A sweet home made treat is always a winner as a gift. Last year we made Rhubarb Fizz using rhubarb from our garden and recycled champagne bottles (you’ll need to buy new stoppers) which was a great success. Or you could make your favourite muffins or cup cakes and pop them in this cute packaging using a recycled egg carton.
Seed Packets
If you are a gardener how about collecting some seeds from your favourite plants and giving them as gifts. Tipnut lists lots of great printable seed packet templates in all kinds of designs, you’re sure to find the perfect one to print out, fill with seeds and give as a gift.
If making your own presents is not your thing, or if you run out of time (like I seem to do each year) then you can still give an eco friendly gift. Itty Bitty Greenie has a huge selection of eco friendly products that make perfect gifts. With a focus on ‘eco-fabulous finds for kids’ Itty Bitty Greenie has lots of lovely toys, clothes and accessories… and I know a few adults who wouldn’t mind one of their drink bottles or cool new Goodbyn Bynto lunch boxes!
Win an Itty Bitty Greenie gift voucher worth $100!
Entries to this competition are now closed. Winners will be notified ASAP.
Itty Bitty Greenie is giving Picklebums readers the chance to win a gift voucher to the value of $100 to be spent in their online store! Now that’s a lot of Christmas shopping!
To win pop on over to Itty Bitty Greenie and take a look at their range, then leave a comment on this post telling us what you would buy and why buying eco friendly gifts is important to you this Christmas. The lovely Donna from Itty Bitty Greenie will choose the most, creative, funny or interesting answer to win the gift voucher.
Terms & Conditions
You must be an Australian resident to enter and provide a valid email address.
Entries are limited to one per household.
Entries close 6pm AEST Saturday December 10th 2011.
The winner will be contacted by email and announced on this blog post on Monday December 12th 2011.
The winner must contact me within 4 days or the prize will be re-drawn.
The winner’s contact details will be passed on to Itty Bitty Greenie and the prize will be organised directly by them.
{Disclosure: Itty Bitty Greenie has been a paid side bar advertiser on Picklebums in the past. I was not compensated in any way for this post. The views expressed are purely my own. }
{Images: Box toys image used with permission from Childhood101. Teacup succulents image used with permission from Epheriell Designs. }
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{ 32 comments }
The rhubarb fizz looks amazing
I’ve never tried youngberries – are they good?
I’d love to win too :-)
Oh awesome give away
I would buy the family all new eco stainless steel drink bottles!
Buying eco presents are very important to us, because we are modeling to our children that time thought and planning is important in present buying.. We are showing them that buying eco friendly is good for the environment but also looks good and are groovy.
Its also about teaching our children that resources are not going to be around forever, so its much better to use things that are sustainable
What a great website, I had never heard of Itty Bitty Greenie and now I love it!!
I would buy some nice wooden toys for bub to play with :o)
Being eco friendly is important to me at xmas time as I feel we live in such a ‘disposable’ world now where eerything is used and chucked out, esp at Christmas time!
Love all their stuff ! but we could really do with a few more Kids Konserve Stainless Steel Containers – now my big eating boy needs all his food too for out and about, I’m having to pull out some plastic ones
:( They’re great !
Sticking with ‘less is more’ for christmas, I would rather have a few quality items that we use everyday til they die than lots of fancy ‘pretty’ but not so functional items that end up being thrown away or of poor quality so don’t last long.
thanks for the chance !
Lauren
p.s. Merry Christmas :)
Stainless steel drink bottles for the kids,
Ones that don’t split or have crappy lids,
Being Eco and Green is important to me,
Having 4 kids who will grow up to see,
The trees and flowers and birds and sky,
Not everything poisoned and ready to die!
After much deliberation I’ve decided to choose
The Bynto lunchboxes; with them you can’t lose!
With one starting kindy early next year,
At least she’ll look snazzy while I shed a tear!
My other will be starting off in Grade 2,
So another Bynto will definately do!
