Each Christmas I try to get the kids involved in making at least some part of the gifts we give to the special in our lives.
When the girls were little their involvement was often only to sit still enough and look cute for a photo, the rest was up to me! But now that everyone is getting older and more capable we’ve attempted some more involved crafting for Christmas.
Here’s some of the things we’ve made in the past…
Family Recipe Book.
Last year the kids helped me choose some of our favourite recipes to compile into “Zoe Izzy and Morgan’s Yummy Treats” recipe book. I created the pages in photoshop and added scanned drawings from the kids. Printed out and stapled together we added it to the top of gifts all with a cooking/baking theme.
Hand Painted Trivets and Wooden Spoons.
To go with our recipe book we also followed this tutorial from Lets Explore to make hand painted cork trivets. We also painted the ends of some wooden spoons while we were at it!
Felt Hair Clips
The girls helped to choose the colour and shape combinations when we made the felt hair clips (image above) from Angry Chicken’s tutorial one year.
Painted Ceramics.
You can buy ceramic paint from craft stores and even small children can paint on platters, mugs, or bowls. Just make sure the ceramics you buy are able to go into a low oven to set the paint.
Painted Plant Pots.
We used regular craft paint to paint the top of ceramic plant pots. I masked off the areas I didn’t want the kids to paint with tape and newspaper and let them go to town. Then we popped in some herbs and gave them as living gifts.
Photo Gifts.
When the girls were babies ‘we’ made lots of photo gifts. I used t-shirt transfer paper to put a photo and fun quote on aprons one year. We made personalised calendars another year which were a huge success. And if all else fails a beautifully framed photo is always a winner.
What are you making this Christmas?
I can’t tell you what we are making this year because it would spoil the surprise for all our family who read here…. but I’ll be sure to blog about it after the big event!
These are great ideas …there is still time :)
wonderful ideas!!!
Oh I love those barettes ! Im making up a bunch of rocky road and giving that as gifts
Great ideas. We’re making mini ginger bread houses :)
Love the idea for a family recipe book. I’m having my son make puzzles this year. I bought some cardboard puzzle shapes at Hobby Lobby. He is coloring them and then I am modge-podging on a picture of him and his Grandpa or cousin or however is getting it and then cuting that with an exacto knife. We’ve only finished one but it did turn out so cute!
I love your hair-clip cards, and the cookbook idea is really gorgeous too.
This year I found some photo albums with plain brown paper covers – the kids are drawing pictures on the outside (one gets the front, the other gets the back) and filling them with photos from our year. Our families live interstate so they miss out on all the day-to-day things so I think they really enjoy getting photos (I hope!)