Shitty homemade Christmas Gifts

[justilou1]

I’m really loving the homemade Christmas gifts thread, and am watching it for inspiration. Can we start one for ideas for things to avoid - ie glitter-encrusted his&hers champagne flutes.

“Don’t you think that if the giver could afford to send you a fancy shop bought expensive gift, they would have done?“

We’re not in the 1800s any more.....

You can buy stuff in shops just as cheaply as you can make bath bombs or home-made cake.

If you can get to a decent shopping centre, it’s easy enough to find a thoughtful, little something for a fiver for someone if you know them well enough.

And if you don’t know them well enough to know whether they’d love that Harry Potter mug or those gloves, then why the eff are you buying them stuff in the first place?!

Totally agree that Xmas gifting has got completely out of hand- but giving every one you’ve ever met a hand-crocheted coaster is not the answer.

Home made bath salts (the sort of thing you find at church bazaars)

Better to invite anticra (anti-crafts. See what I did there?) to tea that spend hours on a present they won't like. That way you can make them eat the baked bean tin cakes and soggy gingerbread right there in front of you.

I love christmas cake.

IggyAce

Another vote for the Christmas cakes cooked in baked bean tins, they look fab

Gerbil shawl
Made from gerbils or for them?

I was given an "inspirational quote" written in sharpie on a piece of paper placed in a pound shop frame from an ex-best friend. She probably spent about £10 per drink every Saturday in London on nights out, but that was my Christmas present.
She later ditched me as a friend when she got a new boyfriend and became obsessed with him, even though he was a dickhead.

Worst handmade gift I ever had - bath crystals in a small Valderma cream pot. The lid had a circle of tissue paper on top with a crinkled bit of tissue paper to resemble a rose or pompom.

I can't use bath crystals.

In every school I've ever worked in the bin is full to the brim in the last week before Christmas.

I wonder where my vast experience comes from.

Teachers dogs get very fat at christmas- they eat a lot of homemade biscuits.

One year i got a homemade cd of my bil singing uggh cringe

The thing is, no one actually likes Christmas cake

we do.
I have to make one every year as DH loves it. He hates mince pies and christmas pud, and is not british, so where this love of christmas cake came from, who knows.

My mum males a huge one, so that each of my brothers can take home 1/3 as they love it.

A proper thick dark moist cake should be made in october/november, left to settle, and can be eaten right through january.

if your cake isn't like that, you're not making proper christmas cake.
(the amount of booze in it may be relevant)

Any photograph framed, I don't want your holiday sunset

Homemade face packs, lip balms etc. Agree on homemade bath salts. All cant be given to charity and so end up binned,

Someone up the thread put about the culture. Just give nothing, break the culture. Most home made gifts are more about the giver than the receiver.

Can I confess I adore shitty homemade gifts and can't wait to make some! I love the ones I am given. I would much rather have a homemade gift no matter how rubbish than the plastic tat bulging from every supermarket.

Wow, I used to make shortbread and jam when I was broke (and no, I could not have bought presents as cheaply). I won't bother again.

Honestly, some of the people on here need to give their selfish greedy heads a wobble.

And the baked bean tin is a shape thing. It's abviously washed before hand.

Homemade gifts aren't always about saving cash. We are not particularly stressing over the cost of Christmas but I am knitting scarves for some female relatives. For us it's about getting back to a simpler Christmas, one without tons of plastic packaging and other assorted tat which has been made by a 6 year old in Asia and shipped half way around the world. I'd rather buy some good quality British wool and make a scarf than get one from the high street at the same price.

“I feel slightly queasy at the thought of a cake made in a baked bean tin.
I don’t understand the randomness of the baked bean tin. ”

Would you feel better if the baker spent mega bucks on cake tins that were exactly the same size and shape as baked bean tins?

Am getting some very good Christmas present ideas here

I love the kids’ Christmas cards sold by their primary schools. Don’t be so bah humbug. Best things ever.

They are your children, that is acceptable. Just don't given them to anyone else. They are not a gift.

“Eating a baked bean tin cake make me want to gag“

Whyyyyyyyy?

One year i got a homemade cd of my bil singing uggh cringe

This totally wins!

If everyone who hates homemade stuff could just put themselves on a list somewhere, that would be a kindness. It would save me making delicious jam, well baked baked bean tin cakes, quilts, blankets and shawls for people who are so utterly dishonest with me that they fake delight when I give them to them. I'd rather make things for people who aren't so two faced.

This thread is actually making me so excited about Christmas! I think I’ll start doing arts and crafts in October and take some of the ideas from here! I won’t give as gifts though I promise- just fun with the family.

I think the thing with homemade christmas gifts is that often the giver will do the same thing for everyone without detailed thought about whether the actual recipient will like/use them. For instance, one year my SIL (and don't ask me why my brother didn't do anything) gave my parents a trio of chutney and chocolate truffles. I'm sure they were lovely, but due to dementia mum has a very very limited food range, dad has an autoimmune condition which blisters his mouth and so doesn't eat anything sharp, and both have diabetes.
Also see: being given booze (dh and I rarely drink), jam (I'm the only person that eats it), and cake (I'm coeliac).

I do make very small (not baked bean tin, they are proper tins from Lakeland 4" across) christmas cakes for some people who ask for them after eating my cake at events and sometimes someone that comments that they like christmas cake but don't get it because no one else in their family does

I must be explicit that you must never give your child's teacher a framed picture your child. Never, ever.

Please.

Which get some onto frames with bits stuck on them, glass ball, shells or glitter.