Tag Archives: holidays

7 Handmade Gifts You Can Make With Your Kids

As Christmas gets closer, it gets harder to figure out what you’re getting for the rest of the people on your list. It can be harder yet to decide what your kids will give to grandparents and the few other people they give presents too. It’s a good time to start working on some handmade presents, things that show personal effort yet look really nice.

1. Cookies

Kids love to make cookies. Pick some favorite recipes and get started. Use organic, fair trade or local ingredients where possible. You can buy organic or fair trade chocolate chips on Amazon, for example.

2. Candy

A little touch of candy making is always fun. I usually do something with chocolate. Chocolate covered pomegranate seeds are easy, for example. You simply melt the chocolate, stir in the pomegranate seeds, then scoop away a few seeds at a time to a cookie sheet to cool. Just a few seeds together are best, and you may want to warn recipients to eat these quickly, as the pomegranate seeds won’t stay good for long. They’re also very juicy and should be eaten carefully so they don’t squirt.

Truffles are also fun to make. There are all kinds of recipes online. My own favorite is a pomegranate truffle, and yes, you are sensing a theme here. My mother has a pomegranate tree, which should pretty much explain it. The truffles are made from pomegranate juice simmered down to about half, with dark chocolate mixed in, allowed to cool, made into small balls, allowed to cool again, then dipped in dark chocolate to coat. The insides melt very quickly, so I usually keep these cold.

3. Homemade Play Dough

This is a great gift for kids to give their friends. You can mix it up all the way or just give bags of powder and instructions on how to finish it off. The play dough recipe can be as simple as a mix of flour, salt, water and food coloring. A little vegetable oil can help make it a little smoother, but I often skip that part and I’ve never bothered with the cream of tartar many recipes recommend, nor do I cook mine. It comes out well and lasts for weeks anyhow.

4. Homemade Slime

This is another fun project, although the ingredients aren’t all as safe as the ones for play dough. Still not too bad, overall. Slime is basically water, Elmer’s glue, borax and food coloring.

5. Heat Packs

You can make heat packs in a variety of sizes. Buy an attractive, sturdy cotton cloth for the bag. Other fabrics may not fare well in the microwave and should not be used. Decide how large a bag you want. Smaller bags are good as hand warmers, which can be nice for cold weather. Larger ones are nice for heating sore muscles and can be draped on the neck or leaned on for a sore back.

Use your choice of filler. Rice, buckwheat hulls, feed corn, barley and beans are common choices. Only one is really necessary. Don’t fill the bag too full, as it should be fairly flexible.

Add in any scents desired. Dried herbs such as lavender, rose petals, mint or rosemary smell nice. You can also use essential oils. Mix these in before filling the bag. Be careful if you know the intended recipient is sensitive to certain smells.

Fill the bag and stitch it closed. I like to include a removable cover bag. It’s much easier to wash a cover than it is to wash a heat pack bag, and they do get dirty over time.

6. Bath Salts

Bath salts are easy to make. You just need a clean, empty jar, epsom salts and/or sea salts, food coloring and some essential oils. Glycerin is a nice addition, but not absolutely necessary. Mix your ingredients together in a bowl, remembering that it doesn’t take much essential oil at all to make a nice scent through the whole thing.

You can decorate the jars to make them more attractive if you like. I save jars from spaghetti sauce and other things all year, so jars for projects like this really aren’t hard to come by.

7. Time

Not even handmade gifts always have to be from something you purchased. You can give the gift of time instead. You can offer to run errands, clean around the house, whatever the recipient would love for you to do.

This one can be great for grandparents, especially if they’re having trouble doing things themselves as they get older. Odds are they don’t need more stuff, but they certainly love having more time with the people they love.

Of course, you don’t have to limit this one to grandparents. Maybe you have a skill that someone else would love to have you share with them. I often have people asking me about how to set up a website, for example, and helping someone get started could be a great gift.

Eco Friendly Gift Ideas

It’s that time of year again to really get serious about eco friendly gifts. It’s not easy to keep gifts environmentally friendly, as the biggest rule of all is that you shouldn’t be buying unnecessary things. Still, you can find some really great gifts that shouldn’t be all that hard on the environment, and will be appreciated even by the folks on your list who aren’t interested in going green.

Organic Nuts

Nuts can be a very healthy snack, and it’s not that hard to find organic ones. Make sure you know there aren’t any allergy issues to consider, of course. They can even be part of a really nice looking gift basket.

Flannel Sheets

Flannel sheets are a great way to keep the nights warm. They’re a nice bit of practical luxury, especially for cold winter nights.

Fair Trade Handbags

Know someone who’s ready for a new purse? A fair trade handbag may be the perfect gift. Not only are they practical, they can make a great style statement.

Men’s Clothing

Green T-shirt MenYou don’t have to feel as though all the eco friendly clothes are for women. There are some great designs out there for the men in your life.

Grow Mushrooms Kit

For the person in your life who just loves to cook with mushrooms. It’s a very simple kit to start growing mushrooms inside your home. You can find a variety of kits, such as pearl oyster mushrooms, shiitake mushroom kit and others.

