All the homemade Christmas people over here please, lets share our ideas :) - THIRD EDITION :)

[theancientmarinator]

Phew! For a minute I thought the thread wouldn't accept my message because I just wasn't making enough stuff for Christmas this week. And then I realised it was because we had reached 1000 posts. Thought I'd lost you all!

We were all listing what we need to finish still. I'll be back tomorrow with mine - if I do it now I will dissolve in tears but tomorrow I will have had a night's sleep and a stiff drink. Not necessarily in that order, although....

My recipe book went down a storm...thank god!!

Just marking my place, will upload pics and update tomorrow

Choc pizza a hit. Phew! Stuck a gift voucher inside the lid of each though - might have been less of a hit if they'd been the whole present

Merry Christmas marinator

Upload your pics marTURKEY!! Do it, do it now!

Well, please hold you breath ladies; today I am venturing down the road of giving homemade (shock horror!) presents to my Sisters and their Families. Wish me luck and I'll report back ce soir...

Ooh, good luck flubba - let us know how you get on. I need to find the lead for my phone, but will sort out pics later.

Everything was very gratefully received, and I was presented with a hamper of goodies from my Mum - seems the home made Christmas is catching!

We are all behind you Flubba - happy gifting!

Hi All. Glad to hear you all had a good Christmas. We've had a lovely time.

Not sure if I will bother with the homemade hampers next year. My family don't seem to be overly impressed. My aunt hasn't even opened hers yet - it is just sitting on the floor in the corner unopened :(. The rest of them had a bit of a rummage & eaten a bit but that's it, despite me repeatedly telling them that they need to be eaten quickly or put in the fridge, they are still just sitting in the hampers sweating in front of the fire. So don't think it was all the bother really :(. The friends that I had given some homemade bits too were impressed and loved it so that was good

Well my parents were very, grateful for and appreciative of their presents, and my teenage niece was blown away by her shoulder bag and make-up roll bag too. All little nieces loved their crayon-rolls, aprons and their cookie-mixes-in-a-jar. One sister definitely loved her bag and was suitably impressed, the other sister not so sure. :( She's a bit more high-maintenance and was a bit at the tea-cosy which she doesn't remember asking for (I showed her the email where she'd specifically asked for one), and she was less than polite about the bag for my nephew (which I had been worried about tbh, for not being boy-like enough ), :( but all condiments and fudges etc went down well with all.

Zeeky you and I can always give each other presents next year and ignore the ungrateful relatives. I went and had a bit of a cry about my sister's reactions when she wasn't looking. Had totally over-estimated their responses :( (well, hers actually, the others were fine, but hers overshadowed it all a bit).

Flubba it really ticks me off when people treat a gift like a salary - ie something they have earned and have a right to and which they can complain about if it's not 'enough'. It is the height of rudeness to be disparaging about something that has been bought or made - and in either case given - with love. Your sister should be ashamed of herself! I bet you have put a lot more thought and effort into your gifts to her and her family than she did into yours. Next year I would give her a bland gift-token or better yet a gift from the Oxfam Unwrapped catalogue - at least you would know that someone was going to appreciate it.

I have a couple of relatives like this - one year one of them actually asked me for a refund for her son's present so she could get him something 'more suitable'. (I had bought him a Hogwarts sweatshirt and exactly a fortnight before Christmas his Harry Potter obsession suddenly ended, unbeknownst to me.)

Zeeky I have a friend who gives me a hamper full of goodies mainly made from her own allotment produce every christmas and it is my favourite present each year - in spite of which it is frequently weeks after Christmas before I actually take the lid off anything in it. There is just too much other rich food around at the time to go looking for more. This does NOT mean I don't like what is in it - maybe it's the same with your relatives?
I have received more homemade and homecooked gifts this year than in the last five put together - I think homemade is becoming the new bought-in-harrods

Hi All - I have named changed from sillyoldelf to this one because my DH worked out my username, not that I have anything scandalous within the MN realms but he is a nosy toad and I want some privacy!
Zeeky my heart sank reading your post. You put so much work in and really deserved so much more appreciation. I would loved to have received one of your hampers . It reflects more on them than it does you - and don't stop making your hampers to suit them. Which do you find more enjoyable- shopping for gifts or making them ? And which do you find more cost cutting ? Your recipients would not have had much of a choice in the Victorian era ! And what is wrong with returning to traditional values and crafts .? sorry to rant I just feel gutted for you and must send you a hug .

