DIY Christmas Gift Ideas – Easy Homemade Gifts

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There’s nothing better than giving a homemade gift for Christmas. These DIY Christmas gifts feel personal, meaningful, and full of warmth. Whether you enjoy baking, crafting, or making something practical, here are a few ideas to inspire your holiday gift-giving ideas.

1. Double Chocolate Sourdough Bread 

This double chocolate sourdough bread recipe is simple and easy and is a perfect bread for the Christmas season, your family members are guaranteed to love it.

The recipe is very similar to my artisan sourdough bread, and can be baked in a round artisan style loaf or in a regular loaf pan.  It’s not a super sweet loaf, but does have a hint of sweetness and rich chocolate flavor from the brown sugar in the bread, and the chocolate chips of course.

This chocolate sourdough bread is a very simple recipe with cocoa powder, chocolate chips and brown sugar added to make a decadent delicious loaf of bread.  It is so good served with some fresh butter or cream cheese.

2. How To Make Beeswax Wraps, Jar Bonnets & Food Covers

Learn how to make beeswax wraps, jar bonnets, food covers and butter wrappers in this step-by-step tutorial.  

These eco-friendly beeswax food wraps are simple and easy to make, and will help you avoid using plastic wrap in your kitchen when storing or transporting food.  

There’s nothing more beautiful than a dish covered in a handmade beeswax wrap.  Perfect to use when transporting dishes to a potluck, or when gifting food to a friend.  

They are much less expensive than store-bought beeswax wraps and take only a little time to make.  Make plenty of these food safe wraps to have in your own kitchen. These are the perfect Christmas gift for anyone.

3. Easy Homemade Whipped Tallow Balm Recipe

Whipped tallow balm is such a thoughtful gift that anyone would love. This easy whipped tallow recipe makes a beautiful all natural balm or lotion that is great for all skin types.  

Made with just a couple of ingredients and a hand mixer, this tallow body butter is so easy to make yourself that you’ll never have to buy it again.  

This versatile product works all over your body and is excellent for prevention against cracked hands and feet in the wintertime, as a tallow face cream to help fight aging, and for deep hydration on any of your skin.  

4. Sourdough Cinnamon Twist Bread Or Wreath

This super-easy sourdough cinnamon twist is so soft and sweet and is such a yummy gift to share during the holidays.

It’s easier to make than cinnamon rolls, it can be made the night before so you can quickly bake it fresh for breakfast in the morning, or you can bake it right away for a quick dessert.

 You can mix this twist up in a mixer, or in a bowl and just do some quick stretch and folds by hand to develop the gluten. There is also the option to make this with discard or active sourdough starter.

 I make many of these sourdough cinnamon twists every week during the summer to sell at our local farmers market, and this twist is usually requested for at least one holiday breakfast throughout the year.

5. How To Make Tallow Candles

Tallow candles are simple and natural, not to mention easy to make and an excellent use of homestead resources especially if you render your own beef tallow (or lard).

This makes them the perfect cozy gift. They are made with just one ingredient, and that’s tallow, unless you want to add an essential oil or pthalate free fragrance oil, and then it’s just two ingredients.  

There’s nothing better than cozy candlelight on a cool fall or winter evening, especially when the candle is a clean-burning tallow candle.  

6. How To Make Homemade Tallow Lip Balm

This tallow lip balm recipe is so simple and easy to make with only 2 basic ingredients, tallow and beeswax.

 Of course, I’ll show you how you can add essential oils so it smells nice if you’d like, but you can certainly make this nourishing lip balm with just 2 natural ingredients that you can either produce yourself or source locally.  

Anytime you can replace a store-bought version of an item like lip balm, that is probably full of preservatives and ingredients you can’t pronounce, with a simple alternative that works better and is healthier, why not do it?  This is what simple living is all about in my opinion.

Using something as basic as beef tallow to cook with, as well as to make all of your own body care products like soap, lotion, lip balm and more. This lip balm is simple and nourishing and is the perfect gift.

7. How To Make Homemade Vanilla Extract

This vanilla extract is rich and fragrant and is the kind of gift that is both useful and special. Learn how to make homemade vanilla extract with only 2 simple ingredients.

 Making your own vanilla is not only economical but also very simple and easy to do.  Vanilla extract is a tincture made by soaking vanilla beans in alcohol.  

You can use your instant pot to speed up the tincture making process, and have vanilla in 30 minutes, or you can make it the old-fashioned way by just allowing it to sit on a shelf for a few weeks until it turns into vanilla.  

Once you learn to make your own vanilla, you’ll never need to purchase it at the grocery store again. 

8. How To Gift Sourdough Bread & Cinnamon Twists 

These are some of my favorite ways to gift sourdough breads and cinnamon rolls.

Sourdough makes a great gift because it is a consumable item, healthier than traditional sweets or candy and can be made in so many different ways!

In the video below I show you some different ideas for gifting sourdough breads for any season of the year.

9. Gardener’s Hand Scrub Soap

This gardener’s hand scrub soap recipe is simple and easy to make and will be your favorite soap to use when your hands get dirty working out in the garden.  

If you’re like me, I rarely wear gloves in the garden as I like to get my hands in the dirt.  That means that after a spending the day weeding or pruning tomato vines that my dirty hands are nearly black.

 The best way to get them clean is to use this gardener’s hand scrub soap recipe which I have been making for many years now.  

If you happen to be a mechanic, it also works great on grease and grime.  One of the best formulations my family has ever found for cleaning really dirty garden-stained hands (or feet). This is a great gift for your friends who love gardening. 

10. How To Make Homemade Vanilla Sugar

Learn how to make homemade vanilla sugar with only 2 simple ingredients.  Homemade vanilla sugar adds a rich vanilla flavor baked goods and can be used as a substitute for plain sugar in coffee, hot chocolate, tea, ice cream or almost any sweet recipe.

If you make your own pure vanilla extract, then it makes perfect sense to make this flavored sugar with your leftover vanilla beans, or you can use fresh vanilla beans as well.

There are a couple of different methods for making this recipe which are outlined below. Put this in a cute jar with a ribbon and a tag, and it makes a lovely little gift. 

11. How To Make A Butter Candle For Sourdough Bread

Learn how to make a butter candle for sourdough bread or any kind of artisan style fresh bread.  Butter candles are fun and easy to make and add a fancy touch to any party.  Essentially, you’re making a candle out of butter that you can place in a loaf of bread, and once lit it will slowly melt the butter allowing you to dip your bread into it.    If you’ve wanted to make the viral butter candle you may have seen online, this butter candle recipe will give you step by step instructions.  You can make herbal butter candles with garlic, rosemary, or other herbs or the butter candle can just be left plain.  Butter candles are perfect for holiday parties, charcuterie boards or centerpieces.  The best part is they don’t take very long to make, and everyone will think you went to a lot of work when you didn’t.

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Favorite Sourdough Recipes:

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