It’s important to buy Eco-friendly because
If we dont care for the environment,well then,who does?
i love the sayings “we are using this planet as if we have another one to go to” and “only when the last fish has been caught and (something i have momentarily forgotten!) will we realise that we cannot eat money”. it is really important to me that we are sensible with what we buy and give. especially at christmas. i ask people to think about the earth when chosing gifts for my kids (or not to give them anything – they really don’t need anything.) infact all that my 5 year old wants is dirty dishes to wash!!! and what better gift really? dirty dishes mean that we have just enjoyed a fabulous lunch with loved ones. what could be better than that? if only we all could think of the dirty dishes at the end of a meal as a gift to be treasured. my new born would be happy with a tickle and a smile and my gorgeous three year old just wants to eat cake and to receive a gift that is wrapped in some sort of wrapping. he does not even care what is in it! kids are delightful. we could learn a lot from them!
in giving a gift, my five year old son says gifts should be handmade to show that we love someone. we have made some beeswax candles as gifts this year and little candle holders to go with them. he also likes to make cards. he currently thinks that chopping off a piece of hair and sticking it on the card is lovely. so my brother got a card with my hair stuck on the front (he gave it back!!! and i got a little spike at the top of my head!). if i were to win the voucher, i would have so much to chose from. i love the recycled colouring books and the star crayons. at the end of the day before the kids go to bed, we like to sit down on the floor together and do some colouring in. we do a page each and it is a special time together for all of us to wind down. the makedo kits are also wonderful. or as Mitch is going off to school next year, we could get him the goodbyn lunch box. he can even wash it himself after school :)
I love the lunch boxes! Always try to buy green because we want to leave a good Earth for our son!
Recycled plastic milk bottles as dump trucks? Who’d have thought! I love the little Snack Taxi re-useable pouches. The colours are vibrant and screams, “Do not throw this in the school bin!”
I’m with Cherie, I like the stainless drink bottles. Better for the planet, better for the user, user friendly AND they look great!
I think buying Eco friendly is even more important at Christmas as it seems to be the season for spending up big on things people don’t want or need and also the season of massive waste.
Cards that get posted, gather dust and get thrown away (hopefully recycled!), unwanted presents and associated packaging, gift wrap and ribbons, far more food than is needed….
At least Eco products are planet friendly and are usually things that people need and use often – best choice all round really!
Oh I would buy the lunch boxes they look perfect for rubbish free lunches that I try & do.
Buying eco friendly is important to us as we want our future generations to live in the wonderful amazing world/environment that we do & do our bit will help that. :)
I love the airplanes wooden box set toy.
It is a toy that both my girl and boy would enjoy.
I love buying eco gifts as they better for a healthy happy earth
And an eco gift is better for everyone even from before birth.
It is great to teach your children that more is not better
They don’t need lots of “fashionable” toys to be a trendsetter.
Quality not quantity means toys can last almost forever
That means your children, grandchildren etc can play with these toys together.
I love eco gifts as they also contain no nasty or toxic chemicals which is so very very bad
And when members of my family buy us “chemical” toys or gifts it makes me so mad.
So to sum it all eco gifts and toys are the best by far
And to consume less not more would make everyone earn a gold star.
Kids Konserve Waste-Free Lunch Kit (Caterpillar), my ‘big’ boy starts school next year (*sob*), and it would be perfect for waste free lunches (and then we could get the Butterfly one for his younger sister, so we could play ‘lunch’ at home)
I love the book on how to save the planet. I also love all the food / kitchen toys.
It’s really important to me to buy eco friendly toys at times to live what we are preaching. As we teach our children how to be sustainable, we need to show we truly believe in what we are saying by doing.
Christmas must be the number one time of year for such a huge amount of packaging, plastic, and other waste to wind up in land fill largely due to gift giving! So if we can be wise with what we purchase this can make a huge difference. I have extended family members who always include those really cheap nasty $2 shop toys as stocking stuffers for the kids in our family and it drives me nuts as they are usually broken before the day is over and I hate to think how many other of these junk toys end up as garbage after Christmas in other households. And what is this teaching our kids?!
Earlier in the year I made my kids a sweet little play kitchen using 3 recycled bedside tables and for Christmas I will be buying a (long lasting!) wooden play food set to add to it, so the gorgeous play food sets are definitely what I would I select from the handsome range available at Itty Bitty Greenie!
I can’t decide if I like the Makedo set more (means we use less tape to hold all our creations together) or the Kids Konserve Stainless Steel Containers (my daughter would love these and the Mudd colour ones would end up with mud pies in them too!).
The stainless steel mini food containers are adorable and would stand up to my girls tough handling of lunch containers. I do not know how they do it, despite constant supervision many of their lunch containers end up in the school sandpit. Their teachers are aware of this problem, as are the yard duty teachers. It has become something of a in-joke at school, lunch box in the sand pit – take it to Marita first, then school lost property :D More often than not it is one of ours. The sand seems to scour the name labels off.
We gave the girls teachers Keep Cups for Christmas last year as I noticed they all drink lots of coffee and seriously who can blame them :D So now they have eco friendly coffee options.