O no Flubba not you too . ( says SillyOldElf that was, but namechanged . )
Perhaps we should all spend Christmas in a 'Christmas Craft Kibbutz' next year so we can all swap gifts merrily knowing that everyone will hugely appreciate them . No one looked at me suss (apart from DDs teacher) about their homemade gifts as they all know I am broke at the moment .

That's the thing silly, my sister does know we're skint (although by her version of skint, she can still go on a weekend away to NY!!! , so maybe she doesn't really understand). Hey ho. Mustn't let it get to me too much :(

So sorry to hear that Flubba :(

If I do homemade stuff again I think I will leave out the fresh stuff (fudge, truffles, cake pops) as that is what took a lot of last minute time and stress and looks like it is going to go to waste.

' our deeds do not remain confined to ourselves
They become world happenings, and if they are permeated with love, then love goes with them ' . Rudolph Steiner .
I think we have sent a lot of love with all our gifts .
We can't make everybody happy. Focus on the people that really loved your gifts Zeeky and Flubba.

:) silly - I like that quote and will pretend it's not from Steiner :o :o

Right, off to bed now. I'm quite missing not having something to make in the wee hours after my Little One has woken me and gone back to sleep. Need a new project

Night all x

Oops, I am so late back to this it may be too late!

I'm really pissed off on your behalfs (behalves?) zeeky and flubba. How rude of them not to put stuff in the fridge.

I did put gold on my chocolates, and they looked good ... such a genius idea, thanks! And I made snowflake-shaped almond biscuits and gingerbread. And I made cranberry jelly then topped it up with apple, so it was double-layered, and that looked pretty.

Those were the things that went down the best - and my brother and dad liked their alcoholic ones (my brother didn't realize the bramble vodka was home-made, which testifies to Dh's skills printing photos onto photo paper but I was dead chuffed too). However, the passionfruit curd wasn't TBH that great, and my mum didn't really like the quince stuff I don't think.

I think another time I'd be more careful to test everything more times over, and not to make anything that wanted to be in the fridge, as like zeeky they ended up sitting in the living room for ages despite me suggesting repeatedly they might be better in the fridge!

Thanks so much for a lovely few months and for so many brilliant tips. I wouldn't ever have thought I could be so organized or do some of this cooking, and I really enjoyed it. I will certainly be on the lookout for a thread next year, please!

Happy New Year fellow makers and I am looking forward to being inspired, egged on, and generally entertained by you all in a year's time.

Who am I kidding - I am hoping you all start planning your festive making so well in advance next time that the next thread kicks off in - oh - April?

Take care - I would have been so happy to receive any of the lovely things you all made this year in one of my parcels.

PS take care as in look after yourselves, not, watch out or I will start stalking you in RL in the hope you add me to your gift lists...

happy new year all I will miss this thread. Thankyou to you all for your inspiration. I hope to see everybody on the thread next year ... I already have new ideas !
Take good care . I have really enjoyed coming here. It's been a great retreat from the materialistic threads knocking about at the mo.

Hi all. Could I just have one last little rant about my ungrateful relatives - this time the inlaws? Saw them a week before Christmas when we gave them the hamper (one for SIL and one for PIL). Later that week I asked DH if his parents had mentioned if they we were enjoying the hamper, and he said his mum hadn't mentioned it, so he asked her when he spoke to her on Christmas Eve and she said oh yes, lovely. Anyway, saw them again NYE and FIL says to me "I have a confession to make, we forgot all about the hamper you gave us, and only found it yesterday. Do you think some of it is still ok to eat (mince pies, oreotruffles, peppermint bark, fudge etc)?" I was so upset! I really don't know why I bothered. I don't believe that they forgot about it as DH had asked his mother about it, but they obviously thought very little of it :(

Aw, Zeeky. They could have really just mislaid it in all the holiday hubbub maybe?

FWIW I think that everything you said sounds delicious and I would love one.

And it's so nice and good for the environment to make homemade things...so much cozier somehow.

Oh, zeeky.

I think two things - one, it is possible they mislaid it and were just honestly telling you (that's the nice explanation). The other thing is, frankly, if they can't be arsed you could probably have got them the poshest, most tacky expensive gift in the world, and they still wouldn't have been more touched. I have bits of family who are like that and I don't think they get the same pleasure we do from gifts - sure, they are pleased to have more things, but they'd be no more pleased by a gift than by buying it themselves. To me that defeats the point of it all and I think it's quite sad.

So if your PIL really are like that, don't let it get you down!

Like cheerful, I have been reading what you were making for ages and it all sounded lovely - I would have been thrilled.