Home-made Holiday Gift-o-Rama

Updated 12/12/07

Hi, folks!

The Engineer and I have declared this to be the Christmas of No Stress, and to this end we have forsworn the following:

1) The Finding of the Perfect Present
2) The Spending of the More Money Than Makes Us Comfortable ("Cringe-making" is our barometer for this)
3) The Buying of a Present for Everyone and Their Little Dog Too
(and a personal one for yours truly)
4) The Spending of Too Much Time (a.k.a. FOREVER) Crafting Presents

To follow through with this commitment, I have decided that I'm going to make the majority of my presents myself, be it with crafts or edibles, and I'm going to give everyone essentially the same thing.

In this era of DIY and craftiness, you'd think it would be easy to find simple-yet-awesome, budget-friendly craft projects, but I've actually been finding it rather difficult. A lot of projects can end up being rather spendy once you add up all the various bits and pieces (some people's definition of 'budget-friendly' being different from my own) Or they take forever to assemble. Or they aren't mass-production-friendly. But it can be done! [Finger jabbed triumphantly skyward]

So, for your holiday crafting enjoyment and entertainment, below is a smattering of projects I've found that appear to be Cool, Cheap, and Stress-Free. Click on the name of the project to link to the original website. Some of them don't have instructions, but seem logical to assemble. If you have questions, feel free to comment or e-mail and I'll cypher it out with you:

*I'll keep adding to this list as I find new things over the next few weeks. Check back in!

Crafts:

Felt wine racks (or HERE)
Rice face masks
Bacon Magnets made with felt
Neck-Warmer--a sexy and simple one-skein knitting project

Eats:

Caramels
-->Salted, dipped in chocolate, w/ espresso powder, bourbon, rum...
(P.S. I'm actually trying another recipe this weekend that I got from one of my chefs at school and that looks easier than this one. If it works out, I'll post about it next week.)
Marshmallows
Coffee Liqueur
Crunchy Snacks

Mixes:
*I'm packaging my mixes in Bell canning jars, which I found at a local hardware store for $8 for 12 jars. You can certainly go shmancier--the Container Store has a plethora of interesting vessels.

Cocoa
Beer Bread (or HERE)

Enjoy!