7 Handmade Gifts You Can Make With Your Kids
Dec 14, 2011 Eco Friendly Parenting
As Christmas gets closer, it gets harder to figure out what you’re getting for the rest of the people on your list. It can be harder yet to decide what your kids will give to grandparents and the few other people they give presents too. It’s a good time to start working on some handmade presents, things that show personal effort yet look really nice.
1. Cookies
Kids love to make cookies. Pick some favorite recipes and get started. Use organic, fair trade or local ingredients where possible. You can buy organic or fair trade chocolate chips
2. Candy
A little touch of candy making is always fun. I usually do something with chocolate. Chocolate covered pomegranate seeds are easy, for example. You simply melt the chocolate, stir in the pomegranate seeds, then scoop away a few seeds at a time to a cookie sheet to cool. Just a few seeds together are best, and you may want to warn recipients to eat these quickly, as the pomegranate seeds won’t stay good for long. They’re also very juicy and should be eaten carefully so they don’t squirt.
Truffles are also fun to make. There are all kinds of recipes online. My own favorite is a pomegranate truffle, and yes, you are sensing a theme here. My mother has a pomegranate tree, which should pretty much explain it. The truffles are made from pomegranate juice simmered down to about half, with dark chocolate mixed in, allowed to cool, made into small balls, allowed to cool again, then dipped in dark chocolate to coat. The insides melt very quickly, so I usually keep these cold.
3. Homemade Play Dough
This is a great gift for kids to give their friends. You can mix it up all the way or just give bags of powder and instructions on how to finish it off. The play dough recipe can be as simple as a mix of flour, salt, water and food coloring. A little vegetable oil can help make it a little smoother, but I often skip that part and I’ve never bothered with the cream of tartar many recipes recommend, nor do I cook mine. It comes out well and lasts for weeks anyhow.
4. Homemade Slime
This is another fun project, although the ingredients aren’t all as safe as the ones for play dough. Still not too bad, overall. Slime is basically water, Elmer’s glue, borax and food coloring.
5. Heat Packs
You can make heat packs in a variety of sizes. Buy an attractive, sturdy cotton cloth for the bag. Other fabrics may not fare well in the microwave and should not be used. Decide how large a bag you want. Smaller bags are good as hand warmers, which can be nice for cold weather. Larger ones are nice for heating sore muscles and can be draped on the neck or leaned on for a sore back.
Use your choice of filler. Rice, buckwheat hulls, feed corn, barley and beans are common choices. Only one is really necessary. Don’t fill the bag too full, as it should be fairly flexible.
Add in any scents desired. Dried herbs such as lavender, rose petals, mint or rosemary smell nice. You can also use essential oils. Mix these in before filling the bag. Be careful if you know the intended recipient is sensitive to certain smells.
Fill the bag and stitch it closed. I like to include a removable cover bag. It’s much easier to wash a cover than it is to wash a heat pack bag, and they do get dirty over time.
6. Bath Salts
Bath salts are easy to make. You just need a clean, empty jar, epsom salts and/or sea salts, food coloring and some essential oils. Glycerin is a nice addition, but not absolutely necessary. Mix your ingredients together in a bowl, remembering that it doesn’t take much essential oil at all to make a nice scent through the whole thing.
You can decorate the jars to make them more attractive if you like. I save jars from spaghetti sauce and other things all year, so jars for projects like this really aren’t hard to come by.
7. Time
Not even handmade gifts always have to be from something you purchased. You can give the gift of time instead. You can offer to run errands, clean around the house, whatever the recipient would love for you to do.
This one can be great for grandparents, especially if they’re having trouble doing things themselves as they get older. Odds are they don’t need more stuff, but they certainly love having more time with the people they love.
Of course, you don’t have to limit this one to grandparents. Maybe you have a skill that someone else would love to have you share with them. I often have people asking me about how to set up a website, for example, and helping someone get started could be a great gift.
Tags: gift ideas, handmade gifts, holidays, kids
Slime – Another Easy Last Minute Gift to Make for Your Kids
Dec 23, 2009 Eco Friendly Parenting, Green Gift Ideas
I just posted about making play dough as a Christmas gift for your kids. You can do the same with the ingredients to make slime. I will warn you, however… slime is NOT nontoxic, at least not with the recipe I have.
2 cups water
1-1/4 cup Elmer’s glue
food coloring
1/3 cup hot water
1 tsp Borax
Thoroughly mix 2 cups water with glue. Add food coloring as desired.
Mix hot water and Borax. Stir into glue and water mixture, removing slime as necessary. You may have to make an extra batch of the hot water and Borax to make the entire mixture into slime.
The slime will be rather tacky at first. The more you work it, the less tacky it will be.
To give this as a gift I would suggest giving the kids just the glue and tell them it’s for a special project. Packaging up the rest of the ingredients just wouldn’t work for me.
Slime is rather messy of course, but if you clean up promptly it’s not likely to stain. At least it hasn’t for me. Don’t let it near carpet as it’s not so easy to clean up there. Tile floors are a much better choice for this one.
