Ideas for easy home made christmas gifts please

[reastie]

We are short of cash this year with me being on maternity leave so I'm hoping to start now making some hand made christmas gifts. Does anyone have any good ideas or links to ideas? I'm imagining making maybe some christmas tree decorations (possibly personalised) for people but don't know where to start. They need to be quite quick and simple to do as I can't spend days on each one but also look good (alot of the more simple ones I find with instructions look a bit ). Any ideas??? Doesn't have to be a christmas tree decoration but I quite like the idea of something hand sewn....

Ooh, I made this last year:

Apple and roasted garlic chutney

1 whole bulb of garlic
3 large onions, peeled and chopped into small chunks
1.5kg apples, cored and roughly chopped into small chunks
A couple of large handfuls of raisins
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp mixed spice (or make your own with a pinch of ginger and one of cinnamon) or just throw in a cinnamon stick
1 tsp salt
1 mug of brown sugar (white will also do)
2 mugs of cider vinegar
Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F/gas 5.

The first thing to do is slice the very top off the garlic bulb so that you can just see the flesh of the garlic cloves through the skin. Pop this onto a baking tray, top side up, and into the oven.

The garlic should take about 45 mins to roast, so start preparing and cooking the other ingredients meanwhile.

Put all the other ingredients into a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Give them a stir now and then and bring back to a simmer. When your garlic is roasted (it'll be soft and squishy), squeeze the garlic from the root end out of the bulb and into the pot. Let the chutney simmer uncovered for about 1½-2 hrs, stirring from time to time. Feel free to add a little more sugar or vinegar to the pot to get your chutney the way you like it.

The chutney should be ready when it becomes a thick porridge-like consistency. Spoon this into sterilised jars, close, cool and store in the cupboard until December.

Yes, the Christmas Pudding Vodka does look nice eventually! When you begin it does look a bit poo-like, but eventually the colour evens out and when you've strained it it is a cola/rum colour.

Thanks mermaidspam - sounds lovely, will definitely have to try it for some gifts this year! :)

Have you got the Kirstie Allsopp one? It's lovely.

Boxing Day Chutney as seen on Kirsties Homemade Christmas

2lb/900g onions sliced

2lb cooking apples chopped

1 pkt/340g cranberries

2pints cider vinegar

2oz/50g fresh root ginger(before pealing) finely diced

1tbsp coarse sea salt

tsp mixed spice

zest of 2 oranges

**

2lb naturally dried apricots chopped

1 pkt dates (175g/60z)pitted and chopped

1lb raisins

Juice of 8 oranges/1 pint orange juice

***

2lb white sugar.

Place all the first ingredients in a saucepan gently bring to the boil.

The object is to let the onions go transparent, the cranberries start to pop and the apple break down. You don?t want to lose all texture so a 5min simmer once at boiling point should do. Remember to stir.

In a seperate bowl mix the dried fruit and pour over the orange juice. Stir well. The mixture should absorb all the orange juice in approx 20mins

The dried fruit can be done before the ingredients for cooking to save time.

Add the marinated fruit to the saucepan with the sugar.

Stir well and bring back to boiling point, stirring all the time. Don?t leave the saucepan at this time or the contents will catch and taint the chutney. The free liquid will start to thicken quite quickly and the chutney can then be bottled. Lid immediately.

I am doing something entirely different to all the wonderful ideas on here and something totally uncrafty.

My parents have hundred and hundreds of slides from the 70's when me and my sister were kids. They have been sitting in their attic for yonks and yonks with the projector with no bulb. I have taken them and told my parents I will scan them in for them and put them onto disc.

However, I have some free coupons for some photo books so as well as putting them onto disc I am going to make a few photo books of the better slides.

It will be time consuming because althouh we have a good scanner, I can only scan one slide at a time and some then also need a tiny bit if photoshopping.

My DH says his parents also have a large stash of slides they never view and so we will try and do the same for them.

Because we have the coupons for some free photo books this wont be expensive (just time consuming) which is a good thing because we cannot afford much this winter.

I am also keeping an eye out on photo websites for sepcial offers and discounts to help keep costs down or get some ideas.

