Homemade Gifts. AIBU or is he?

[WonderLime]

This evening, whilst stuck under a sleeping baby, I’ve spend the evening browsing Pinterest. I’ve seen some great home made gift ideas and I was feeling really inspired.

DP comes home and I tell him about my idea to make a homemade gift for my Secret Santa present this year, as I think I can do something really cool with a limited budget (I’d been thinking bath bombs and sugar scrubs as they look easy).

DP says that ‘no one appreciates home made gifts unless they are really, really good - and anyway, it will end up costing you more’.

I’d told him just today how I’d been feeling quite low and fed up being on maternity leave, so it was nice to feel excited about something. However now I feel disheartened and don’t see the point anymore.

AIBU thinking about making home made gifts, or was his response unreasonable?

I’m pretty sure speakout decorates an item she’s discussed before on here.

It’s not candles, I do that and am about to go all out with my new company - would be very hard and unlikely to turn a £50k profit doing that. Particularly if you sell on eBay where speakout says she does.

Good luck to her though, it’s hugely difficult making money crafting

What’s ‘nido’ Annabelle?

laurie I make stuff from scratch.

I sell on Amazon ebay, supply several shops and outlets and do comissions for celebrations.

It's crystal meth isn't it?

Weirdly I just heard about someone I went to school with who’s gone all Breaking Bad and makes crystal meth He did a degree in er .... chemistry

1. Scented candles in large glass jars with flat press lids
2. Chocolate truffles with edible gold leaf
3. Kid soap (e.g. clear with fish, blue waves, loofah at bottom as sand)

These are my greatest handmade gift hits. My DH has even used the big candles for his secret santa at work with v positive feedback.

OP my top tips would be:

1. Master one item at a time - keep at it until you know that it's so good you'd like to receive it yourself
2. To keep costs down, go for economy of scale in your supplies so make this single item for everyone

Good luck. I love receiving handmade gifts

gone all Breaking Bad

I’m stunned at some of the responses here. People really think a Boots gift, bought on special 3 for 2, is better than anything home made? People throwing away home made gifts just in principle?

Wow.

I may be a complete weirdo but I hate homemade gifts unless I know the person and their hygiene very well. I don't know how clean their kitchen is so I won't eat homemade food stuffs.

I love it when my DW gives me a handmade present. However I have given some of my artwork away to friends and their reaction had a distinct whiff of recycling bin about it.

"I’m stunned at some of the responses here. People really think a Boots gift, bought on special 3 for 2, is better than anything home made? People throwing away home made gifts just in principle?

Wow."

Have you ever read the FB tat threads? It's eye-opening what shite some "craft" or make and not only give as gifts, but think others will happily purchase.

Never a good reaction MrDB.

I can't understand that Diva as thinking rationally, any baked goods would be heated to temperatures that no bug could survive.

Do you never buy from cake sales or have a slice of cake in a cafe or anything? It's unlikely you'd "catch" something from a scone.

ilost I know it's totally irrational. But nope I avoid bake sales at work or when out. I will happily donate to the cause but normally give the cake to someone else. Unless I know the person or I can see a food hygiene certificate on the window I will avoid it. It's unreasonable and I wish I wasn't like it but I blame my other halfs mum who has given us 1 too many cakes with dog hair in them.

“Have you ever read the FB tat threads? It's eye-opening what shite some "craft" or make and not only give as gifts, but think others will happily purchase.”

Fair enough - I have never been given a bad homemade gift. I agree, bad ones wouldn’t really be welcome, but the OPs ideas sound nice to me.

Once I was given a pretty jar, cloth lid covering and all, of lemon curd. Another time, a big glass jar with a handle full of hot chocolate mixture, infused with a cinnamon stick and a vanilla pod. Yet another friend gave me a large kilner jar of coffee sugar scrub. They were all beautiful and appreciated. The thought that other recipients of these gifts would throw them away without even trying them makes me feel depressed.

None of them would have been cheap to make, so in that way the OP’s DH is right, but they were much nicer than a store-bought version.

Equally, I just paid £7 for a smallish jar of creamed honey from a market. I could have bought a squeeze bottle from Lidl for less than half of that, but it wouldn’t be nearly as nice.

