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Homemade Personal Gift Ideas

Here are a few of my favorite homemade personal gift ideas. I recently contributed to an article for a local paper, about simplifying the holiday season with home made gifts, the article is pack with ideas for getting crafty and using your thinking cap to gift it up this year. I’d like to expand those ideas with a personalized flair- and I don’t mean a monogrammed sweater.

While making gifts can be stressful and time consuming for some, it can also be a stress reliever for the budget-minded gift giver. Here are a few personalized, simple ideas on how to create a memorable handmade gifts, no sewing (needles) involved this time!
A few examples from around our house…

Tiny Pocket Love Notes

This little love note (above) has been around awhile (Q is now 16). It’s about the size of a business card. I don’t recall how it came to be but she always has it hanging somewhere in her room. It’s a trimmed picture then added illustration with pens and markers– because a daily affirmation is something everyone can appreciate. Laminate a tiny love note to be kept in a wallet or backpack– a frequent reminder of a loved one’s awesomeness.

Personalized Framed Notes

This is a piece of salvaged wrapping paper from last Christmas. I believe M (our 12 year old) saved it and framed it herself. So, simply trimming up a picture and a note from her dad to display. It’s been kept on her night stand all year long.

Customized Box

A friend of mine made this box a few years ago- a plain wooden box (can be purchased at any local craft store) covered with craft paint, collaged vintage pictures, modge podge and a bit of rick rack.  And then add personal pictures and words for the perfect gift.
**There are enough silly, inspiring, random, funny quotes on the internet to cover a box like this over and over again.

Custom Collage

Another friend of mine gave this me after a trip we had taken to New York. Isn’t remembering a trip the next best thing to being there?

Personalized Yardstick

One of my favorite, most useful gifts ever is this personalized yardstick, given to our family by my sister. So simple but hands down the best.

Many words on the yardstick go back to childhood memories. We lived in New Hampshire and Rhode Island and when it snowed we would rush to open the front door first thing in the morning- yardstick in hand- to measure the overnight snowfall. Based on the results… we would either begrudgingly put on our school clothes OR hurriedly climb back under the covers with the radio on and pray that school would be cancelled. School was often cancelled and we would collectively cheer with delight. My mom would dread the cheer and the upcoming day of chaos. Because there is a tremendous soggy, snowy mess that ensues when 6 kids are home from school for the day and at least 12 inches of fresh snow lay waiting to be played in. Of course I found this all out later, first hand, when I became a mother.

Great lines from the yardstick:
“Ahh, just a dusting”
“What, that’s it?”
“Just enough for sledding.”
“What? You call this a blizzard?”
“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.”
“The snow cat’s broke!” (a line from Snowball Express)
“My back’s going to be so jacked up tonight…”
“Winter Wonderland!”
“Lock in the hubs”
“School has got to be closed.”
“Where are the chains?”
“Now, THIS is winter!”
“Time for a snow fort”
“It’s the Motherlode!”
“Shovel off the roof!”

One of my goals this year is to put my creative cap on and come up with something a clever as the ideas shown here. Working on it… but I can’t give anything away!

These homemade personal gift ideas get you thinking along the right lines because creating epic gifts for your loved ones is the best!

1 Comment

  1. kalamitykelli

    December 12, 2012 at 6:57 pm

    I love ALL of these!! The yardstick is fantastic! Of course, if WE get a dusting, simply everything closes because Okies don’t know how to drive in any kind of snow! 🙂 I think the mod podge box is my favorite though……..I had a box as a kid and I still have it with all my 9-year-old treasures still in it! 🙂

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