I am thinking of extending the photo book idea for my sister and BIL as well with some specially selected photos appropiate to them.

cocktail sometimes when you 'refer' people to a photo website once you've placed a order then they get some free photos for their first order to get them started and you get some free photo credits for referring them once they make an order - I've done this before using my name and dhs name so we get all the free snaps . It does mean you have to re upload all the piccies into different accounts though. Lovely idea btw wish i had time

That is a lovely idea Cocktail.

cocktail here's an offer on photobooks you might be interested in.

Thank you for the tips and link! May come in very handy.

How about potting up some early flowering bulbs into a nice pot? Now is a good time to pot them up and then all you have to do is put them somewhere warm & dark until you're ready to put a bit of ribbon around the pot & hand them over. I'm planning on doing this but need to find somewhere selling the pots for less than £3 each. I don't mind spending on decent quality bulbs to ensure they actually grow but need cheaper pots. An IKEA trip may be in order!

mutette I've done that before actually - was a good idea though

Hi,
Not read the whole thread so someone may have said this already but what about getting some cheap mugs (wilko's, IKEA etc?) and making up either a nice tea or hot chocolate kit? Could include a sachet, mini marshmallows and some mini cookies ooh! Or a chocolate stirrer mmm...

Last year I made up boxes of homemade sweets which went down really well. I just put them in plain brown boxes, tied them with red raffia and attached a mini candycane to them. The favourites were christmas pudding truffles which i'm going to do this year too.

how far in advance can you make your sweets pink ? Love the hot choc idea btw - might do that one

Um I think I did them a few weeks before xmas, froze them then defrosted and decorated them a couple of days before we saw people.
Recipe

Should've added that i'm sure you can do them further in advance if you're going to freeze them.

not so gifty but I made these a few years ago great way to use odd socks!. I got really into it and my whole sideboard in my hall had a big choir!

I've been reading the thread and taking notes I'm hoping to have a cheaper christmas this year and am fed up buying people stuff I can't afford and they also don't want!

I'm thinking of making chocolate lollipops for children, has anyone else done this? The moulds will cost a little bit but i'll have them for future years once i've bought them. I'm also considering the skittles vodka for the adults, accept some of them are pg so not too appropriate for them.

Can the Christmas pudding vodka be made with white rum, brandy or whiskey? Just don't like vodka but love christmas pudding!

eddas i've made choclillipops at a chocolate making party quite easy to get them to look good. if you find where to get the molds/sticks will you post the link?

reastie, that's good to hear I've found moulds on the hobbycraft website and also on ebay, and they both had the sticks and cellophane bags, I think ebay comes out a bit cheaper for the bags & sticks.

I also found this site which looks good.

I was thinking I can have a few practise runs adding bits onto the lollipops like glitter/sweets etc and even if they end up looking bad me/dc will eat them, they can't taste bad even if they look bad eh?!

I hope this is the right thread, there seem to be a few similar ones going so I didn't want to start yet another one!

Can anyone tell me, if you make stuff like bramble vodka, do you really need kilner seals or is a screwcap going to work ok? I mean, I'm guessing as long as the fruit is covered with alcohol there's no chance of it going off ... right? We've loads of empty bottles we could use if they don't need to be super tightly sealed.

On a similar note, has anyone tried the rosehip syrip in Sarah Raven's book? It sounds yummy and there are masses of rosehips around where I live at the moment, so I would like to ... but again, does it have to be a kilner jar seal?

sorry dragon I have no idea . I'm sure someone on the recipe threads would know though

It's ok, don't worry.

I wasn't sure which was the most active of the 'home made' threads, but after trawling through I think I can risk ordinary bottles for the alcohol ... I will check the recipe threads for the syrup, thanks for the heads up.

Btw, this is a great thread - I've got a load of ideas I want to try out now! Thanks.

Love love loving this thread. Thinking of making edible goodies - spicy nuts, marinated olives, fudge, cookies etc for my parents, pils and dbro and sil. Thought about putting them all in a jute shopping bag as the wrapping paper. Have seen some nice cheap plain bags on eBay and was wondering about decorating them myself. Does anybody know if fabric paint would stick to jute? Also, was wondering if I could get ten month old ds involved- footprints on the bags? Not sure about fabric paint on feet! Do you think I could somehow make a stencil from a footprint and then reproduce on the bags?