Favorite hand-made gifts?

[Minmom3]

Wow.  I found a whole page of instructions:

http://www.craftypod.com/2007/10/29/how-to-make-a-gift-box-from-an-old-greeting-card/    easiest!
http://craftypants.wordpress.com/2007/03/13/tutorial-how-to-make-a-greeting-card-gift-box/  nearly as easy
http://www.mariposacounty.org/index.aspx?NID=1093                                                      much larger, and more work
http://craftypants.wordpress.com/2007/03/13/tutorial-how-to-make-a-greeting-card-gift-box/ interesting, not for older painful fingers!


I think I like the top one best.  There are more out there, but not all of them have pictures, which I find helps me enormously!

[Cami]

We have friends who have sent us homemade treats every year. They are highly caloric and totally awesome.

When we got married, I had a friend whose gift was a stained glass suncatcher his mom made for us.  It was...made out of love. It was also a lesson to me that as much as I might like making some arts/crafts item, it's best to give it only as a gift if you know the person would love it and you have the skill to do at least an adequate job.

On the other hand, one of the gifts that has the most meaning in my life was one that was handmade not by the giver but by someone he paid to make it. It was a lovely stained glass window piece that the giver had designed and commissioned for me.  In that case, the piece itself was remarkably beautiful, but the effort the giver expended to provide it to me has added a lifelong layer of love to the piece that makes it a work of art to my eyes.

[White Lotus]

Incoming: candy, cookies, pesto, condiments (we get a special homemade mustard every year that we treasure), jams, jellies, preserves, marmalades.

Outgoing:  artwork, usually watercolors on cards, and the products of my husband's interest in historic food preservation, aka pickles.  He is presently happily studying archaic recipes and heirloom seed catalogs. His experiments are usually successful.

[KenveeB]

A friend of mine embroidered two scarves for me last year. I do dog rescue, boxers. One scarf had a stylized picture of a boxer on it. The other had paw prints and said "foster mom". I love them both!

[Mikayla]

I don't know if this counts as homemade, but about 5 years ago, my sister made a family cookbook.  She scanned photos of all of us cooking, and then we were forced under threat of death to submit our favorite recipes.  She helped by identifying ones she specifically wanted.

Then she just did it up in Word, created a Table of Contents, designed a cool cover, and went to Staples or whatever to get the plastic protection on the cover and for it to be spiral bound. 

It's really cool, and the recipes are even helpful.  It was an awesome idea.

[ladyknight1]

I make jewelry and for our group vacation with my family, I made endless pearl and bead necklaces for my sisters and mom.

For Christmas, I put together a photo album of my son and had it printed in a hard bound book. It was a big hit!

[TootsNYC]

I don't know if this counts as homemade, but about 5 years ago, my sister made a family cookbook.  She scanned photos of all of us cooking, and then we were forced under threat of death to submit our favorite recipes.  She helped by identifying ones she specifically wanted.

Then she just did it up in Word, created a Table of Contents, designed a cool cover, and went to Staples or whatever to get the plastic protection on the cover and for it to be spiral bound. 

It's really cool, and the recipes are even helpful.  It was an awesome idea.

Ooh, I love this! That would be a lot of fun. One problem would be that my MIL never uses a recipe. Ever.

[mandycorn]

I don't know if this counts as homemade, but about 5 years ago, my sister made a family cookbook.  She scanned photos of all of us cooking, and then we were forced under threat of death to submit our favorite recipes.  She helped by identifying ones she specifically wanted.

Then she just did it up in Word, created a Table of Contents, designed a cool cover, and went to Staples or whatever to get the plastic protection on the cover and for it to be spiral bound. 

It's really cool, and the recipes are even helpful.  It was an awesome idea.

Ooh, I love this! That would be a lot of fun. One problem would be that my MIL never uses a recipe. Ever.

I made a set of recipe cards for my sisters and was worried about that same problem, because my mom is the same way. What she agreed to do for me was to let me watch her cook and I'd write down exactly what she did and after doing that a couple of times, I was able to find commonality between the versions. The recipe cards I wrote up include the common ingredients with notes at the bottom explaining her variations.

She was also nice enough to dump her pinches and handfuls into a measuring spoon or cup for me before adding them to the pot, so I could come up with reasonably accurate amounts.

The recipes don't produce exact copies of her dishes, but they're definitely close enough to point us all in the right direction.

[KenveeB]

I made a set of recipe cards for my sisters and was worried about that same problem, because my mom is the same way. What she agreed to do for me was to let me watch her cook and I'd write down exactly what she did and after doing that a couple of times, I was able to find commonality between the versions. The recipe cards I wrote up include the common ingredients with notes at the bottom explaining her variations.

She was also nice enough to dump her pinches and handfuls into a measuring spoon or cup for me before adding them to the pot, so I could come up with reasonably accurate amounts.

The recipes don't produce exact copies of her dishes, but they're definitely close enough to point us all in the right direction.

Great idea! Once my mom came up with a red beans & rice recipe that I just loved. She didn't have an actual recipe, so I followed her the next time she made it and wrote the whole thing down. Yummy.

[Waterlight]

My mother and best friend are both avid knitters and have made me scarves.

Mom also makes her own cards.  The last couple of Christmases, instead of making a card, she put together a journal with a short story...about me going shopping at my favorite stores, with a gift card from each store on the page with the words about that favorite store:  "Waterlight went to FavoriteBookstore... [gift card on page] Then because she needed NewPieceofClothing, she went to FavoriteDepartmentStore [gift card on page]...."

I'm neither a knitter nor a card-maker, but I embroider (tea towels, pillowcases, samplers, bookmarks), and I've made candy.  This year I made maple-cinnamon cashews, and attached the recipe to each jar of cashews; in past years I've made fudge.