Yoga Gear

Some yoga gear manufacturers make the effort to keep their products kind to the environment. Yoga itself is a good form of exercise, and only requires a little gear. A yoga mat or other helpful gear is a nice present for someone thinking of taking it up.

Bamboo Toys


The great thing about bamboo is that it grows quickly. It can make some cute toys too. There can of course still be some question about how the bamboo is grown and processed, but there are some pretty great toys which can be made from cut up bamboo that has been dyed or painted.

Kids and Christmas – How Do You Keep the “Gimmes!” Away?

Christmas is a fun time to be a kid. You get to ask all kinds of people for things you want, and there’s a chance you might get them. It’s all pretty amazing. It also encourages kids to get really demanding about wanting more and more stuff. Is there any way to control this?

No way is perfect, of course, but you can cut things down some. Kids will be kids, and that means that even if you limit exposure to television commercials, there will be friends talking about the latest and greatest whatevers. Still, cutting down on media exposure is one of the best ways to limit how much stuff children ask for. Here are some more ideas.

Talk to Them Honestly

Discuss with your kids why they can’t have everything they want. You can cover financial reasons (who can afford all that?), environmental reasons (the waste, oh, the waste!) and even that sometimes it’s hard to buy something because too many people want it.

Go with whatever works for you. Children, especially as they get older, understand more than many adults think.

Remind Them of What’s Important to Your Family

We all want things, but there are values beyond things. Whether it’s the meaning of the holiday, thinking of those less fortunate or something else, remind your kids what lies beyond wishing for presents.

Discuss the Value of Patience

This one really helps if what your child wants is something you’re willing to get, but can’t do so yet. It doesn’t matter if it’s for financial reasons or because all the stores are sold out. Patience is something children need to learn.

Encourage Them to Give

Whether it’s the gifts they give to family or something your children give to charity, help them to remember that giving is as much a part of Christmas as receiving. Help your children start thinking of others, even if it’s just family members.

This can also include giving toys to a Toys for Tots drive or finding a place that gives you information about what a child or a family would like for Christmas. Another choice would be to look at international charities that provide live animals to poor families or otherwise do things to help communities in need. There are many opportunities to give both locally and around the world.

Sort Out Old Toys

Christmas is one of my favorite times to sort out old toys to give to charity. Kids know that new ones are coming, and there’s always some that just don’t get used anymore or maybe never really caught your child’s attention.

If your child is reluctant, you can do the sort yourself. I still suggest keeping your child involved in the process. One way is to divide the toys into two more or less equal piles. Let your child pick one to keep. Allow trades for truly wanted items, but you can put rules on it such as having to give up two items to get one back. Make sure you keep sets together.

Take the unwanted toys to a favorite charity together. You and your child can talk about what the charity will do with the toys and who will benefit.

If you really want to work the lesson more, you can encourage your child to give up some current favorite toys. Children can be amazingly generous given the chance. They may wince and whine, but they also may do it.

How Do You Limit Your Environmental Impact at Christmas?

If there’s one problem with Christmastime, it’s the consumer feeding frenzy that happens every year. So much waste, and it’s hard to not get into it at least a little bit. Most families have a lot of Christmas traditions that are difficult to change and too much fun to easily opt out of.

How can you adapt your habits at Christmastime to limit the impact you put on the environment?

1. Talk it over with family.

Have a discussion with your family about changes you’d like to make and why. Try to make handmade, reused and Fair Trade gifts more acceptable.

My kids are getting a stack of books from our local $1 bookstore this year. They’re all used books, but in good condition. For about the price of one or two new books for each, they’re getting a bunch of books. I call that a good deal.

Trees and seeds are good gifts for those who enjoy gardening. Find out what they’d like to grow and which varieties grow well in their area. A good fruit tree is a gift that will keep on giving for years.

2. Limit spending on gifts.

There are a few ways to go about this. You can set a price limit and still all shop for the same people, or you can draw names and pool the total value given in gifts per person.

Between my sisters and I, we have an agreement on how much each of us contributes toward gifts. It’s approximate, as no money actually changes hands. Instead, names are drawn and gift values assigned to each name. Each person shops for the people they drew.

This cuts down a lot on shopping time and on the buying of obnoxious knickknacks. You can find out what the person actually wants, and it might be in the budget.

3. Reuse gift bags.

This one drives some people nuts, but it’s why I don’t like to use wrapping paper. Gift bags are very reusable if you treat them well. I keep quite a stash of them for whenever I need to give a gift.

Alternatively, use a reusable shopping bag as a gift bag. Make it a part of the gift.

4. Go easy on the lights.

Holiday light displays are beautiful, there’s no doubt about it. We’re planning a walk around our neighborhood soon to see all the holiday lights on display – my youngest just about plasters herself to the windows at night when she notices all the pretty lights outside right now.

The only problem with holiday light displays is how much energy they use. It adds a lot to your power bill, and most power generation isn’t exactly clean. Then light strands break down over time and have to be replaced. That part isn’t so pretty.

