Gifts from the heart.  Or from your homestead.  Or made by the work of your hands.  Or something you devised from the nearest craft store.  A letter.  Let us all strive this year to give each other things of real worth.  Nothing that needs to be dusted or that may end up in a landfill.  Something that touches our hearts, or souls, or our tummies, or that just makes us smile.  Here are some ideas for homemade gifts and a recipe for the best lip balm you will ever try.

1. Use rough yarn, or leftover scraps of yarn to whip up little kitchen wash rags and a pot holder.
2. Anything you canned this year, or if you didn’t can this year, it won’t take long to cook up some jelly!  A beautiful jar of beets, applesauce, or strawberry jam is always a delight to receive.
3. Infused alcohol: place vodka, rum, brandy or other hard liquor in a pretty bottle and drop in vanilla beans and a little brown sugar, or raspberries, hazelnuts and honey, or lemons and sugar, or cinnamon sticks and maple syrup.  The combinations are unending, the aperitif unparalleled.
4. Homemade laundry soap (future post).
5. Candles, made by you or not, candles are always nice to have in any lifestyle!
6. A pretty tea cup with your favorite blend of tea and a tea ball.
7. Homemade cookies, fudge, any delight from the kitchen that the recipient may not have had time to make this year.
8. Your prized recipe with a few of the ingredients.
9. A letter telling the person how much they mean to you.
10. Cover half a styrofoam ball with leftover fabric and glue into old teacup flat side down to make a charming pin cushion.  Glue cup onto saucer.
11. Seeds and instructions.  Your saved seeds even better!
12. Infused honey.
13. The best lip balm: In a double boiler (I put the ingredients into a glass measuring cup inside a saucepan of water) you will need 2 and a half ounces of olive oil, almond, grapeseed, or apricot kernel oil.  Add to that 1 oz of shea butter, and 1 oz of chopped up beeswax. While that is melting prepare the lip balm containers (available online, I get mine at http://mountainroseherbs.com ).  Drop 3 drops of essential oil to each container (spearmint, orange, lemon, or vanilla all make yummy lip balms).  When wax mixture has thoroughly melted and you have stirred it with a chopstick several times in the process, pour into each container without cussing.  It’s quick and kind of messy and worth it.  For you will have 20-22 fabulous lip balms in your possession made by you.

Merry Christmas Everyone!