I have my eye on the Goodbyn Bynto for my son who starts Kindy next year and good old Sophie for my new nephew. The thing I like most about buying eco friendly is that you are doing good without even realising it. I find in most cases eco friendly items are so well designed and thought out that using them is a dream.
Thanks so much! I have nave now bookmarked IttyBittyGreenie and will enjoy spending time there looking at all the great products ?
In particular, I like the recycled colouring books and crayons – I am sure they’ll keep my tribe of 5 occupied and amused for hours! There are many other products there that I’d consider buying as well! Including the eco drink bottles and lunch containers…
I am all for purchasing sustainable products as I believe in setting the example for my children. I would much rather that they give and receive either homemade gifts or gifts that have been bought from retailers embracing the sustainability drive! My pet hate is seeing people given a HUGE amount of presents that are in essence junk, simply because it’s cheap. I further hate seeing or hearing that people have then thrown it all out because it fell apart or doesn’t work anymore. What a waste! I’d much rather just one or 2 well chosen sustainable gifts that will last!
Thanks foe the great giveaway!
what a fabulous website! Here I was going to leave a comment saying your eco ideas are just fabulous and then it is a giveaway! Bonus! Serious, that tree house is wonderful and the log blocks are just even better!
I would buy the lunchbox and stainless steel zippy bottle ready for creche for next year :) xx
Great post, love the tree blocks. Have been wanting to make some of these for a couple of months but none of my trees are big enough- might have to steal a branch from my mum’s garden ;)
I would buy the Green Toys Tea set. Many people think of eco toys as being wooden toys or recycled materials, but I believe that if you buy toys that are well made, and built to last, it doesn’t matter what material it is made out of. ‘Eco’ to me means buying a few well chosen toys rather than heaps of toys that may only be suitable for a few months, and not buying in to this consumer mentality that has been drilled into us. This year we have bought our daughter one present from us, and one from santa.
It would be a toss up between the red Goodbyn Lunchbox and the Kids Konserve Waste-Free lunch kit, perfect for to send with my oldest next year as he heads off to kinder for the first time (*sob*).
It’s really important to us to buy eco at Christmas just as much as any time of the year, as part of teaching our children how to care for the earth.
My little boy needs the Sophie giraffe as he has to stop sucking on my toes…………:-)
I would love to buy Green Toys Fire Truck and Kids Konserve Stainless Steel Containers (Magenta).
Buying eco friendly gifts are important to us because this way we can teach our kids that buying eco friendly things is the best gift we can give to our environment.
Those Goodbyn lunchboxes are great! They do look a bit big for Miss 5 though (she has mentioned I overfeed her when I pack a lunch) so I had better get a bynto box too. Oh, and some Makedo products, because we’re going to have 6 weeks needing to be filled with fun activities very shortly!
I have to say I love their drink bottles and lunch boxes! I have struggled to find the ‘right’ ones that have a mix of compartments – I have a little girl who likes a variety of things to pick from for lunch, as opposed to one sandwich – and a drink bottle with the durability for little kids!
Well… Eco presents make me cozy on the inside of giving and tacky placky gives me more of an, “Oh gee thanks Nan” (‘What am I going to do with this?), smile.
I would get:
-a Dandelion Bear because it’s got a tickle-able tummy
-Some Jack and Jill toothpaste because we’ve eaten all of ours
and
-one of the Petal Print Pocket Nappies because they make ME want to wet myself
errr…that should read ‘ Eco presents make me cozy on the inside, wrapped up in the love of giving’ … but I s’pose you could get cozy inside giving, if giving were to blanket humanity
The Goodbyn Bynto Pink and blue would be my number one pick as it requires no packaging for lunches and the more we can conserve the better.
Every year at christmas my family has decided to make each other home made christmas cookies, jams, treats so that we can really appreciate what christmas is really about. Family, friends and Jesus.
Eco friendly, Itty Bitty Greenie
its products are not meanie.
My daughter suffers asthma,
so your products, the best by far
Little Innoscents Hair & Body Wash
all other brands I will squash!!!
Tito the Tiger Organic Bath Towel
Lovely ‘purr..fect’ way to wrap, dry and cuddle a child!!
Oooh, I love the Fruit & Vegetables play set. We love playing ‘shops’ at the moment, and ‘fruit shop’ is the favourite. These would go down a treat!
Eco friendly is always important to me, not just at Christmas. The obsession with more, more, MORE, kills me. Our kids are getting op shop presents. They won’t know the difference and I can assure you, they are definitely not missing out. Do you know how much you can get for the same price as shopping retail!? Amazing!
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