Be completely honest, how would you feel about homemade gifts?

[SparklyAlice]

In complete and utter honesty, how would you feel if your relatives gave you homemade presents this year for christmas?

Or would you much rather have something small from the shop?

Absolutely love homemade gifts.

One of my good friends is very creative and talented and I look forward to her gift more than anyone else. I have lots of things that she has made on show in my house and they always get commented on by visitors.

Its my DCs birthdays a few days after Christmas and my friend is making them an elephant doorstop and a bunny doorstop for their bedrooms - they are going to love them!

Unfortuntaly for me I am totally useless at making things so end up spending a fortune on gifts that the person probably doesn't want or need!

Lovely - esp sloe gin!

I like homemade better even if it's crappy.

What I find suck-my-soul out depressing are those awful 'gifts' that are sold only this time of year to catch the £5-£10 market. The stuff you'd never buy for yourself and is reduced by 70% in the sales. Even if it;s from someone I don;t like, it depresses me to think of people throwing their money away out of a misplaced sense of obligation towards me.

Tbh, I have home made stuff which i didn;t like to begin with, but ended up finding a cosy corner in my home (e.g. duck cushion (!) ), It's definitely more special.

I would love to get homemade presents. Absolutely love it (lovingly stroking homemade embroidery piece made by friend as we speak)

It's nice to get shop bought stuff but so little thought goes into it. I mean y'know Quattro likes Chanel so we'll buy her some. Total time and thought = 2 nanoseconds

Would depend what it was.

Edible for 4example: would need to last a while as I buy in lots of food and go visiting for days, and would need to be tasty. Hoemmade apperitif could be nice, pickled peppers not so much.

Would love anything home made. I agree with Kit and hate 'gifts' such as 3 for the price of 2 ''gift sets that the shops are awash with at the moment.

home made really nice shows personal effort,i like squashed cakes and flat muffins and glittery cards

What got me thinking about making gifts was that clogging up my bathroom are hundreds of bottles of bubble bath and minature showergels, which means i never get to buy myself nice bath products as always using up christmas ones. My grandma got me body lotion for my birthday, not gifty stuff but a proper bottle of nivea because i was always nicking hers when i was round there I am more than happy to get useful things. Also with my Aunt, every year we get each others family a box of chocolates/biscuits and i thought by making them something i was kind of saying 'i really think a lot of you, so wanted to take time to make something to show this' i think this is what homemade presents are about.

There should be a law against the making of 'body lotion'. Does anyone ever use it?. I can use the soap and bubble bath from gift sets (under duress) but the body lotion goes straight into the bin.

well it would depend........hand knitted jumper and wooly hat.......ermm no thanks

well DS specifically wanted a red and black stripy Dennis the Manace jumper last year, so that's what MIL made him, and matching stripy gloves. He was delighted. MIL knitted DD a lovely jumper too. I can't knit, and MIL is very proficient, so everyone was happy.

If I saw a pattern I liked I might ask MIL to make it for me, I'd buy the wool and ask her to give her time as my present, as I know how expensive wool is.

we treasure our knitted nativity that she made for us when we were first married, we got Mary Joseph and Jesus the first year, shepherds the next and kings the following year. NOw maybe I wouldn't have bought it in a shop, but the love that went into them makes them special, and now we have children they look forward to getting them out.