13 DIY ideas: Make your own Christmas presents

Are you still looking for creative and personal gift ideas, but don't fancy Christmas shopping and an unnecessary spending spree or simply don't want to spend so much money? With these original ideas and DIY instructions, you're guaranteed to make your family and friends happy.

1. beautiful origami mobile made from cranes

In China, cranes mean "happiness of long life". But these beautiful origami cranes are also a great eye-catcher in any room. All you need is origami paper, paper (colored or paper in black and white, which looks very elegant), string, shashlik or other wooden sticks, scissors.

 

 

 

2nd nutshell boat for the bathtub

Making the nutshell boats and letting them float is a lot of fun. Here's how: first crack the walnuts, then use hot glue to attach a matchstick or toothpick in the middle and glue a paper sail to it. I always glue a small screw to the hull. Then the boat floats much better.

 

3. cooking cards with favorite recipes

If you like cooking and want to invite someone over for dinner, you can stick three to five recipes with photos on index cards, wrap them up nicely and you're done!

 

 

4. eat pretzels for a week

You can vary this idea as you wish: You write a nice voucher and then bring the recipient a pretzel every morning, or you catern a favorite person with dinner or dessert every evening for a week. Catern is very popular right now.

 

 

5. glass with good wishes

Take a nice preserving jar or another jar with a lid and write on small rolled notes what you wish the other person, what you want to experience with them in the new year or what you have wanted to say for a long time. The recipient can fish out a piece of paper whenever the days don't go as you would like them to.

 

 

6th Merci box with thank you notes

Buy a box of Merci and write something nice on the packaging. Then you can write something nice on each individual chocolate stick:"Thank you for picking me up from the train!","Thank you for always telling me jokes!","Thank you for your patience when we went to the swimming pool!" etc. Or you can just write nouns on it like in the photo.

 

 

7. give away flower bulbs and pots

Simply buy a flower bulb, customize the pot and you're done. Particularly impressive: tulips and amaryllis.

 

 

8. build birdhouses and give bird food as gifts

Bird feeders are available in different versions. You can hang fat balls in flower pots you have designed yourself. You can make fancy, cat-proof bird houses from old Tetra containers that you paint nicely.

 

 

9. folding the Fröbel star

These stars look really impressive. There are lots of videos on the internet that explain step by step how to do it. Once you've got the hang of it, you won't want to stop!

 

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10th photo calendar

Print out the 12 best photos that you took with your favorite person this year or that you think will be well received and stick them into a finished calendar. Of course you can also make collages.

 

 

11. preserving jam

Making jam is not difficult at all. What's more, homemade jam tastes better than jam from the supermarket. Three things are important:

1. Sugar (or the preservative contained in the gelling sugar from a ratio of 2:1)
2.  Cooking fruit
3. Fill boiling hot into preserving jars

To make this a success, we have summarized some tips for preserving:

Make sure the fruit is fresh and fully ripe. Only wash fruit briefly before chopping so that it does not lose its flavor. Make sure you use jars that are airtight and completely clean.

Example recipe: 1.2 kg strawberries, 3 tbsp lemon juice, 1 vanilla pod, 500 g preserving sugar (2:1)

Prepare 7 200 ml jam jars. Wash, clean and finely dice the strawberries. Place the strawberries in a large pan with the lemon juice. Cut the vanilla pod lengthwise and scrape out the seeds with a knife. Add the scraped out pod and pulp to the strawberries. Stir the preserving sugar into the fruit and bring to the boil. Bring everything to the boil, stirring constantly, and cook for at least 3 minutes. Carefully remove the vanilla pod, puree the jam, pour into the prepared jars and seal immediately.

 

 

12. individual corona protective mask

Bettina provides the pattern and detailed step-by-step sewing instructions for the face mask free of charge on her blog "Nähtalente". The masks can be made individually - according to personal taste - from different fabric patterns. The mask has an extra pocket for a filter and a comfortable fit. You can find the tutorial here: www.naehtalente.de/atemschutz-naehen

 

 

13. bake cookies

It's really easy and also very suitable for beginners.

Bake butter cookies!

Line a baking tray with baking paper, preheat the oven to 180 degrees (fan oven 160 degrees). Flour the work surface. Roll out the dough on the work surface to a thickness of about 5 mm and cut out the cookies using a cookie cutter of your choice. Place the cookies directly on the tray and bake in the preheated oven for about 7 to 10 minutes (per tray). Leave to cool completely.

Working time: 35 minutes
Baking: 10 minutes
Cooling: 50 minutes

Ingredients:

For the shortcrust pastry:
125 g cold butter
200 g flour
100 g sugar
1 packet of vanilla sugar
1 egg
a little flour for the pastry

For icing & decoration:

2 tbsp lemon juice
6 tbsp powdered sugar
various sugar decorations

 

 

The gift tips for Christmas or other special days come from pme social pedagogue and trainer Jürgen Griesbeck and his daughters. They have already made, baked or cooked many of the ideas themselves and given them as gifts to good friends and family.