You can't help it Diva. To be fair, the dog hair cake has probably scarred you. Yuk.

Hand or Home made is great - but pick your recipient well. I LOVE crafting and am perfectly capable of producing at a professional level pretty much across the board and have pretty much done fairs the whole of my adult life. Having a break from selling at the moment and loving making things for friends and family, I generally ask first though :-) otherwise it wouldn't be worth my time and effort in my view...trundles off to order christmas stocking to make for new nephew

I don't think too many people are saying they'd throw them away on principle though. With edible gifts from your mum, friend or sister you actually know these people, you'll have a pretty good inkling whether they're hygienic about food prep. So it's not a case of anything home made is chucked it's more that not everyone is happy to eat food gifts from people they don't know so well. Or from people who we perceive to be a bit relaxed about hygiene standards.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who has observed certain practices and thought "urgh, I would never eat food from that person". I work in a large open plan office, there's one colleague who I've seen regularly leave the toilets without washing her hands, there another who will only barely run her finger tips under the tap because she puts foundation on the back of her hands and doesn't want to wash it off!! Then there's the one covered in the hair from her 6 cats and makes it very clear they're her babies and have the run of the house. She'd think you were being precious if you balked at cat hair in your hm fudge! So although I wouldn't assume everyone's a mucky so and so I'm afraid if I don't know you well I'd probably prefer not to eat your hm delights. Therefore be aware that your time and effort might be wasted.

A friend of mine who is a lovely, lovely person is very crafty and loves to make things, and bake things.

She would happily bake all sorts of things for people.

She is wonderful but her home is one of the filthiest places I've ever been and I avoid it at all costs. She is also unclean, her clothes, her hair, her nails etc.

I love her but Hell would freeze over before I'd touch anything she'd made.

Hmm, ok. I can understand that.

To be honest all of my friend’s places are annoyingly clean and tidy (makes me wary of inviting them round to mine as I have to tidy so much...) but yes I take the point that homemade isn’t best for secret Santa.

Saying that, something like a bath bomb, I’d totally use.

If you look at the following link -

www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/healthsafetywellbeing/guidance/foodhygieneandsafety/highandlowriskfoods/

• you will see that baked goods and foods with a high sugar content are very low risk in terms of food safety.

You might privately think that your friends and colleagues don't met your standards of hygiene, but that doesn't mean that eating their home made biscuits, jam or chocolates is likely to do you any harm.

Food from take-aways, restaurant, stuff bought from supermarkets or meat that you've bought but failed to defrost and/or cook correctly is much more likely to cause digestive troubles.

I'm sure you're right funder but it doesn't matter because for me and indeed lots of other people it's an immediate, almost visceral reaction. It's not even "Oh, it'll give me D and V" it's just bleurgh. I'm not inclined to force myself past that reaction for the sake of a piece of cake.

I'm with your H here. I have a lot of friends who are very good crafters. It needs to be very good to give it as a gift. By all means do it for yourself but not as a SS gift. I found those cute snow globe necklaces on Pinterest. Costed up making even one and then went on Ebay - you could buy a quality one for about 4 quid. Went for that instead.

I love a home made gift. I’ve made chutneys in nice jars and sloe gin- we’ve been asked for it to brought to parties, as house guests etc. So others do like it too!

I do think the seemingly widespread aversion to home made food is very very sad. I remember posting some years back about a family gathering where I'd done a home-made soup with (stock, fresh veg) etc and baked a lemon drizzle cake (using butter etc). There was quite a hostile response about how rubbish this sort of thing was and a 'proper' hostess bought food from M&S to warm up, rather than wasting time on cooking stuff nobody actually wanted to eat.

I'm not saying that some ready made food isn't appetising. However it will contain a great many more additives and preservatives to food made from scratch. So by and large my argument would be that home prepared meals are likely to be better for you. It is just a shame that there's such a widespread mistrust of others.

Is it some kind of individualistic, industrialised English thing, I wonder. My sense is that making food for others to share - and valuing this kind of exchange -is more deeply rooted in other cultures.

I’m not English.

It seems the only people who are staunchly for homemade gifts are the ones who make them!