by Kat McCrystal

Homemade Heating Pads:

Find yourself some nice, cheap flannel material at your local fabric shop. Sew a rectangle large enough to say lay on the back of someone’s neck. Leave the one side open (of course) and fill it with uncooked rice and if you can get them, some lavender buds. Sew it closed and pin a hand written note to it instructing them to pop it in the microwave for 1 minute before use. Also, if they are in need of a cold pack, they can put it in a plastic bag and put it in the freezer for a while.

Emergency Cookies:

Buy large capacity mason jars (16 oz.) and laying in them the dry ingredients and chocolate chips for Nestle’s Tollhouse Cookies. Hand write a note letting them know how many eggs and how much butter to add to the mix and how long to cook them and at what temperature. Take scraps of fabric and ribbon decorate the lids. I tied the handwritten notes to the jars with a fancy gold thread.

Painted Containers

I don’t know how artistic you are but another two ideas I have used require hand painting items with glass paints. One is to buy cheap ceramic (preferably NOT with a real smooth surface) and hand paint them with flowers and put the name of the person you are giving it to (with glass paints that become permanent when baked). For the men, instead of flowers I painted a tartan plaid design on the cups. Another idea, which also might be very cheap this time of year, is to buy small terra cotta pots, packages of flower or herb seeds, and a big bag of potting soil. You can the paint the name of the flower or herb on the front lip of the pot with some fancy lettering and perhaps some leaves or flowers. (Do not paint the entire pot as it needs to breath once planted with the seeds.) Put enough potting soil in a ziplock bag to fill the pot and put the package of seeds in the pot as well.

Frugal Wrappings

To cheaply wrap the above gifts, I did a couple of things. For the heating pads, I bought tissue paper (you could also use a standard brown paper or even a white freezer paper) and then cut a sponge into the design of a wreath or Christmas tree and then sponge painted the tissue paper to make it festive. I wrapped the pads in the paper and then tied a red ribbon around them. For the cookies, mugs and pots, I bought plain brown lunch bags and did the sponge painting on them. You can cut the tops of the bags with pinking shears or in some kind of scalloped design with regular scissors. I stapled the bags shut in the center and then attached red bows to the bags with streaming ribbon that you can curl with a scissors.

Sweatshirt Cardigan

The idea for the cardigan out of a sweatshirt is a very simple one. You buy an oversized sweatshirt (so that it will be big on the wearer) and you cut it straight up the middle of the front of the shirt. You fold over about 1/2 inch of the edges and either sew it to make edging or you can use that seam stuff you can iron and melts. The sewing looks nicer. Then I bought some scrap lace with a pretty floral design on it. I also bought some very thin (I believe less than 1/4 inch thick) ribbons in three different colors. I bought fabric paint to match the ribbons. I cut out the floral design on the lace and then appliqued it (with iron on applique stuff) to the breast of one side of the sweatshirt. I then used the fabric paint to outline and decorate the lace flower applique. Then I made a simple triple bow with the three different colors of ribbon and hand sewed them onto the breast of the sweatshirt near the flower. For additional ideas, you can buy scraps of fabric in your local fabric store and instead of the lace applique and the fabric paint, you can use sew the scrap fabric onto the edges of the sweatshirt (where you cut it to be open in the front making a cardigan out of it) like piping and you can use more of the fabric to sew pockets onto either side of the bottom of the sweatshirt.

I use white sweatshirts whenever I do this so the person receiving the gift can wear it with more things and I try to this so the person receiving the gift can wear it with more things and I try to use common colors for the fabric paint or in the design of the fabric I choose for piping and pockets. If you use this idea on your site, caution people not to buy sweatshirts that have real right bottoms — you know the ones I mean… where the bottom portion of the shirt is much tighter than the rest of it creating a billowing effect. They will not work as well as the ones that do not have tight bottoms. It is also possible, if you buy a large and long enough sweatshirt to cut the bottom ridging off the shirt and make a hem on it so it hangs straight and flat to the bottom on the wearer.

I hope this helps. My family especially loved the heating pads and the Emergency Cookies.

About the Author: Kat McCrystal is single mother of a eight-year-old son named Ian. She lives in New Mexico. After nearly a decade in the jungles of corporate America, working as a web designer for AT&T for the last three of those years, she is now a stay-at-home, self-employed Mom. She does freelance web and graphics design and is the Publisher of a full featured magazine on the Internet for the readers of romance novels The Hopeful Romantic.

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