As with the play dough, keep it sealed up and it will last a while. Your patience with whatever mess they create may be another matter.
Tags: crafts, gift ideas, homemade, slime
Homemade Play Dough – An Easy Last Minute Gift to Make for Your Kids
Dec 23, 2009 Eco Friendly Parenting, Green Gift Ideas
Kids want so much for Christmas, especially if they watch much television at all. They see all the cool toys out there. But sometimes one of the best gifts can be one you make yourself.
Homemade play dough is a great choice for kids in the right age group. They love it.
My plan this year is to prepare a couple containers of dry play dough ingredients and have a part of the gift being getting to choose the colors they make while spending time with Mommy. It’s a really inexpensive gift, and the ingredients I need are right on hand. Here’s my recipe:
2-1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup salt
1 tbs cream of tartar (optional but helpful)
1-1/2 cups hot water
3 tbs cooking oil
Food coloring
glitter (optional but pretty)
Mix dry ingredients together. Separate into containers if you want to do multiple colors. Add oil and food coloring to each batch. If you’ve separated colors, estimate the right amount of oil for each. Add hot water slowly and mix until the consistency is right. Too much water makes dough gooey and less fun to play with. But you can always add extra flour to work it out.
We like this recipe because it lasts a long time. Keep it in a sealed container. Refrigeration is helpful.
If you don’t add the glitter this is of course completely nontoxic, which is nice. Especially if you’re like me and have a near toddler to deal with as well as the older children.
Tags: crafts, gift ideas, homemade, play dough
Encourage the Kids to Make Christmas Gifts
Dec 11, 2009 Eco Friendly Parenting
There are a few things that are true about most kids, especially younger ones.
- They love to make crafts.
- They love holidays.
- They don’t have much of their own money.
Put it all together and what do you have? The perfect excuse to have them make the Christmas gifts they give.
Gifts don’t have to be complex. Last year my kids made frames out of wooden craft sticks, with magnets on the back so they could be stuck on the fridge. They painted them and added glitter because, well, it wouldn’t be a fun craft in their view if things didn’t go just a little overboard.
The frames are really easy to make. You’ll need:
4 or 8 craft sticks, depending on if you want a single or double layer to the frame.
Glue
Photograph to be framed
Paperboard or thin cardboard
Magnet (strong enough to hold the whole thing up)
Decorating supplies
Have the kids glue them into approximately a square. Don’t fuss about perfection, these are kids and a little off looks good. My kids like to do the double layer frame.
Allow the glue to dry, then let the kids decorate the frame as they please.
As the decorations dry, you can cut the photograph to fit the frame. Glue its back to the paperboard and attach the magnet to the back.
When everything is dry, glue the photo into the frame.
There are many other crafts kids can easily make that will be appreciated by grandparents and other relatives. Having them make the gifts encourages them to give things that have more meaning, rather than spending a dollar or two on what appeals to them at that instant at the store.
Tags: christmas, gift ideas
Green Gift Ideas to Give to the Non-Green
Nov 24, 2008 Green Gift Ideas
Not everyone wants to go green, even now. That can make them harder to shop for when you’d rather keep things green. So I’ve been thinking on things that just about anyone can appreciate.
Gifts for Non-Green Adults
I know this can seem a bit odd, but I’m seeing people who would rather not be called environmentalists using these now. My inlaws, for example. They’re not remotely into the environmental movement, but recently found out about reusable shopping bags and utterly adore them.
Brita Pitcher Plus Reusable Water Bottles
Put the two together for the people who just cannot stand the thought of drinking straight tap water, and you might just help them break the bottled water habit. Brita is about to start taking back pitcher filters, so make sure to let people know! They may or may not do it, but it’s worth the try.
It may help to get a nice looking Sigg or Kleen Kanteen, so the appearance is a motivator for it to be used as well. Don’t forget to buy some for the kids in the family. My daughter adores her Kleen Kanteen.
Cast Iron Cookware
You can often find this in local antique shops. It’s great for people who love to cook. Cast iron skillets and dutch ovens are the most popular. I own a cast iron skillet that had been my grandmothers, and it’s my favorite. They really do get to be nicely nonstick with age and proper treatment.
Organic or Fair Trade Chocolate
Who could resist? If you have a Whole Foods nearby you can probably find a decent selection, but I’ve also seen Green & Black’s at other stores in my area, such as Target.
Green Skin Care
Many people love getting skin care products. Shop around a little and it’s not too hard to find some that are fairly environmentally friendly as well as kind to the skin. Who needs all those chemicals anyhow?
You can buy a preassembled gift basket or make one of your own. I tend to enjoy assembling gift baskets when I give them, so that I have total control over what goes into them. Makes it a bit more personal, too.
I’ll cover gift ideas for kids in another post. There are some really great shops out there that offer wonderful, environmentally friendly toys for children.
Tags: gift ideas, holidays, shopping
