Selfsufficientish.com

Only cos I need some ideas lol

1) cutting beer bottles to make glasses (will let you know how I get on...)


and thats about all I have...so please help me!


Anna x

i am knitting bags, purses, belts from remnents of wool that i accired from someone off freecycle.

I also make my own jewellrey too and i am going to give patchwork a go as well from remnents of fabric also from someone off freecycle.

hope that helps

maggie

some time ago a large group of friends (inc me!) agreed to only give home made pressies to each other. its great! lots of fun, fairly cheap!

so far we have done:
homemade icecream (best for neighbours or it melts)
chicken liver pate
tie dyed socks
hand knitted gloves
candles
sweets - truffles, fudge, peppermint creams, choc dipped fruit
hand painted glass things (items bought from charity shop)
cake
plants

Years ago when we were very low on cash at Christmas time, I was going to tech and used the machines to make my brother an anvil out of scavenged railway line.

Nev

The obvious - chutney and jam!

One of the best presents I ever got was a bag of acorns. Seriously. Had great fun out in the countryside planting them - including one in the 18th green of a gold course. One that I planted in the garden is now a small tree.

What a fab idea Stew... I like that....!!

we are making homemade food hampers for a lot of our family this year. Also try googling 'gifts in jars' you'll find tons of great ideas. I make jewellery so make for people. How about homemade wine, herb sachets for the bath, pop pouri, handmade soap or preserves.

I'm a big fan of this, I much prefer to recieve something a friend has toiled over and thought about rather than going into woolies and just buying the first thing that came to hand.
Ive done...
Jewellery (beads from 2nd hand shops and restrung)
Button cuffs (loads of buttons sewn onto elastic and spaces filled with beads)
Wine
Chutney
Sweets
Baby sitting 'vouchers' only redeemable with me!
Paintings/drawings
I'm planning to raise turkeys next year so mum and dad will have one of those next year!

kind thoughts
Deb

I begin raising herb and potplant seedlings for pressies about now.

One year I made clay pots for the seedlings and got a friend with a kiln to fire them for me, and then painted them. If you wanted to try this but don't have access to a kiln you could ask at a local pottery club or school - they might charge very little or nothing to let you put a few items in the next time it is being used.

Other good consumables are sweets, biscuits, biscotti, jams, pickles, mustards, pestos etc because you can do large batches ahead of time.

- A really good sweet recipe is peppermint creams (which I think have already been mentioned), which look great but are amazingly easy and cheap to make big batches of.

- Candied peel is great because you would otherwise be throwing away the lemon or orange peel, but it is quite 'gourmet'.

- Lemon curd is another one that is very easy to make, but the proper-tasting homemade stuff seems to be difficult to find in shops at a reasonable price so people seem to like receiving it.

- Woodwork-type things - eg toys, furniture, puzzles - if you are that way inclined. My husband is making his parents a coffee table from a slab of recycled rimu (native timber), which he got from a old house that was being gutted.

- Pomanders, which are oranges stuck with cloves, for wardrobes/drawers, though you need to make sure they are fully stuck with cloves or else they go off.

- Wheatsacks - sew a small 100% cotton tube, 2/3 fill with rice and a few dried lavender flowers or geranium leaves or a couple of drops of lavender oil and then sew the top. These can be heated up in the microwave or put in the freezer as a hot/cold pack.

aside from the homemade stuff I also boot sale (if you start early there's some amazing stuff which looks brand new, and even some still sealed kids toys occasionally) and charity shop (ditto)

Vouchers are also good because they tend to be for nice treats but the you don't get the product miles on them - as long as you choose somewhere that the person will shop anyway or is ethical-friendly they solve loads of problems, especially with people who don't think 'home made' or 'second hand' is a good type of present.

I also try and plan ahead as much as possible too so I don't make any special shopping trips, which is great for my sanity as well

Oxfam unwrapped is great. Last year I added up the cost of cards and wrapping paper had I actually shopped for them, and spent the money instead on a donkey and a goat. I photoshopped pics of them onto a 'print and fold it yourself' card and e-mailed it to everyone with instructions to only print it if they must and to recycle it if they did. Then I wrapped pressies in newspaper (start saving christmas colour supplements next month and it looks really pretty under the tree )

We did a thing last christmas for this might have some ideas on it for you.

