A Thoughtful Christmas

Every year as Christmas draws closer, I would like to think that I come up with some pretty good and creative gift ideas. This year, I bring you two years worth of crafty gift ideas!

For one Secret Santa gift exchange last year, the kids wanted the presents to be homemade. I made a prayer box:

This was a pretty easy project. I took an empty Altoids tin and decorated it with scrapbooking paper, a favorite Bible verse, and a nice pom pom fringe.

I then added some small Post-it notes inside to finish it off. As with most of my homemade presents, I wanted one for myself when it was finished, so I knew this one was a winner.

Homemade gifts were where it was at last year, as we found ourselves trying to figure out another idea for our 4-H Christmas gift exchange. Our "giftee" liked jewelry, so we tried our hand at making a necklace.

The beads on this necklace are actually torn magazine pages. You roll long skinny pieces of paper  around a skewer and glue the ends to create the beads. We threaded the finished beads through some twine and paired the necklace with some sausage balls for a gift.

This year, we didn't have as many crafty gift exchanges, but my oldest daughter wanted to stretch her gift giving buck to include everyone she has ever met, so we landed on creating photo cubes. The first one I attempted came out great. I printed pictures on regular paper and sized them exactly to the size of the cube using the Paint program on the computer. That was probably the trickiest part and the most time consuming. I glued them on and then applied a layer of Mod Podge over the top. The corners looked like they may present a problem, so on the next one I changed it up a bit.

The kids painted the corners of the cube to allow for a smaller photo on each side. That way the photos would lay flat and be easier to decoupage. However, I liked the look of the first cube better, so I did some engineering.

I cut out frames for the smaller photos, and I added a felt bottom to both of them so they can be used as paperweights. Because these specific cubes will be cousin presents, each cousin got their own side of a cube.

For my last craft, I made teacher gifts! In keeping with the theme of being cheap saving money, I stole one of my daughter's ideas. Our movie theater has one night a week when the movies are $5, so I bought $5 gift cards and added a note: "Treat yo'self, to a movie (on a Tuesday)."

I scrapbooked the explanation onto a card and put it all into a popcorn box along with a snack:

So, if you're still mulling over what to get that mailman who has been inundated with delivering your Amazon packages, break out the Mod Podge and be sure to make an extra to "Treat yo'self."