MISCELLANEOUS
Creative gift ideas abound!
- these just don't happen to fit into any of my other
categories:
- Pet treats (for a homemade canine treat, see "Dog
Biscuits, Non-allergenic" in Recipes/Ideas)*
- Flea shampoo (mild shampoo with about a teaspoon each of
orange oil and tea tree oil mixed into it)
- An inclined cat scratching box (cut a box at an angle -
fill it with corrugated cardboard wedges of the same shape,
all pressed in together to form a slope for kitty to scratch
on... and sprinkle the little crannies in the edges of the
cardboard with dried catnip!)
- Bulbs in pots, waiting for spring...
- Music CDs, tapes; old records for the diehard enthusiast?
- Long-distance phone calls instead of gifts
- Long-distance calling cards
- Magazine and book- (or audiotape-)of-the-month-club
subscriptions
- "[?]-of-the-month" (soup, flowers, cookies,
poems, books, etc.)
- Cloth-covered blank books decorated with glued-on fabric
cutouts (possibly punched from starch-stiffened thin fabric)
in interesting designs
- When you give books, stamp the edges decoratively (if
they're not too thin) with colored ink
- Copies of old family photos for all members
- A "day in the life" videotape of your family
- Genealogical(/historical?) research for all family members
- Stuff from the colleges of the giftee’s last name (e.g.,
running shorts or mugs that say "Gordon
University" on them)
- A packet of postcards made from old Christmas cards (or
fun photos? maybe with goofy captions on the back?)
- An over-the-frame light for a prize painting
- Gifts for sale by local non-profit organizations
- A boxful of paper butterflies (cut them from decorative
papers)
- Honey-Do and Honey-Thanks jars!**
- A Help Jar (a fancy jar filled with slips of paper (daily
or weekly count?) with life-brightening, rib-tickling,
business-building, or grit-strengthening messages on each
- A jar full of good words!... to ponder on
- A wish box, full of cards or strips of paper on which your
wishes for the recipient are expressed
- A Memory Jar, filled with little cards on each of which is
written a different family memory (this is a wonderful gift
for an entire family to give to an elderly parent or
grandparent) - or a Memory Chain, where the good memories
are written on the inside of paper links (and the person has
to unlink and open one link a day)
- A Dream Sheep Box: strips of paper - or cutouts of sheep?
- on which is written a scenario the receiver would like to
dream about (smelling the pines on a sunny mountaintop, walking barefoot
at the beach, playing with kittens), or perhaps a
quotation... in a box, to be picked from upon hitting the
hay (for when counting sheep doesn’t work)
- A cookbook of your favorite gourmet recipes (perhaps
customized for each person?)
- Juice-can lid photo magnets - glue a child’s picture
inside the round frame of a frozen juice-can lid (the one I
received had glitter around the outside - my favorite
refrigerator magnet, still there even though the child is
now growing into a young woman)
- Christmas stockings! - felt appliqué, embroidered,
glossed with buttons and charms or ribbons and lace,
cutwork, needleworked, quilted; fringed/beaded and made of
trading post blankets or leather, in the shape of a dog or
dog bone for Fido (cat or fish for Fifi), in the shape of a
ballerina’s slipper "en pointe" or a cowboy
boot, or just a Santa hat turned upside down... adults like
stockings too!
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