I love home-made presents. They are specialized for the individual, and show that you have put thought and effort into them.
Here are two home-made present sets that we gave away at Christmas time, but they would work well for birthdays, etc. as well.
This set has a jar of rose sugar. I love flavoured sugars as they are such an easy but impressive way of adding flavour to your baking. This rose sugar is made from caster sugar and dried pink rose petals (picked from our garden and dehydrated), and is stored in an air-tight jar (I bought it at Ikea). I also included some pink cupcake cases and a
recipe for rose cupcakes. To tie it all together, we used pink ribbon to embellish everything. We wrapped it in tissue paper (the kind of hand-made paper with flower petals in it) and put it in a gift bag. Easy, and relatively cheap, to make, it still looks romantic and attractive. This is perfect for people who love to bake.
This was a garden oriented gift set. I grew lavender plants from seed, and included one of the little plants (it smells fantastic). We made a little sign to put in the pot from a cut down wooden skewer left over from last summer's barbecues, and some paper and a sticker from my scrapbooking supplies. We also included a nicer ceramic pot (bought in a multi-pack at Tescos and decorated with another scrapbooking sticker). The cool part of this present are the little paper envelopes. I harvested seeds from our garden and saved them. I included a selection of seeds for "cottage garden flowers", including poppies and daisies, and a packet of broccoli seeds. I saved seeds for my own garden, as well, so I'm excited to find out how well they grow this summer.
