Our Gift Ideas

Thanksgiving is done, now what???

Well, now that we have gotten the big Turkey day done I'm left pondering what I need to get done and when things need to be mailed.  I read somewhere that cards should be mailed by the second week of December and that parcel post packages I believe was the same.  If your shipping things priority mail or via any other faster service you still have lots of time.  If your wanting to save some money by shipping slower you only have......oh shoot, a WEEK left!!!!!

With that I'm going to share some of our crafty ideas we came up with this holiday season!  The first I'd like to show you are some cute items my oldest helped me "bling out" as she likes to say!




For these we simply hot glued bling to some cups and headbands that we picked up at our local dollar store!  My oldest did the design work for these and I did the gluing as per her instructions, she's only 7 wasn't trusting her to not burn her fingers on hot glue!!!  These are going to be gifts for her cousins who are approaching the teenage years and are just getting harder and harder to shop for!

 Next on our list...... Gifts for Grandparents:

One gift my oldest daughter and I came up with was making hot hands for the Grandparents.  I'd originally planned to just make them for the Grandmothers, but she said we should make them for both as everyone cooks not just Grandmas!  She's so right as the Grandpas cook just as much in our family!!!  So we took some oven mitts and made a simple and dare I say cheap craft!

Pee Paw and Grandma

 
We made two sets, one for each side of the family, mine and my husbands.  The oven mitts came from the dollar store which is why I said this can be done cheap!  They were a $1 per mitt, so $2 for each family.  I had the Puffy Paint I used on hand, but you can get it for pretty cheap at your local store or here . I liked the Puffy Paint because it is made for fabric and is nontoxic for using on my littlest ones hands. I did the bigger hand prints first, let them dry over night, then put the little ones hand prints on top.

Grandad and Mee Maw

To do the writing on the bottom I used this Print n Press paper by June Tailor.  It's awesome stuff!!!  You just go on the computer and design what you want to put onto the fabric and then print it out using the mirror image!  Don't forget to do the mirror image though as when you iron it down if you skip this then you won't get the right image on your fabric!  Yes, it does happen to all of us!!!  I always print out my image on normal paper first, make sure it'll fit and that I like it and then print onto the iron-on paper.  You don't want to print on the iron-on paper until your sure everything is right!  I should probably mention that I did the iron-on transfer first before putting the hand prints down.  I'm not sure how the puffy paint would react to the iron and I sure didn't want to find out :)

Gift basket ideas for Grandparents:

The next idea that my oldest and I came up with were our spin on gift baskets for them!  You see them all over pinterest and the internet where people make cute themed baskets for someone!  Well, we decided to do a bit of that too.  It's so hard sometimes to find gifts for my parents especially when they don't seem to need anything, so my daughter and I came up with two cute ideas!

The first idea is for my Mom, it's a Sunshine Box!  For this we took one of those clear shoe boxes you can buy at the dollar store and we covered it in yellow tissue paper.  This was a bit messy, but made it that much more fun for my oldest because she was helping with the project!  We used Modge Podge which you can find just about anywhere, or it's available at Amazon here.  All you need to do is in small areas put down a coat of Modge Podge, then cover it in squares of tissue paper, add more Modge Podge to cover the tissue paper and seal it in, then move onto another area.  You do overlap as you go to get a full coverage on the container. 

We let that dry and it gave the box a nice yellow sunshine effect!  My oldest does plan to write on the lid "Grandmas Sunshine Box," but she hadn't done it as of my posting.  Once dry we took all kinds of yellow items we could find and that would bring sunshine to Grandmas day!  We chose mints with smiley faces on them, yellow note papers, candy canes, manicure set, socks, hair thing, tissues and lots of other yellow items we could find (see photo to left)!  My family is big on wrapping even the tiniest items for Holidays, so we plan to wrap almost everything going into the box too!

The next "box" idea we came up with was for my Dad who loves Tootsie Rolls!!!  We made a giant Tootsie Roll, to be filled with assorted Tootsie Rolls.  I'll post a quick tutorial for how to make this in a little while, but here's our finished product and the assorted Tootsie Roll items we plan to wrap up and put inside.

(edit: the tutorial is here for anyone who wants to make their own!)

My oldest wanted to paint the name on the side and course I let her!

The brown bundle in upper right corner is Tootsie Pops that I bundled together and then wrapped in tissue paper

Both of these "boxes" were a lot of fun and gave my daughter and I some bonding time while we worked with the glue and came up with the ideas to put them together.  I'm so glad that she's already into crafting and learning new things, but also I'm glad that I'm able to show her that we can make some great gifts if we put our minds to work and put a little effort into it!

Sometimes it's not what you give the person it's the thought that counts, and we put a lot of thought into these gifts that I'm sure our family will love and appreciate!!