Will have to update that before christmas with some of the ideas here. I love the acorn idea too, I did the same with sunflower seeds just before I moved from Bath in order to leave a bit of a mark. I wonder how many Muddy oaks there are around?

Andy Hamilton wrote:I wonder how many Muddy oaks there are around?

In fact, the idea of giving acorns away has some historical interest. It was not only my friend that had the idea when she sent them to me. When John&Yoko were doing their peace protesting in the late '60s they sent acorns to world leaders, with the message 'Plant an acorn for peace'. Word is that Pierre Trudeau (then PM of Canada) actually did, so there may be a few John&Yoko oaks about as well.

food items that are expensive to buy, but cheap(ish) to make and can be tailored to tyhe recepient, eg-

oil for oriental cooking- sunflower/groundnut type oil plus dried onion, chillies, shrimp (from oriental supermarkets), garlic granules, star anise etc etc. Glue a whole star anise on the label

Oil for Indian, Italian, Morrocan cooking etc

preserved lemons- good for stews, and north African cooking

Spice mixes for Tacos, fahitas, potato wedges, etc. Lots of recipes for these on line, mostly a mixture of onion salt and spices

flavoured salts- mix large granuled salt with celery seed for dipping (quails) eggs in, make lemon salt, bay salt, cayenne salt flakes. Also Gomasio (japanese seasoning with ground sesame seed) and Dukka (Egyptian mix for dipping bread into after dipping into olive oil)

Dundee cakes and Christmas cakes baked in large sqaure tin and cut into quarters before icing or baked in family size baked bean tins

American breakfast kit. I did this for my Califorinian SIL- I made grape jelly from grape juice and preserving sugar, homemade peanut butter, Mocha/Hot chocolate mix in a jar, pancake dry ingredients in a jar and instructions on what to add on the label and/or scone mixture ditto, with a cutter tied round the jar if necesary! This can easily become English Teatime set


last year DD and DS's teachers got Christmas Potpourri- dried chillies, star anise, cinnamon bark, cloves, nutmegs, small pine cones, dried orange slices and so on. I can see this isn't the 'greenest' because of the airmiles of the spices, but at least it was homemade, and any ingredients we couldn't grow or find we got from the local oriental shop.

This year we're making handcream with local beeswax (DD wil have male teacher next year so I'll have to change my train of thought!) I know gifts for teachers is probably a subject for another debate, but we do small gifts, made by the children, that are least likely to end up in the bin. If there is a competition between parents to get the 'best' gift at our school, I've managed to avoid it, and I reckon there is a limit to the number of 'worlds best teacher' mugs one person can use anyway!


MIL is getting candles and gel air fresheners as well as homemade notelets and maybe some Smiler stamps to go with them. She loves all the artificial 'fresheners' that make me feel when I visit, so DD1 and I are making our own out of gelatine, salt, food colouring and oils, and filling old jars. We've bought some cups, pots and glasses from charity shops and we're melting down old candles to fill them. Might even manage to set spices etc in them. I think I can do my v trendy 20-something friend too, by using retro champagne glasses (£1,75 for 3 from Sue Ryder )

Try looking in shops and catalogues for these gifts in a basket/survivaal kit and adapt. I saw lakeland has a fireside gift pack of 'pinecones' that make the flames change colour ( ), candles, scented fire starters etc for nearly £20!!! Fill a basket or covered cardboard box with pinecones, home or hand made candle, small attractively tied bundles of birch twigs/bark and a cinnamon stick, perhaps a bottle of (blackberry) whisky or a jar of homemade spiced hot chocolate mix and some (homemade) marshamallows- much nicer!
A bath kit could be a book (used but good condition?), some homemade smellies and some chocolates, even a bottle of peapod burgundy.

You get the idea....

hazel