If you’re going to have holiday lights, go for LED whenever you can. They use less power, and they’ve been improving over the past few years. You should also put your lights on a time, both outside and on your Christmas tree inside, so that they don’t stay on all night long. They don’t really need to look so pretty when no one is going to see them, right?

5. Think your travel through.

The holiday season is a time to visit and enjoy being with family. If you live away from your extended family, it’s common to take a trip and go visit.

Kind of a pity about the pollution created.

Choosing the most effective and environmentally friendly form of transportation is a balancing act. A big part is how far you have to go. If you’re only a couple hours away, a car may be your one option. If you’re cross country, you may not be able to afford the time a car or train takes to cover that distance.

There are options to traveling. You can talk on the phone, of course. If both sides have a webcam, you can talk that way. Not as much fun as being together in person, but it’s kinder to the environment and the budget.

6. Think about the food.

Holiday food, oh, the holiday food! It’s no wonder many people gain weight over the holidays. There’s too much good food available this time of year at the various parties and other events you may attend.

For your own health, overeating is a bad idea, although the occasional indulgence isn’t that terrible for your health at all.

When you’re preparing food, think about where it comes from. You may not be able to get much fresh, local produce this time of year, depending on where you live, unless it was grown in a greenhouse. You can try to get organic produce. You can get free range turkey or other meats that have been treated better than the usual factory farmed stuff.

Sweet treats are the big challenge. Look for bakeries that use healthier ingredients and avoid HFCS you can buy Fair Trade candies, or you can make desserts and other treats yourself. Balancing deliciously decadent with environmentally sensitive takes some extra work, but it’s not a bad challenge if you’re up for it.

7. Think about your tree.

We have an artificial tree. Not as pretty as a real tree, but we’ve had it for a number of years now and intend to keep on using it for many more. My mother has had the same artificial tree as far back as I can remember, and it’s still going strong.

If you go artificial, that’s the thing to remember, to commit to keeping it a long time. Don’t just throw it out because you want a real tree from then on. Find someone who does want it if you’re done with it.

If you go for a real tree, make sure it was sustainably farmed. A good tree farm replants every year. Don’t flock your real tree, as that makes it unrecycleable.  Do make sure that your real tree gets recycled in whatever way is available in your local area. Many communities have places where you can drop off your real trees at the end of the season.

8. Remember your reason for the season.

Whatever holiday you’re celebrating, whatever the reason, keep it in mind as you prepare for it. There’s no religion anywhere that demands the consumer frenzy that has become so common at this time of year.

Do you have any special ways you limit your family’s impact at this time of year?

What to do About All the Non Eco Friendly Gifts Your Kids Want

Most children have very long wish lists for Christmas. There are so many ads on television, so many toys discussed with friends, and they want most of them.

Unfortunately, very few toys are made in anything remotely resembling an environmentally friendly manner. How do you deal with the requests for toys that are not eco friendly when you’re trying to raise a green family?

Buy Used

Some classics I find hard to resist, as do many other parents. The good part about some classics is that they’re pretty easy to buy used rather than new.

Legos are a good example. Many of us had them growing up. We may even have some stuffed away in a closet or at a parent’s house.

I love Legos. They encourage creativity, especially the plain block sets. But eco friendly they are not. Too much plastic.

On the plus side, they’re durable. I’d expect a set to be handed down many times. That helps a lot on the environmental side of things.

Any toy that has been out for a few months you have the chance to buy used. No guarantees, of course, and you have to look at how much they’ve been damaged by previous owners. But in terms of finding popular toys in an eco friendly manner, that’s as close as you’re going to get.

Trade Around

This method takes a lot of trust. You can trade with family and friends who also have kids for the toys your kids want. You may even be able to arrange a toy rotation for those toys that they want returned. Agree that a toy will spend a month, a week, whatever length of time at each house.

If this works, it also teaches sharing. It’s harder to do with really possessive kids. Children who accept the trades can enjoy the wider selection of toys they can play with without costing you a lot of money.

Have a plan for when toys break. Will they be replaced? What if one child is more careful and the other damages a lot of toys? You do not want to ruin a friendship over a few toys.

Encourage Handmedowns

Anyone you know with kids older than yours you can encourage to give your children handmedown toys. Discuss the ones your kids want and see if they’re available. This makes gift giving within the family much cheaper if all the cousins are within a good age range.

Discover Eco Friendly Alternatives

This is hard to do, as many toys really do not have an eco friendly alternative, or at least not one most children will accept. Very few toys, relatively speaking, are made from plastic. There are more limits to what you can build with most wooden toys… just try to match something like K’Nex with a wooden or eco friendly equivalent!

When it’s possible, go for it.

Get the Toy Requested

We’re human, we parents. Sometimes just because it will delight our children, most of us will choose the toy requested, regardless of environmental considerations.

It’s best if you avoid this until you’ve gone through the other options. But when your child really wants a particular item, and you’ve been eco friendly in every way you can manage, it may not be completely unreasonable to give in. Just consider what you’ll do with the toys when they break or aren’t played with anymore. Hopefully you’ll be able to find them a good home to be played with again.