We're still not very personal with our gifts, but we've done homemade since DH and I got married just to save $$. (I'm one of 7 children, he's one of 5... add kids, spouses, parents & grandparents and I can't afford that many presents.)
One year we did ornaments. We used wooden balls and attached legs, heads and/or tails then painted them to create different animals. We had a really cute fat horse, a monkey, a penguin, an owl, a frog, etc. Each person got a different animal.
We did calendars one year. Each month had a different picture including a member of our extended families. We printed out the calendar portion and put the whole thing together like a scrapbook. My mom has a hole punch for that spiral coil binding, so we used that to put it together.
One year we made everyone a deck of Rook cards. My family is huge into card games and one of our favorites uses a Rook deck. We put a different picture on each number, glued it to the back, laminated them and cut them all out (that part took FOREVER... especially since we made 9 decks). Thankfully we still have younger siblings living at home so we didn't feel we needed to make them their own.
Last year we edited our family videos from the past year and put them on a DVD for everyone. We figured that was the best way for our parents to see their grandchildren growing up since we didn't live near either of them. We also had several slide-show type parts where we had pictures from throughout the year and music. It turned out really cute.
I'm not sure what we'll do this year, but I really need to be completely finished by Halloween. I'm not sure I'll be able to deal with anything after Thanksgiving.
Emily
ambitious I'd like to make a few quilts as gifts.
We've been slowly moving towards more handmade gifts and away from the commercial gifts.
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